Full metadata
Title
Urban political ecology of green public space in Mexico City: equity, parks and people
Description
Decades of research confirms that urban green spaces in the form of parks, gardens, and urban forests provide numerous environmental and social services including microclimate regulation, noise reduction, rainwater drainage, stress amelioration, etc. In post-industrial megacities of the twenty-first century, densely populated, violent and heavily polluted such as Mexico City, having access to safe and well-maintained green public space is in all respects necessary for people to maintain or improve their quality of life. However, according to recent reports by the Mexican Ministry of Environment, green public spaces in Mexico City are insufficient and unevenly distributed across the sixteen boroughs of the Mexican Distrito Federal. If it is known that parks are essential urban amenities, why are green public spaces in Mexico City scarce and so unevenly distributed? As a suite of theoretical frameworks, Urban Political Ecology (UPE) has been used to study uneven urban development and its resulting unequal socio-ecological relations. UPE explores the complex relationship between environmental change, socio-economic urban characteristics and political processes. This research includes a detailed analysis of the distributive justice of green public space (who gets what and why) based on socio-spatial data sets provided by the Environment and Land Management Agency for the Federal District. Moreover, this work went beyond spatial data depicting available green space (m2/habitant) and explored the relation between green space distribution and other socio-demographic attributes, i.e. gender, socio-economic status, education and age that according to environmental justice theory, are usually correlated to an specific (biased) distribution of environmental burdens and amenities. Moreover, using archival resources complemented with qualitative data generated through in-depth interviews with key actors involved in the creation, planning, construction and management of green public spaces, this research explored the significant role of public and private institutions in the development of Mexico City's parks and green publics spaces, with a special focus on the effects of neoliberal capitalism as the current urban political economy in the city.
Date Created
2015
Contributors
- Fernandez Alvarez, Rafael (Author)
- Bolin, Bob (Thesis advisor)
- Boone, Christopher (Committee member)
- Lara-Valencia, Francisco (Committee member)
- Arizona State University (Publisher)
Topical Subject
- environmental justice
- Geography
- Sociology
- environmental justice
- GIS
- Mexico
- Mexico City
- Parks
- Political ecology
- Greenways--Mexico--Mexico City--Regional disparities.
- Greenways
- Greenways--Political aspects--Mexico--Mexico City.
- Greenways
- Urban parks--Mexico--Mexico City--Regional disparities.
- Urban Parks
- Urban parks--Political aspects--Mexico--Mexico City.
- Urban Parks
Resource Type
Extent
vii, 173 pages : illustrations (some color), maps (some color)
Language
eng
Copyright Statement
In Copyright
Primary Member of
Peer-reviewed
No
Open Access
No
Handle
https://hdl.handle.net/2286/R.I.29978
Statement of Responsibility
by Rafael Fernandez Alvarez
Description Source
Viewed on July 14, 2015
Level of coding
full
Note
thesis
Partial requirement for: Ph. D., Arizona State University, 2015
bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 152-172)
Field of study: Geography
System Created
- 2015-06-01 08:16:52
System Modified
- 2021-08-30 01:28:34
- 3 years 3 months ago
Additional Formats