Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Mexico City Mobilities: The People, Politics, and Pathways That Built a Metropolis

Mexico City Mobilities: The People, Politics, and Pathways That Built a Metropolis

Bess, Michael K.

Paperback

Series: Diálogos

General World HistoryMexican History

PREORDER - Expected ship date January 26, 2027

ISBN10: 082637056X
ISBN13: 9780826370563
Publisher: Unm Press
Published: Jan 26 2027
Pages: 256
Language: English
An essential resource for students and scholars of Latin American history, urban studies, and the history of mobility and transport.

Mexico City Mobilities is the first comprehensive study to place regional mobility and transportation infrastructure at the center of the Mexican capital's two-hundred-year history. Beginning in 1824, when a fledgling national capital began to define its political and territorial identity, historian Michael K. Bess traces the evolution of mobility politics--the deeply contested negotiations between state authorities, technical experts, and everyday citizens over the right-of-way and built and natural environments. Moving beyond traditional urban histories, he explores how the Federal District functioned as a showcase for technocratic visions of progress through its transportation-infrastructure systems and policies.

Bess examines the shift from nineteenth-century animal-drawn trams to the massive twentieth-century megaprojects that sought to tame the city through asphalt and steel. He rigorously analyzes three key dynamics: first, the rise of technocracy in Mexico, wherein generations of architects, engineers, and planners implemented infrastructures designed to influence human behavior and signal modernity to local, national, and international audiences; second, the expansion of motor mobility and urban highways, which reflected capitalist supply and demand, often at the expense of low-income neighborhoods, and reinforced social markers within the metropolis; and third, the emergence of hybrid transportation, such as the pesero, which operated as a decentralized network that became the backbone of the capital's transit network at crucial times in the latter twentieth century.

By analyzing the wicked problems of congestion, public safety, and environmental impact, Mexico City Mobilities uncovers the fractured social reality of a region that grew from a collection of local communities into a global megacity of more than twenty-one million.

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