A City on a Lake: Urban Political Ecology and the Growth of Mexico City

In A City on a Lake Matthew Vitz tracks the environmental and political history of Mexico City and explains its transformation from a forested, water-rich environment into a smog-infested megacity plagued by environmental problems and social inequality. Vitz shows how Mexico City's unequal urbanization and environmental decline stemmed from numerous scientific and social disputes over water policy, housing, forestry, and sanitary engineering. From the prerevolutionary efforts to create a hygienic city supportive of capitalist growth, through revolutionary demands for a more democratic distribution of resources, to the mid-twentieth-century emergence of a technocratic bureaucracy that served the interests of urban elites, Mexico City's environmental history helps us better understand how urban power has been exercised, reproduced, and challenged throughout Latin America.

Author: Matthew Vitz
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 04/27/2018
Pages: 352
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.40lbs
Size: 9.20h x 6.20w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9780822370291

Review Citation(s):
Choice 01/01/2019

About the Author
Matthew Vitz is Assistant Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego.