ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to contribute to people's knowledge of Mexico City, which derives from rich studies on the city's economic, spatial, and social development, based on global embeddedness. It emphasis on transformations of Mexico City that occurred with the deeper integration of Mexico into the international division of labor, and the specific role of Mexico City in this process of globalization. The chapter argues that the city's development was strongly biased by radical shift in the country's economic strategy toward foreign markets, because this shift implied a revalorization and reordering of economic activities, of space, and of capital-labor relations. In the case of Third World cities the new elements in urban processes tend to be submerged under the size of the population, which impedes one from grasping the structural transformation that cities like Mexico City are undergoing. The chapter concludes that there is much more to Mexico City than a huge urban agglomeration, one should reconsider the concept of megacities.
