As a result of the general pull factor of jobs and higher wage prospects the typical migrant would have been a young man, the eldest son who had decided to help the family by moving to the city to earn money and provide financial assistance to his family. This type of migration can be seen in the diagram below, with the population pyramid of Mexico city having a larger population of Males in the 20s to 30s, and to go with it a population pyramid of Puebla which shows a very high birth rate but a sharp decrease in population at the 20s to 30s especially in the Male population.
The spatial Structure of Mexico City
Mexico City is structured around a central core, followed by three inner zones, A B and C, with A mainly concentrated close to the core b and C more concentrated as you get further away with C being more concentrated outside of B. Zone A has the largest population and is almost 6 million with B having a population of 4 million and C less than 500000. The Urban core houses up to 5 million people and has the lowest ratio of men to women. The Urban core has the best housing facilities, with the quality slowly decreasing over zones A to C with C still having reasonable housing quality, with all 4 of these zones having very low unemployment percentages with C having only 2.4 per cent unemployment.
After the 4 main zones the housing quality deteriorates and the semi urban peripheral districts are found which have the highest population growths, and have low percentage of home owners (8%), and 32% of the homes lack a toilet facility.
Mexico City Barrios
Studies of the Barrios in Mexico are significant in showing the quality of the housing and the facilities. The data from the 6 studied areas showed that the majority of housing had scored well in the facilities the housing offered, only one of the studied areas (Liberales) having over 3% of houses with no flow of running water, and out of the 6 sampled sites only a total of 12% of housing had no electricity supply. Most of the housing was constructed of a type of brick.
The barrios sampled are areas in which have been established early on and sites are located on the inner areas of the outer city poorer districts sites, as a result I predict that the newer more recent migrants whom have settled on land have worse of conditions, with little assistance in improving facilities due to the early stages of their settlement, these places will have the worst conditions.
I do not think Barrios areas are slum areas, the barrios are well established and undergone massive improvement and most of the homes have toilet facilities and most of the occupants are both employed and home owners, this in my opinion means the Barrios are not slum areas but an area which has improved from what was once a slum area.
Employment In Mexico City
In 1950 Mexico City had 37.4% of its employed working force in the informal sector and in 1950 35.8% in the informal sector, this decrease does not seem as significant, until it is thought that the population has increased by around 15 million. So this decrease in % is still an increase in figure with more people working in informal jobs than in 1950, but the figure means that the growth of informal jobs is a lot less than the growth of formal jobs in Mexico City.
In the 1980s the Unemployment Rate in Mexico City varied between 4.0% and 5.8% which for a population of around 10000000, is a high number of people, around ½ a million people were unemployed. This rate would be questionable, remembering that population was merely an estimate, as many people living in Mexico City had no formal way of being counted in population, the unemployment rate would also have been affected by the difficulty of evidence showing how many people were actually unemployed. The rate also includes jobs that are informal, many people in Mexico City would have jobs like cleaning car windows, which they do, in a desperate attempt to earn money when they cannot find a formal job and receive jobs in which they are cheap labour workers, which does not earn them enough to escape poverty.
These cheap labourers work in the lower circuit of Mexico City which is the informal sector which is poverty stricken and produces thousands and thousands of cheap labour jobs employing a vast work force cheaply making and constructing in a labour intensive fashion using out of date and generally poor equipment wasting very little. This lower circuit works below the Upper Circuit which is the 1st world part of the city having formal jobs and having chain shops banks and businesses like a 1st world city. This circuit has the technology and investment to allow the area to be capital intensive. The Upper circuit and Lower Circuit work together, with the Lower Circuit providing the absorption of the jobs for most and the Upper circuit providing goods sold by wholesalers which are then sold on stalls in the lower circuit. The lower circuit has a very efficient use of little money wasting little and using the small amount of money efficiently. This lower circuits trend of spreading little amounts of money across a vast work force lowers the cost of living because the small income does not enable the labourers in the lower circuit to lift them completely out of poverty, and this chain effect leads to most the profits in the lower circuit going back into the Upper Circuit and dominates the cities economy.
Obtaining a home in Mexico City
When migrants first move to Mexico city the majority go to the City Centre or direct to the large squatter settlements on the outside of the squatter settlements. The migrants who move to the city are generally males looking for job opportunities as stated before as a result they will go straight to where they think they will find a job, mainly to the city centre in hope of finding a job, they then move to major squatter locations after they find no job and realise the difficulty in getting a job in the upper circuit of the city so they move into the squatter settlements of the lower circuit in search of an informal or cheap labour intensive job.
Turners model shows the social economic effect on the migrant’s priorities in housing desires. The model shows three types of income and its type of housing ownership, the very low income, low income and middle income. The model shows proximity to inner rings is the main location for very low-income “bridgeheader” the permanent ownership of residence highest at low-income “consolidator” and modern standard of amenity highest with the Middle income “status seeker”. The model is based on how Turner views the location layout of the city based on income and desires.
The Environmental Problems of Mexico
The rapid growth of Mexico City has created many environmental problems. Serious air pollution is one of the problems. In 1994 the World Health Organization declared that air quality was acceptable on only 20 days in the year, this problem is not helped by the areas geography, city’s altitude and the surrounding mountains cause cold air to sink, preventing pollutants from dispersing. This has resulted in the city to restrict the emissions and strategies been devised e.g. trying to make all cars have catalytic converters.
Other major problems are an increasingly inadequate water supply and sewage system, the growing population has had a strain on the city to an extent where the infrastructure can not cope and this includes water supply and sewage treatment, the result of this means that disease and the spread of disease is imminent. The city also suffers from subsidence, by as much as 6 m (20 ft), of parts of the downtown area into the soft lake deposits that underlie much of the city, damaging buildings and disrupting some water and sewage lines.
Mexico city has major problems with removing its waste products, wastewater from the city is carried through an open sewage canal called the Grand Canal and by a deep transmission system known as the Emisor Central. The sewage in the Grand Canal is raw, and is used as fertilizers in the states of Mexico and Hidalgo. Over 90% of hazardous waste is released into the Grand Canal, and the water supply is being contaminated at source. As a result serious human health problems arise.
Solid waste disposal is also a problem with over 8000 tonnes of solid waste were produced every day in 1992. Only 25% of this was legally collected and deposited in landfill sites at the edge of the city.
Air pollution strategies have been introduced to try and combat the
- Lowering sculpture content of oil and fuel
- Retrofitting buses and vans to burn natural gas
- Limiting carbon monoxide emissions from vehicles
- Increasing the use of unleaded fuel and equipping cars with catalytic converters
- Restricting commuter traffic, even having no driving days.
- A ban on new “potential polluting” industries
In spite of the introduced strategies the air pollution intensified and a new program of more efficient air pollution control technology and a program of reforestation.