ABSTRACT
The sole fact of population loss is not enough to apply the notion of “shrinking” to urban areas of metropolitan Mexico. As the case of Naucalpan illustrates, economic adjustments among sectors and (an apparent) population decline may be accommodated in a process of restructuring that is characterized by changing interrelations between several dimensions of social life at different levels. This analysis displays the ways in which changes in economic activity (global as well as local) are related to changes in urban form and spatial dynamics, always mediated by a changing institutional setting, the “spirit” of the time, demographic transition and the local (competitive) advantages produced by a particular historical trajectory. Non-economic factors such as symbolic values of regional leadership and prestige are historical and play a definitive role in the “capacity to adjust” in any given urban region.
