ABSTRACT
Within the Mexican urban system, Mexico City has historically been the national economic, political and cultural core. It houses most of the federal governmental institutions as well as the main agents symbolizing progress and modernity. Since the 1930s and 1940s Mexico City’s urban primacy has led it to be both a national development site as well as a pole of attraction for rural/urban migration. During this time national economic activity was strongly guided and supported by an import substitution industrialization policy, which was reflected in the dynamism of the primate city. Nevertheless, since the beginning of the 1980s, even though Mexico City continued its urban dominance at a national scale, important transformations in the political economic model have modified its internal dynamic as well as produced important urban reconfigurations at the national level. The transition from an economy oriented towards internal industrialization, to one highly intensive in services, had important effects on Mexico City’s performance as the epicentre of the national economy. As a result of these changes, a new spatial order within the Mexican urban system was created, in which Mexico City’s new specialization was fundamental to understanding the functions carried out by other cities in the national context (Pérez Negrete, 2007).
