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METROPOLITAN MERIDA. HISTORICAL EVOLUTION AND CURRENT FEATURES.
- AN URBAN PERSPECTIVE – JORGE BOLIO OSES INTRODUCTION Despite the fact that since 1984 the Mérida region began to be considered as a conurbation in official planning spheres, the metropolitan phenomenon was still not outlined with the clarity that it assumed a decade later. Although the physical continuity of three cities, Mérida, Kanasín and Umán, was a visible and worrying trend in terms of urban planning, the strong functional unity that now exists between Mérida and the immediate surrounding region, made up of various municipalities, and which marks the development of all areas of regional life beyond physical-spatial expressions. . The tendency of the city to organize around itself the activities of the population centers to constitute a clearly differentiated functional region, has gone beyond the role of Mérida as the gravitational center or pivot of the area previously called henequenera. Today, the flows between this central city or conurbation and its hinterland They are not limited to the transfer of henequen fiber and the commercial supply of this wide area. Now, the flows incorporate strong commuting and short-distance migratory movements, significant and growing vehicular traffic, and above all, the integration of regional real estate and labor markets. No less important are the flows of intangible components such as information, the new sociocultural patterns promoted by urban consumption and even the exercise of political power through emerging forms and actors. The metropolitan phenomenon has established its roots in the Mexican geography and plays a central role in the urbanization process of the country. If in 1960, the country's industrialization already consolidated, there were 12 metropolitan areas, by 1995 these functional units around large cities were already 56, Mérida included in ninth place, and concentrated 56% of the national population on 79 % of the urban population and 75 % of the 2 gross domestic product (SEDESOL, 2006: 10). In the metropolitan area of Mérida (hereinafter ZMM) the process manifested itself in the early 1990s (Bolio, 2004: 53-65) and accelerated in line with a dynamic real estate market favored by neoliberal reforms to the legal and institutional framework. , which favored the passage of extensive peri-urban ejido areas into private hands, as we will explain later. The complexity of the metropolitan phenomenon is such that it would require an enormous effort to study it and too much space to expose it within the brief limits of this work. Of course, we are not addressing our field of interest here without relating it to a more general and interdisciplinary context that in recent years has materialized in a Comprehensive Program for the Metropolitan Development of Mérida (PIDEM), coordinated by the person writing this and carried out in close collaboration with Alfonso X. Iracheta from El Colegio Mexiquense, A. C. It was sponsored by the Conacyt-Government of Yucatán Mixed Fund and carried out between 2010 and 2011 at the Fundación Plan Estratégico de Mérida, A. C. During this collective effort, I developed a research project at UADY called "Metropolitan processes and urban reorganization of Mérida and its region" with the collaboration of Luis Ramírez Carrillo and Rodolfo Canto Sáenz, researchers from the same institution. This work is largely my contribution to these projects.
This essay focuses particularly on some processes of territorial and urban order undoubtedly linked to the metropolitan phenomenon. The purpose is to show its historical development, particularly in the context of recent events of great importance, and then expose the most relevant features of urban change and its current trends. In a first part called "A regional history of urban primacy" I make a tight historical synthesis of the formation of Mérida as a pre-eminent city, reviewing processes such as its central function in the peninsular context (Bolio, 1984: 92-111), the reorganization of the regional economic base in the face of global markets and, finally, its consolidation as a regional metropolis expressed in demographic and functional changes in the urban system. A second part “Mérida and its region today. An urban perspective”, briefly exposes the current state of the urban structure and the use of the territory in the ZMM, emphasizing the behavior of the real estate market and the influence of public policies that through plans and urban megaprojects have accompanied and reinforced the metropolization of this area. Finally, the most outstanding findings in this study of the urban reorganization of Mérida and its region are presented as a conclusion. MÉRIDA, A REGIONAL HISTORY OF URBAN PRIMACY The most remote antecedents In a previous work (Bolio, 2000: 1-5) I explained in more detail how in the face of the scarcity of attractions for Spanish colonization and the demographic collapse of the indigenous population in the first decades of colonial life, the greed for arms and tributes gave lead to the following demographic and territorial consequences: ● The depopulation of the coasts for three and a half centuries. ● The reconcentration of indigenous peoples under the policy of religious congregation or “reduction” of indigenous peoples. ● The high indigenous component of the viceregal population compared to few Spaniards and Creoles. ● The slow growth of the "Spanish" cities that only required a few naboríos or "urban indigenous" for their personal service. ● The demarcation of very rigid sociocultural borders between the white northwest (the region around Mérida) and the indigenous rest of the peninsular territory. ● The late agrarian change from the indigenous milpa to the fenced Creole units, such as cattle “sites” and corn-livestock ranches. ● Lastly, the generation of a pre-eminent urban system, organized since then around Mérida, the administrative and religious capital of the province. With Independence, the first phase of a sui generis process of agrarian accumulation and transformation was unleashed, with the dispossession of lands from the indigenous community and the forced rooting of the population in ranches, haciendas, and sugar mills, all of which generated a period of prosperity for a newly independent Creole society from
It was this period of henequen economic boom, technological innovations and links with the international market, which led to the most profound urban and architectural changes in Mérida at that time. The city registered its first physical overflow to the north, a privileged site for the ascending elite, beyond the downtown-neighborhood layout and structure inherited from the colony and under a different urban structure and with better services, new materials and construction procedures. Mérida underwent architectural changes that substantially modified its image. Emblematic elements of this urban change were the Paseo de Montejo residential subdivision with its boulevard designed in the European style of that time; Paseo where the henequen magnates built large mansions under new architectural fashions; No less important was the complex of urban facilities to the west of the Santiago neighborhood, with a zoological park "El Centenario", the "Parque de la Paz", the "Hospital O'Horan", a Psychiatric Hospital and, of course, a modern and huge prison, the "Juárez Penitentiary" with its panopticon cells, according to the avant-garde theses of Jeremy Bentham. This complex communicated with the center through "Porfirio Díaz" avenue built on what is now 59th street (Ancona, R. and R. Riancho, 1987: 54-57). Along with these emblematic works, the henequen oligarchy undertook the modernization of the urban structure, paving the entire central headquarters of the city and introducing public lighting in it and in the squares and main streets of the neighborhoods. 6 New materials, construction procedures and technological innovations have been introduced in the city since then; asphalt, steel, concrete, glass, electricity, lighting of downtown streets and urban transport, signaled the change in the new urban spaces and buildings. With 62,000 inhabitants and an urban area close to 1,400 hectares, in 1910 Mérida was the third largest and one of the best-equipped cities in the context of Mexican cities; of course, without this equally benefiting the residential areas of the new elite nicknamed "Casta Divina" and their subordinate social groups -settled in the center and around Paseo de Montejo, Reforma avenue and 59th street- and the few middle and popular colonies of the beginning of the century, emerged mainly to the south and east of the old central area. The total peninsular population was, in 1910, 435,000 inhabitants, with a distribution concentrated in Mérida and its henequen area and the western coast. Well-configured urban subsystems (relationships between cities and towns and productive areas) were already present and still prevail with slight variations in the current era. Since then, the city of Mérida and the port of Progreso tied their destinies as a functional unit, as a port-city duo with strong economic and social ties (Map 1). MAP 1. HENEQUENERO RISE AND URBAN NETWORK OF THE PORFIRIATE, 1910.
Source: BOLIO (1984). In the first half of the 20th century, the difficult decades that elapsed from the end of the First World War until the 1950s were marked by the limitations of the world market for hard fibers. This adversity reoriented the scheme of economic use towards other areas and activities. A new activity began to emerge in close connection with the production of henequen and the depression of the world market: the industrialization of the fiber. This gave rise to the massive emergence of cordage factories in Mérida, which multiplied with the favorable circumstances of the Second World War and the Korean conflict, until reaching their greatest number in 1960 (Vera, 1983: 19-27). The active population employed in industrial branches in the state grew from 10.6% to 15.5% between 1940 and 1950, a margin that would be maintained until 1970. In this way, until the end of the fifties, the activity of the corderías of the city of Mérida was the more dynamic in the regional economy, although nothing comparable with the export boom of decades ago. Between 1925 and 1950 the railways were gradually complemented by a network of highways that connected the main peninsular towns with Mérida. This network adopted a peculiar convergent disposition that clearly expressed the economic control of this city in the regional context of that time. On the other hand, the influence of the automobile and public transport in the expansion of the city towards new neighborhoods and suburbs became evident from the beginning of the fifties, when the number of automobiles, trams, buses, distribution agencies, mechanical workshops and fuel outlets multiplied without ceasing. Robert Redfield, a distinguished representative of the Chicago School and of the trend later called Urban Ecology, studied the Yucatan peninsula in the early 1930s. The description of Mérida is exemplary of what was considered a city of that level, which the demographic concentration and the confluence of communication routes had turned into "a metropolis without competition" that dominated the economic, political and social life of Yucatán. Its economy revolved around financial and, above all, commercial activity: in Mérida the “import and export firms, large wholesale houses, insurance agencies, department stores, automobile dealers, modern hotels and other specialized services” (Redfield, 1944: 38) It was pointed out that most of the mechanized industry that existed was in Mérida and the business of some factories and workshops was mentioned (Idem, 39). Another of the urban functions that Redfield emphasized was that of the economic and political control of the rural
● The availability of a commercial port open to the world market at that time and a dense rail transport network converging in Mérida, which was quickly replaced by highways and motor transport. ● The late and limited industrialization (corderías and goods of immediate consumption) of the urban economy of Mérida. ● The incipient urban concentration of the main local fortunes (rentiers) due to the Agrarian Reform and the crisis of the henequen business. ● The emergence and rise of a commercial apparatus concentrated in the center of Mérida and whose area of influence would cover a region beyond the limits of Yucatán. Reorganization of the economic base and consolidation of a regional metropolis Between 1940 and 1990, the provincial and traditional city that prospered with the rise of the henequen economy and that barely reached one hundred thousand inhabitants (98,832) reached a demographic size five times greater (523,422); this without including the capital of Kanasín, already physically linked to Mérida and which registered 22,020 inhabitants in the 1990 census. This fact, merely quantitative, was the expression of a complex and prolonged process of economic, social and physical-spatial transformation, knotted around the obstinate and permanent search for alternative activities for the increasingly worse situation of the hard fiber market. Such substitution of the basic axis of the Yucatecan economy went through multiple experiences; most of them did not manage to consolidate, others were resounding failures for various fractions of the regional capital; However, some lines of economic development managed to become attractive options for production, employment and growth over the years. These advances, to a greater or lesser degree, were closely related to what we can call the urban economy of the city of Mérida ; that is: the size of its market for the incipient industrial production and commerce, its still central function in the state and peninsular supply, its availability of workforce and basic infrastructure, the boom in housing construction, its various services for the productive plant and collective consumption, its educational and training levels in human resources and, above all, the fact of being the headquarters of the main capital accumulated during the henequen and
cordage But also, the control center for the enormous federal public investment that was channeled to Yucatan to mitigate the most serious effects of the agave crisis, such as unemployment for almost 70,000 peasant families, a political risk that the regime would not run thanks to the federal subsidies destined for more than two decades to agrarian credit (Henequeneros de Yucatán, Banco Agrario, Banrural, etc.) and to the parastatal textile complex Cordemex. This contributed to making Mérida the main financial center of the region. As happened with most of the large Latin American cities (De Mattos, 2002: 5-10), the link with the world economy through activities such as tourism, regional control of foreign trade, the rise of the maquiladora export industry and the development of a modern commercial and services apparatus, were the options that the regional capital took as the most viable for its expansion in the situation that opened with economic globalization and made possible by the recent modernization of the port of Progreso. By the mid-1990s, other government diversification projects had been left behind, as well as the intentions of private capital to develop a nationally competitive local manufacturing plant and to reactivate the construction industry to the levels it reached in the 1970s, when it monopolized the branch throughout the peninsula. Between the urban informal economy and the massive emigration of rural workers to Cancun and other poles of the "Riviera Maya" -relief valves or forms of exclusion that are very effective until today- new options for the regional productive base. In this sense, Mérida, as a regional metropolis favored by a nearby port and with a privileged geopolitical location, managed to maintain its central role in the urban context of the peninsula thanks to the productive transformations that globalization brought to Yucatán. This influence reinforced the historical trends of spatial concentration of the economy in Mérida and its immediate region and favored a dynamic process of growth and modernization of communications and transportation in the region and of an increasingly dominant urban commercial and service sector in the region. the peninsular scene. To no lesser extent, it also fostered the demographic growth of the Mérida-Kanasín-Umán conurbation, despite the strong Yucatecan rural migration to Quintana Roo and the daily or weekly commuting migration from a network of towns and cities from which It was the henequen zone, a symptom
TABLE 1. ZM MERIDA. EMPLOYED POPULATION BY SECTOR OF ECONOMIC ACTIVITY, 1990- Employed population 1990 Employed population 2009 total primary secondary tertiary total primary secondary tertiary fish i n g a n d a n i m a l a q u a c u l t u r e tra n s f o r m a t i o n a n d e l e c t r i c i t y co ns tr uc tio n t r a d e c o m m u n ic a ti o n s a n d tr a n s p o rt s e r v i c e s fishi n g a n d a n i m a l a q u a c u l t u r e tra n s f o r m a t i o n a n d e l e c t r i c i t y co ns tr uc ti o n t r a d e c o m m u n ic a ti o n s a n d tr a n s p o rt s e r v i c e s ZM of Merida 218,276 11,169 44,578 16,857 41,796 10,704 78,714 277,222 4,073 51,320 19,359 85,907 16,314 100, Konkal 2,111 511 376 172 395 60 507 804 226 337 0 241 Kanasin 7,450 766 1,483 832 1,833 410 1,735 7,002 2,391 556 2,351 73 1, Merida 184,636 5,157 37,113 13,896 36,500 8,995 70,686 242,819 61 39,718 18,660 76,618 15,017 92, Progress 11,462 2,665 1,703 935 1,340 702 3,067 13,606 4,012 998 55 3,612 1,093 3, They teach 763 302 188 33 56 26 106 200 63 105 32 uman 11,854 1,768 3,715 989 1,672 511 2,613 12,791 7,924 88 2,884 131 1, Sources: INEGI, XI General Population and Housing Census 1990, and Economic Census 2009, Interactive data consultation. MAP 2. MERID METROPOLITAN AREA: HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF THE URBAN AREA, 1906-
Source: Iracheta, A. and J. Bolio (2012). To the economic factors historically generated by the crisis of the henequen industry, such as the geographic and sectoral concentration of the most dynamic activities (commerce and services in Mérida) and the alleviation of rural unemployment that the rise of Cancún meant, came to added in the last two decades a set of effects generated by the re-entry of the region in the world market and the appearance of new activities. This time the link would not be the export of henequen, but rather the promotion of a new urban productive base, based mainly on activities linked to the world market and foreign investment in the 1990s, and to an explosive real estate market during this century. In this way, the Mérida region transitioned from an agro-export economy to a modern tertiarized economy, based on trade and regional-scale services without first going through a process of industrialization, as did most of the regional metropolises in Mexico. It should be noted that the informal sector of the economy is insignificant compared to that of other similar cities; To this contributes the already mentioned offer of low-skill jobs in Cancun and the "Riviera Maya", as well as an accelerated migration to the United States (California, in particular) from municipalities in the south and east of the entity, where detect the highest degrees of marginalization, according to INEGI and the National Population Council (CONAPO).
Source: Iracheta, A. and J. Bolio, 2012 Despite its slow demographic growth and high levels of inequality, Mérida and other municipal capitals such as Kanasín, Umán, Progreso and Conkal, are constantly expanding, incorporating the regional periphery and small towns, such as Cholul, Caucel, Chichí, Dzityá and Ucú. within a vast and increasingly complex metropolitan system. This peculiar urban configuration is generating, as a functional and/or spatial unit, a complex city in which more than one authority makes decisions about its organization and operation. The growth of Mérida and its immediate region, as we have already explained, was considered slow until the early 1970s, when they began to undergo radical changes in their urbanization process. By that date, the formation of a metropolitan area began to be clearly outlined with an influence in terms of employment, supply and services that was felt to a greater or lesser degree up to the limits of the old Henequen Zone. In a more precise way and based on the criteria of delimitation of zones
metropolitan areas established by SEDESOL ( on cit, 2006) and redefined by a Comprehensive Metropolitan Development Program for Mérida (Bolio, 2011), in 2010 this ZM made up of the municipalities of Mérida, Kanasín, Umán, Progreso, Conkal and Ucú already had 1 million 27 thousand inhabitants. This redefinition of the area included Progreso among the metropolitan municipalities officially delimited by SEDESOL, using the same four criteria as in that study, namely: urban character, functional integration, urban planning and policy, and distance from the central city (Map 3). MAP 3. DELIMITATION OF THE ZM OF MÉRIDA AND ITS MUNICIPALITIES Source: Iracheta, A. and J. Bolio, 2012 This historical process of urbanization shows a pattern of horizontal and expansive physical growth starting from the capital city, giving rise to a diffuse and fragmented metropolis; the decline of the henequen activity and the rise of the real estate market in the periphery have been some of the elements that led to the current configuration of the metropolitan urban system, characterized by an urban area that grows along the main access roads to the city central (Municipality of Mérida), forming a conurbation or continuous city with Kanasín and metropolitan corridors such as those of Umán and
● An extensive peri-urban zone (composed of the potential territorial reserve of the PDU 2003 of the City of Mérida) "oversupply" more than 30 thousand hectares to develop. In these areas, the most distant land (the cheapest) has been used, with potential for the location of uses that require large areas of land (golf courses, industrial parks and particularly mega housing projects). Outside this radius of influence, there are still predominantly Mayan-speaking police stations or rural towns (with high levels of poverty and marginalization). ● Satellite cities that mostly represent a series of dispersed housing complexes, which due to their size should cover functions typical of a city and that together with the 16 police stations or peripheral urban localities (of which 6 belong to Mérida and the rest to 4 of metropolitan municipalities), make up an apparently polynuclear metropolitan scheme, with average distances between each urban settlement of 6.5 km ● In these areas, the process of urban growth without proper planning and scant government control maintains accelerated changes in the use of rural land to urban use; caused by the sale of large areas of land that belonged to the ejidos and that today have been incorporated for residential use, which has given rise to an extremely expansive urban structure. ● Finally, a conurbated central urban area can be seen that grows horizontally along at least 7 of the main access roads to the city of Mérida, where there are a multitude of empty properties within the urban area of the ZMM that have not been occupied. because speculative pressures predominate, materializing in high expectations of economic gain, obtaining private benefit at the expense of public investment. The predominance of the city of Mérida as the highest ranking settlement within the state and metropolitan urban system is absolute; it concentrates the exchange of people, goods and services of all levels and types, in turn promoting the progressive increase in land prices, becoming one of the reasons for the emergence of urban sub-centers
that absorb the increases in population that is not able to access land in the central city. The importance of Mérida has in turn led to another historical phenomenon of segregation of the low-income population; Densification levels within the city mark and differentiate the areas where the population of the different economic strata lives, maintaining the historic center as the supplier and meeting point for the population in general. Historically, the northern portion of the city has registered the lowest occupancy levels and high land prices. The construction of Paseo de Montejo marked the settlement of high-income families and therefore the area was endowed with infrastructure and equipment, a trend that in the present is maintained. Urban nodes and corridors Within the city of Mérida there are three hub nodes of services and facilities that also function as points of reference for the population: (Map 5). MAP 5. MÉRIDA, FACILITIES AND SERVICES CONCENTRATOR NODES WITHIN THE CITY Source: Own elaboration based on the Urban Development Program of the Municipality of Mérida, 2009.
TABLE 1. METROPOLITAN AREA OF MÉRIDA: CONCENTRATION OF VEHICULAR TRAFFIC AND LAND USE IN METROPOLITAN CORRIDORS, 2009- metropolitan corridor Annual Average Daily Traffic (TDPA) (^) TMCA TDPA projection 2015 Traffic concentratio n 2001 2005 2009 2009 2015 Merida-Progreso 8,460 10,602 15,176 7.58 23,524 26.44 31. Merida-Ucú 4,253 5,068 9,372 10.38 16,949 16.33 22. Merida-Uman and Ent. Poxilla-Merida 6,401 9,428 10,334 6.17 14,801 18.01 19. Merida-Kanasin-Acanceh 5,345 6,271 6,867 3.18 8,287 11.97 11. Merida-Tixpehual 3,868 4,448 4,778 2.67 5,597 8.32 7. Merida-Kanasin-Teya 6,732 3,955 5,985 -1.46 5,480 10.43 7. Merida-Conkal 5,357 6,628 4,878 -1.16 4,547 8.50 6. Total (APTD) 40,417 46,400 57,390 4.48 74,653 100.00 100. Note: The data corresponds to the weighted average of the TDPA in the sections corresponding to each indicated road. Source: Own elaboration from SCT. Road Data, eds. 2002, 2006 and 2010, corresponding to the years 2001, 2005 and 2009. The existing relationship between the land uses that each corridor groups together and its consolidation responds to a strong dynamic of transport flows of people and goods linked to access to sources of work, mainly towards the City of Mérida and the Port of Progreso; This axis is part of the pillars of the economy of the Yucatan Peninsula, so its influence is regional. The Mérida - Progreso corridor is a pole of imminent conurbation and a strategic axis for the location of industrial and logistics activities due to its accessibility to regional and metropolitan markets; With the high flows registered in the highway that connects them, in a horizon to 2015 the traffic will increase 5% with respect to the registered in 2009, the TMCA of vehicles that circulate through this road is the highest in the ZMM, the daily traffic in annual average (TDPA) is just over 15 thousand cars. The industrial, commercial and service potential of the area increases the occupation pressures in both towns and in the corridor, projects such as the construction of the Museum of Mayan Culture, a logistics platform, an inland port, a container terminal in the port of height and private recreational complexes attached to the highway (soccer stadium, gyms, spas , Coliseo Yucatán) are little compared to what the arrival of
new companies linked to the extraction of hydrocarbons (Ramírez, 2007: 35-49). The Mérida - Umán corridor concentrates a TDPA of more than 10,000 vehicles and the functional relations between Umán and Mérida include the port of Progreso due to the industrial specialization of the former; the population dynamics of Umán is in clear stagnation as well as the vehicular flows of its corridor; however, its importance lies in the fact that it is the door of the ZMM towards the state of Campeche and the rest of the country. The Mérida – Ucú corridor will register the highest vehicle flows in the ZMM due to the construction of Ciudad Ucú and the consolidation of Ciudad Caucel; The high tertiary specialization of the corridor is associated with the installation of the aforementioned housing megaprojects and the high dependence that remains with the city of Mérida, a situation that favors daily commutes of more than 9,000 vehicles, a figure that by 2015 will increase 6%.. The Mérida-Kanasín-Teya and Mérida-Conkal corridors are the lowest level in the hierarchy due to vehicle flows, in particular for the former it is estimated that it will lose 3% of the flows it currently registers due to the appearance of other population attracting poles inside the ZM (Map 6). MAP 6. METROPOLITAN AREA OF MÉRIDA: CONURBATION AND FUNCTIONAL INTEGRATION CORRIDORS, 2010. Source: Own elaboration based on SCT. Road Data, eds. 2002, 2006 and 2010, corresponding to the years 2001, 2005 and 2009.
