Vers une périphérie en archipel ?

Abstract

Trough this paper, we want to demonstrate the polyphony of the production of urban social space, far over the last Southeast frontier of Mexico City around 1980: the Chalco Valley. Therefore, we will overview the various forms of city growth actually taking place around Chalco. The first part of the paper deals with the evolution of Mexico’s urban growth in the last decades. Then we will propone some ideas regarding the tendencies to the fragmentation of the metropolitan territory and to the formation of «archipelagos» in the low-income suburbs of the Mexican capital city. Finale, we will analyze in details this particular tendency to create an archipelago at the South east borders of Mexico City, an area with a intense dynamism of spatial growth during the last two decades: Chalco’s municipality.