Introduction

This book argues that urban outcomes are better understood as the result of the interactions between policies from different policy domains rather than from any single policy silo. In doing so, this book develops and applies the Policy Interactions Framework to the study of the mobility experience of workers in Greater Mexico City. The book demonstrates that the highly unequal mobility experience of workers is the result of the interaction between three urban policy areas that often work at cross-purposes: economic development, housing, and transportation. Four empirical studies provide the reader with a comprehensive view of how urban policies can sometimes interact to produce inequitable urban outcomes. As a result of the investigation, the book puts forward the choiceless mobility hypothesis: a process by which the interaction between the spatial location of the demand for labor, the housing pathways available for the population, and the political economy of public transport operates to produce geographies of low accessibility to jobs.