Urban Shrinkage and Suburbanization in Mexico: A View Based on the Last Census Data

Abstract

The management of Latin American urbanization processes requires constant monitoring of urban dynamics and their particular characteristics. The aim of this work is to provide a macro-view of the dynamics of urbanization in Mexico through the analysis of urban shrinkage and suburbanization processes. The applied methodology is based on the identification of demographic variations at the municipal level using as sources the census data produced by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) from 1990 to 2020. Although the main causes and the differences between urban dynamics remain to be investigated more specifically, it is concluded that urban shrinkage and suburbanization are both decreas-ing phenomena in Mexico. Twenty-nine shrinking cities of Mexico are identified in the thirty-year period 1990–2020 and the ten-year demographic variations of the metropolitan municipalities are analyzed, detecting an ongoing catch-up trend among the growth rates of the central and peripheral metropolitan municipalities. This last is unlikely to occur; however, the trend indicates an ongoing stabilization of urbanization processes in Mexico after the boom of the 1990s.