Poverty and urban inequality: the case of Mexico City metropolitan region *

Alicia Ziccardi is Senior Researcher at the Social Research Institute of the Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and Director of the University’s Programme on City Studies. Professor of Post-Graduate Studies on Political Science and Urban Studies at UNAM. Member of the Academy of Sciences of Mexico. Member of CLACSO’s Working Group on Poverty and Social Policies. Email: ziccardi@puec.unam.mx; ziccardi@unam.mx been and still are very serious social problems that have been addressed in numerous in-depth social and urban research studies. This has particularly been the case over the last three decades, during which cities underwent a rapid and profound transformation faced with the need to repurpose urban spaces to adapt them to the demands of the global economy. These same globalised economic and social processes in turn take on new connotations when one explores the rapid and profound transformations that have occurred in large cities and, as will be shown, amplify structural inequalities and create new asymmetries in access to urban goods and services. In this regard, taking an ecological-territorial perspective, our unit of analysis is a megalopolis: Mexico City, a central space that serves the main function of articulating the national and the international economy, while still being the hub of the country’s economic, social, cultural and political life. Generally speaking, this large metropolis has modified its urban morphology