Urban Studies http://usj.sagepub.

com/

Is Mexico City Polycentric? A Trip Attraction Capacity Approach

Manuel Surez and Javier Delgado Urban Stud 2009 46: 2187 DOI: 10.1177/0042098009339429 The online version of this article can be found at: http://usj.sagepub.com/content/46/10/2187

Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com

On behalf of:
Urban Studies Journal Limited

Additional services and information for Urban Studies can be found at: Email Alerts: http://usj.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://usj.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Citations: http://usj.sagepub.com/content/46/10/2187.refs.html

>> Version of Record - Aug 14, 2009 What is This?

Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at DIRECCION GENERAL DE BIBLIO on December 14, 2011

46(10) 21872211, September 2009

Is Mexico City Polycentric? A Trip Attraction Capacity Approach

Manuel Surez and Javier Delgado
[Paper first received, July 2007; in final form, April 2008]

Abstract The article explores whether Mexico City is a polycentric metropolis. Building upon previous methodologies, an alternative criterion is proposed for identifying employment centres, using a jobs to working residents ratio, while taking into account economic informality. Although a small set of minor sub-centres is traced, it is found that most jobs are concentrated in a large central agglomeration, with a moderate percentage of jobs concentrated in corridor-like shapes. Within this central agglomeration, are found inner nodes and corridor-like structures that had been identied in previous research as sub-centres. Additionally, economic specialisation is identied with the use of location quotients and the results are compared with those of previous methodologies. It is concluded that Mexico City has a hybrid, although still predominantly monocentric, urban form.

1. Introduction
Recent research suggests that Mexico City is in a period of transformation from a monocentric to a polycentric urban form. With the use of distinct methodologies, Aguilar and Alvarado (2005) found 32 sub-centres using tract-level data, while Graizbord and Acua (2005) found 14 using municipal-level data. The economic centres found in these two studies do not match.

Other studies suggest contradictory evidence of sub-centre formation. While there is evidence of co-location of jobs and housing in some industrial suburban locations (Cruz Rodriguez and Duhau, 2001), a job accessibility study (Surez and Delgado, 2007) found that there is high urban structure efciency in the centre, which rapidly decreases as distance to it increases. This study found that low job accessibility in suburban locations had been accentuated between 1990 and 2000.

Manuel Surez is in the Instituto de Geografa, Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mxico, Circuito exterior s/n, Ciudad Universitaria, Mxico DF, 04510, Mxico. E-mail: msuarez@igg.unam.mx. Javier Delgado is in the Instituto de Geografa, Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mxico, Circuito exterior s/n, Ciudad Universitaria, Mxico DF, 04510, Mxico. E-mail: jdelgado@igg.unam.mx.
0042-0980 Print/1360-063X Online 2009 Urban Studies Journal Limited DOI: 10.1177/0042098009339429
Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at DIRECCION GENERAL DE BIBLIO on December 14, 2011

2188

MANUEL SUREZ AND JAVIER DELGADO

In a historical analysis of population and job suburbanisation, Surez (2007) found that, between 1950 and 2000, there was an accelerated rate of population suburbanisation and a slow decentralisation of jobs. The purpose of this article is to research whether Mexico City has evolved into a polycentric metropolis, or, that not being the case, to identify the present-day urban form of the city. In doing so, we present an alternative methodology and criteria for employment centre identication that build upon previous methods. While most studies in the US have used a combination of employment density and employment volume thresholds to identify sub-centres, we use a trip attraction capacity approach, based on both employment and working population concentration dynamics throughout the city. Additionally, given that more than 40 per cent of economic activity in the city is informal, our method is applied both to formal employment and to the formal and informal sectors combined. Finally, we classify employment areas in the city according to size, trip attraction capacity and economic specialisation. For the moment, the focus of our research is mainly methodological and exploratory. However, determining the urban form of Mexico City may have important implications for public policy. It will allow, through further research, the evaluation of the success of the (admittedly few) metro-wide planning policies, the effects of transport on urban development and growth, and the efciency of the urban system and its environmental impacts, among others. The rest of the article is divided into ve sections. In the next section, we give a general description of Mexico City, our study area. Basic demographic and economic proles are presented, as well as an outline of urban structure and transport. The third section

summarises theoretical issues surrounding our study. We describe previous methods used for employment centre identication for diverse cities and build upon these to present the criteria upon which we base our methodology. That methodology is then described in section 4. In a fth section, we present results and include a comparison with an earlier study of Mexico City, along with an alternative methodology used in previous research in the US, although applied to our study area. Finally, we present a set of conclusions, discussion questions and needs for further research.

2. Employment and Population Suburbanisation in Mexico City, 19502000

Mexico City reached a population of 18.5 million in 2000. It comprises the Federal District and 75 municipalities of two contiguous states. Although there has been a set of legal planning frameworks, regulations, general and partial plans since 1936 to generate employment sub-centres, experts would agree that most urban development plans, for Mexico City, have been designed once development occurs, or have constantly fallen behind this process (Ward, 2000; Bazant, 2001; Cervero, 1998). Development has been mostly market driven (Cervero, 1998). Most of the plans made for the city have been designed for the Federal District and not for the metropolitan area as whole, lacking both physical planning as well as implementation strategies (Ward, 2000). In the early 2000s, federal, state and municipal authorities developed a master plan for the metropolitan area [Plan de Ordenamiento Territorial de la Zona Metropolitana de la Ciudad de Mxico], which includes the development of metropolitan sub-centres. As in the

Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at DIRECCION GENERAL DE BIBLIO on December 14, 2011

IS MEXICO CITY POLYCENTRIC?

2189

past, with the Conurbation Commission in 1979 and the Programme for the Metropolitan Region in 1984, this recent metro-wide plan, has no implementation strategies. Municipalities are not legally bound to full the plan directives and, in many cases, have no institutional capacity to do so. In part, this is the result of the limitations to local authorities amended in the 115th Constitutional Article, which diminishes the capabilities of metropolitan and regional development and planning (Legorreta, 1994; Iracheta, 1997). While there is evidence of job suburbanisation having taken place in the past 50 years, population suburbanisation by far exceeds it (Surez, 2007). Since the 1980s, predominant land uses in the central city and rst urban ring have shifted towards a service economy (Delgado, 1988; Cruz Rodriguez, 2001). The service jobs agglomeration has displaced residential uses towards the periphery and the central city has shown a decrease in total population, although with a slight increase

in the number of working residents (Surez and Delgado, 2007). Population and economic census data show that population suburbanisation has been accompanied by some local job growth; however, in absolute terms, there has been a continuing concentration of economic activity in the centre. This raises doubts as to whether job growth outside the central city has been sufcient for the development of employment sub-centres. Figure 1 shows Delgados (1988) urban ring conguration1 (including main roads and highways), which we use only for the purpose of a general description of the area. Table 1 shows the ratio of percentages of employment to working residents concentrations, for each urban ring across a period of 50 years. In the 1950s, the population concentration gradient was steeper than the job gradient, because much of the industry, the most important economic sector of the time, was located on the outskirts of the city, in the rst and second rings.

Table 1. Mexico City: formal employment to working residents percentage ratios by urban ring, 19502000 1950a Central city First ring Second ring Third ring Fringe Total employment Working residents 63:77 24:17 10:3 3:2 1:2 611 082 850 353 1960b 60:61 24:30 12:5 3:3 1:2 839 774 1 551 610 1970 51:40 27:38 17:17 3:4 1:2 1 271 814 2 101 471 1980c 40:21 30:30 23:35 5:11 2:3 1 715 065 2 226 783 1990 39:15 29:34 22:31 8:16 2:4 1 997 467 3 859 133 2000 36:11 27:31 22:30 11:22 3:6 3 135 074 5 306 073

a Simple linear extrapolation of economic data gures with data from 1965 and 1955 due to data constraints for 1950 and 1945. b Simple linear interpolation of economic data gures with data from 1965 and 1955 due to data constraints for 1960. c Simple linear interpolation of population gures with data from 1970 and 1990 due to data uncertainty for 1980. Note: Secondary and tertiary sectors excluding electricity and transport sub-sectors due to data constraints from 1950 to 1980. Sources: authors calculations using 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990 and 2000 population censuses; 1955, 1965, 1969, 1979, 1989 and 1999 economic censuses.

Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at DIRECCION GENERAL DE BIBLIO on December 14, 2011

2190

MANUEL SUREZ AND JAVIER DELGADO

Figure 1. Mexico City: urban ring conguration, main roads and highways Sources: Delgado (1988); GDF (2000).

Over the course of time, the central citys share of metropolitan employment has been steadily declining. However, overall employment growth has been such that the central citys percentage share has still consistently equated to the highest absolute growth. In contrast, since the 1970s, the central city has experienced negative population growth in both absolute and proportional terms.

The rst ring shows a similar behaviour to that of the central city, albeit lagged in time. Conversely, rings two and three, and the fringe, show a constant increase in the share of both population and employment over the 50-year period. Working population growth has increased and has surpassed employment growth by more than double in the rst and second rings, and by more than triple in the

Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at DIRECCION GENERAL DE BIBLIO on December 14, 2011

IS MEXICO CITY POLYCENTRIC?

2191

Figure 2. Mexico City: share of formal jobs and working residents growth per urban ring 19902000 Sources: authors calculations using 1989 and 1999 economic censuses and 1990 and 2000 population censuses.

third ring and the fringe. While, in the 1950s, the proportion of jobs was higher than the proportion of working population in rings one, two and three, this ratio has been denitely reversed since that time. Figure 2 shows employment and working population growth for each urban ring, as the share of metropolitan growth as a whole, between 1990 and 2000. On the one hand, while working population growth was minimal in the central city, it was especially high in the second and fourth rings. On the other hand, close to 40 per cent of metropolitan job growth took place in the city centre, declining steadily as distance to it increased. This suggests that the role of the central city, in economic terms, is far from having been reduced, especially since gures imply that, relative to working population growth, the number of work trips to the central city has

steadily increased in both absolute and proportional terms. Figure 3 shows a suburbanisation index of working residents and employment from 1950 to 2000, expressed as the normalised distance from the centre at which jobs and residents are, on average, located (see Appendix). Although job suburbanisation is evident, especially in the industrial sector, the working population shows more of a sprawl-type growth. Thus, the question we look at in the following sections is whether employment suburbanisation has led to sub-centre generation.

3. Literature Review
Research suggests that the monocentric model is insufcient to explain todays cities (Anas and Kim, 1996; Giuliano and Small, 1991; Song, 1992). Evidence of job suburbanisation

Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at DIRECCION GENERAL DE BIBLIO on December 14, 2011

2192

MANUEL SUREZ AND JAVIER DELGADO

Figure 3. Mexico City: index of employment and population suburbanisation 19502000 Notes: secondary sector excludes electricity, tertiary sector excludes transport due to data constraints from 1950 to 1980. Sources: authors calculations using 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990 and 2000 population censuses; 1955, 1965, 1969, 1979, 1989 and 1999 economic censuses.

and sprawl has led several scholars to develop different methods for identifying urban sub-centres. Although the tacit consensus is that sub-centres exist, there is no universally accepted criterion for their detection and classication.
3.1 Theory and Debate

According to Fujita et al. (2001), the monocentric economy is only sustainable until the population growth reaches a critical level, after which a system of cities would tend to emerge. When, due to population growth, equilibrium is unattainable, there is a shift into a non-monocentric economy. Thus, urban efciency holds as the cause for the

transformation to a polycentric urban form. If polycentric urban forms are indeed more efcient in terms of travel times, allowing colocation (for example, Levinson and Kumar, 1994; Wachs et al., 1993; Gordon et al., 1991), suburban centres should, at the same time, have a direct and moderate impact on a small number of the working population in nearby areas who travel to work, and an indirect and slight impact on overall metropolitan commuting times and congestion. The more centres that exist, the less proportional impact each will have on the overall urban structure. This efciency is, however, subject to debate. From one point of view, the efciency of urban polycentrism is in doubt, because multiple

Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at DIRECCION GENERAL DE BIBLIO on December 14, 2011

IS MEXICO CITY POLYCENTRIC?

2193

sub-centres are bound to attract trips from all places in a city, generating wider dispersion between origins and destinations (Bertraud, 2004). Indeed, for a sample of US and Japanese cities, Hamilton (1982) observed that commuting distances would be eight times shorter if cities were completely monocentric. Similarly, Cervero and Wu (1998) showed that VMT increased with job suburbanisation. The spatial mismatch hypothesis literature would suggest that it is accessibility that makes the urban structure efcient (Cervero et al., 1997). Policies such as jobs housing balance have been recommended in order to develop sustainable urban villages (Cervero 1996), but criticised from the land market angle (Giuliano and Small 1993). From a regional perspective, the European Spatial Planning Observation Network (ESPON) has intensively encouraged planned polycentrism. ESPON research assures that polycentric structures should
stimulate the functional division of labour, as well as ows and level of co-operation between neighbouring cities promoting the balanced and multiscalar types of urban networks that are the most benecial both for the core and for the peripheries (ESPON, 2005, p. 3).

3.2 Previous Methods for Sub-centre Identication

Finally, from a global view, research suggests that terciarisation, IT development and global networking could affect the structural and physical changes of cities and regions due to emerging global economic roles (Scott, 2001; Graham and Marvin, 2001). New forms of social interaction, changes in production and the dependence on communication networks such as the Internet, could inuence location choices (Saxenian, 1996), thus having an impact on urban form and travel patterns. In any case, to enter these debates from the perspective of a mega-city in a developing country, we start off by identifying current urban form in Mexico City.

Bogart and Ferry (1999) dene centres as places with both a high density and a high quantity of employment. Likewise, according to Song (1992), urban centres should incorporate adjacent high-density zones that, together, are large enough to exert a signicant inuence on the urban structure. While it is intuitive to state that, as employment volumes and densities increase, the likelihood of exerting an inuence on urban structure also increases, the threshold from which the inuence on urban structure becomes signicant is unclear. It is also unclear what the extent of this inuence should be. There have been different approaches to identifying urban centres. At the regional level, ESPON has used the concept of functional urban areas (FUAs) to dene nodes within regions, consisting of core and fringe municipalities. At the metropolitan scale, Thurstain-Goodwin and Unwin (2000) have located town centres using kernel density estimation and a town centredness index. Batty (2001) has explored the emergence of polynucleated cities through agent simulation. Economic sub-centres have been also identied through the visual inspection of density maps (Gordon et al., 1986) and volume of employment and job specialisation methods (Dunphy, 1982). Most studies, however, have used minimum density thresholds (McDonald, 1987), or minimum density thresholds in addition to a minimum concentration of jobs (Giuliano and Small, 1991; Song 1992; McDonald and Prather, 1994; Cervero and Wu, 1997). In any event, the number of subcentres that can be found depends on the criteria employed to identify them. Giuliano and Small (1991) developed what seems to have been the most widely used methodology to identify sub-centres. It consists of two steps. First, a density threshold is set and urban tracts that surpass it are

Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at DIRECCION GENERAL DE BIBLIO on December 14, 2011

2194

MANUEL SUREZ AND JAVIER DELGADO

identied as potential sub-centres. The nal list of sub-centres is composed of sets of contiguous tracts that individually meet the density criterion and that, together, surpass an employment volume threshold. With this method, Cervero and Wu (1997) found 22 sub-centres in the San Francisco Bay Area, setting the density threshold above the metropolitan average (17.3 jobs/ha) [7 jobs/acre] and the sum of jobs at 10 000. Giuliano and Small (1991) used a minimum density threshold of 24.7 jobs/ha [10 jobs/ acre] and a sum of 10 000 jobs for their study of Los Angeles, while Song (1992) established the thresholds at 37 jobs/ha (15 jobs/acre) and a sum of 35 000 jobs. It is evident that if these three thresholds were applied to the same city, each would nd a different number of sub-centres. The issue is one of criterion. Furthermore, as discussed by McMillen (2001), most of these previous methods for sub-centre identication require ample local knowledge in order to produce reasonable results; with the question being: how reasonable is reasonable? With this in mind, several scholars have developed alternative methods of identifying density peaks, taking into account the space dynamics that exist in cities. McMillen and McDonald (1997) argue that the job density criterion is more objective if, instead of selecting an arbitrary threshold, employment density is regressed with distance to the CBD. Taking this approach, places that are near the CBD will require higher densities to meet the density criterion than those that are further away. Thus, the number of subcentres close to the CBD is less likely to be overestimated, while the number of distant sub-centres will less likely be underestimated. McDonald and Prather (1994) substantiated that regressing the natural log of employment density on distance provides the best functional form of predicting the density gradient under the assumption of monocentricity. Still, whereas a sub-centre is an area with an

employment density that is significantly higher than would be expected based on its distance to the CBD, sub-centres should also have a signicant inuence on the local density gradient (McMillen, 2001). McMillen (2001) and McMillen and McDonald (1997) suggested that density peaks around secondary employment centres in a polycentric city were better modelled using a non-parametric locally weighted regression (LWR) (also known as a geographically weighted regression) than using an OLS regression. Nevertheless, this method requires an ad hoc knowledge of polycentrism in a given city, which is modelled in a rst stage of an LWR. However, McMillen (2003) suggests that using a hybrid methodology that combines the McMillen and McDonald (1997) and McMillen (2001) non-parametric approach with the Giuliano and Small (1991) approach, offers advantages over both methodologies. This hybrid methodology, in a rst stage, uses LWR to select tracts that show peaks in the density gradient. In a second stage, selected tracts are grouped, based on contiguity, into subsets. Each subset enters the nal list of sub-centres if the sum of jobs within the set of contiguous tracts meets an employment volume threshold. Nevertheless, the choice of a job-volume threshold as an additional criterion for employment centre identication remains a subjective issue.
3.3 Previous Methods Used For Sub-centre Identication in Mexico City

For Mexico City, Aguilar and Alvarado (2005) determined that tracts that had at least 5500 jobs dened sub-centres. Sub-centres would be composed of more than one tract if adjacent tracts had high employment concentrations, although the authors did not explain what this high concentration meant. They argued for the use of number of jobs instead of job density, due to the differences in the size of tracts. This is ambiguous, since it is precisely because of the difference in land area

Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at DIRECCION GENERAL DE BIBLIO on December 14, 2011

IS MEXICO CITY POLYCENTRIC?

2195

that density is used to determine job concentration differences. This study found 35 subcentres, concentrating 25 per cent of the jobs in the city. Additionally, the authors classied centres into ve job-size groups, as well as into ve economic specialisation groups: industry, commerce, services, commercialindustrial and service-industrial. In a parallel study, at the municipal level, Graizbord and Acua (2005) located centres by analysing what they call remarkable ows (ujos sobresalientes). They observed the number of trips between pairs of municipalities that exceeded the expected number of trips estimated with the use of contingency tables. Using this method, the authors found eight primary centres and six secondary centres. Yet, since chi-squared tests, if signicant, suggest that a distribution is not probabilistic, this study shows, in any case, that some origins and destinations share certain characteristics that raise the number of observed interdestination commuting ows above the expected number of ows. However, this does not mean that these destinations are actually centres. This is true, especially since, due to the characteristics of contingency tables, a destination zone j will have less attraction capability from at least one origin i, if there is a higher number of observed trips than of expected trips from another i origin. In fact, in this study, the municipality with the second-highest jobresident ratio and concentration of jobs in the metropolitan area did not show up as either a primary or a secondary centre. To our knowledge, there have been no attempts to identify sub-centres in Mexico City using land use maps. Potentially, land use maps could be used to dene sub-centres, by selecting ofce, commercial and industrial uses with high employment density. At least for Mexico City, this option remains impossible due to differences in land use classications between the Federal District and the State of Mexico, the lack of city-wide

geo-referenced land use maps and even their sole existence in many municipalities!
3.4 Proposed Approach for Sub-centre Identication

Although the method used by Graizbord and Acua (2005) is statistically decient, the idea of trip attraction underpinning it is an outstanding contribution; a concept missing from previous sub-centre identication techniques. While the rest of the aforementioned studies take into account employment data, none of them considers the relationship between employment and residential locations. According to Perroux (1950), a centre is a place that attracts centripetal forces and from which centrifugal forces emanate. In classic location theory, residential zones comprise residual lands for which no economic uses have been found. Economic activity represents the dominant land use and out-bids residential uses (Alonso 1964). Conforming to these ideas, urban centres and sub-centres should be dened not only by the degree of concentration of jobs, but also by their capacity for attracting work trips. Just as the density of employment centres, and residential density around these, should be expected to vary with distance to the CBD, the volume of employment in each centre cannot be expected to be a xed number. Our proposition is, instead of using a xed employment volume threshold for a series of contiguous tracts, or one for central locations and a slightly lower one for suburban centres (based on local knowledge), to use a threshold that is dynamic in space, that can be set for each location in relation to its capacity for attracting work trips from other places in the city, once the concentration of working residents in nearby areas has been considered. With this approach, surpassing the density gradient is also a necessary criterion for identifying an employment centre, given that, otherwise, a small shop in the middle of, say,

Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at DIRECCION GENERAL DE BIBLIO on December 14, 2011

2196

MANUEL SUREZ AND JAVIER DELGADO

a regional park, would be considered an employment centre, which obviously cannot be true. Thus, to identify sub-centres in Mexico City, we use the following denition: any point of the city at which there is a peak in the employment density gradient and a concentration of jobs relative to the working population concentration, large enough to attract more work trips than those it is able to generate, within a given distance to it.

4. Methodology
The method employed in this article to identify urban sub-centres is based on two concepts used in previous research: job concentration; and trip attraction capacity. However, we use a different approach. Since there is no convincing argument to prove that Mexico City is a polycentric metro area, we initially assume that it is still in a monocentric stage. The rst assumption in identifying employment centres, taken from the work of McMillen (2003, 2001), is that employment centres are places that surpass a smoothed density gradient. Based on the work of Graizbord and Acua (2005), the second assumption of this analysis is that a centre should have the capacity of attracting workers from other places. Although almost any place where there are jobs will show some degree of crosscommuting (Graizbord and Santillan, 2005), a given place may only be said to have a real attraction capacity if it has a higher concentration of jobs than resident workers. In effect, an area that can attract more work trips than those it is able to generate. Thus, the area that is identied as the centre is the area contiguous to the CBD (see Figure 1) that meets both criteria. The same is true of sub-centres, however, these will be physically separated from the centre. Additionally, corridors may be identied and classied according to their shape. The application of these criteria towards identifying employment centres in Mexico City presents two methodological problems.

The rst problem is that over 40 per cent of the jobs in the city are informal and do not appear in the economic census data. Additionally, there is no recent origindestination survey and the US census transport package equivalent only shows origins and destinations between municipalities, which represent areas that are too large for the purpose of identifying employment centres. Since our methodology requires calculating jobs to working resident ratios, if we were to use economic census data alone, we would only analyse formal employment and not the overall urban form of the city, a product of all economic activity. Therefore, by way of compensation, we adjust the number of jobs per tract for informal work. However, because of the rough nature of our informality adjustment procedure, due to the aforementioned data constraints, we run the sub-centre identication analysis twice: once for formal jobs alone and a second time having adjusted for the total number of jobs. The second problem is data aggregation at the tract level. Tracts are articial statistical sampling areas with dened limits and have no evident socioeconomic/spatial meaning, in addition to being delimited with population data and not with economic data. This is especially problematic when applying our criterion of jobs to working residents ratio, since there is no reason to assume that urban tracts can be self-contained areas. Furthermore, McMillen (2001) shows that tract size has a direct inuence on sub-centre production, as small tracts are more likely to show peaks of employment density. For this reason it is important to work with areas of equal size.
4.1 Informality Adjustment

To resolve the informality problem, we combine three data sources. The rst is the 1999 Economic Census, which shows the number of established jobs per tract (Et) that can be expected to represent formal employment. This database divides jobs into industrial, commercial and service jobs.2 Second is the

Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at DIRECCION GENERAL DE BIBLIO on December 14, 2011

IS MEXICO CITY POLYCENTRIC?

2197

2000 Population Census, which contains the number of working residents per tract (Wt). The third is the 10 per cent sample census database (similar to PUMS data in the US). This database presents personal records including: sector of employment, occupation and type of work, as well as place of work at the municipal level (the lowest aggregation level at which personal records are released in Mexico). We employed an informal worker identication method used previously (Surez, 2007). Drawing on the 10 per cent sample census database, the proportion of informal and formal workers per municipality was calculated by selecting persons whose type of work was self-employment or day labour, although excluding professionals (such as architects and doctors) and those dedicated to health, education, nance, telecommunications, government-owned industry or services, or economic sub-sectors heavily regulated by government.3 Since this database contains a place of work variable, we were able to estimate the number of informal (Im) and formal (Fm) jobs per municipality, which we subsequently prorated among tracts. We cannot expect, however, the number of formal jobs per municipality estimated from the 10 per cent sample to match perfectly the economic census data.4 However, we know that the total number of informal and formal jobs J should equal the total number of working residents W. Thus, our task is to estimate the total number of informal and formal jobs by tract Jt, by prorating the difference of W minus E, considering the proportion of informal jobs per municipality, and assuming that, within tracts of municipalities, informal jobs follow the proportional distribution of the formal sector (equation (1)). J t = (W E ) Im E t + Et I m + Fm Em (1)

where, Jt is the total number of jobs in tract t; W is the total number of working residents (Population Census, tract-level data); E is the total number of formal (established) jobs (Economic Census, tract-level data); Im is the number of informal jobs (estimated) in municipality m (10 per cent sample, Population Census); Fm is the number of formal jobs (estimated) in municipality m (10 per cent sample, Population Census); Et is the number of formal (established) jobs in tract t (Economic Census, tract-level data); and Em is the number of formal (established) jobs in municipality m (Economic Census, tract-level data)
4.2 Generation of GIS Neighbourhoods

such that J = W, assuming that F E

While most studies search for adjacent tracts that meet the density and concentration criteria, this often results in maps that show pockets within the identied centres or subcentres, due to the fact that one or more tracts fail to meet these conditions (for example, because they hold a large park, contain surviving residential areas within economic centres, or comprise warehouse areas that serve the local industry). Some studies have resolved this by using tract proximity instead of tract contiguity (McMillen and McDonald, 1998), while others have ignored the issue completely. Furthermore, although tracts represent the preferred level of aggregation due to their small size, they do generate spatial autocorrelation problems. To approach this problem, we use GISgenerated neighbourhoods of 1.6-km (1 mile) radii in order to provide focal statistics for each urban hectare of the city. This method undergoes two assumptions. First, that tracts are not self-contained entities and, secondly, that the edge of a given tract is likely to resemble more closely the edge of the adjacent tract than its own opposite edge. The 1.6-km threshold was selected, as it represents a 20-minute walk. This is usually the maximum distance that a person is willing to walk

Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at DIRECCION GENERAL DE BIBLIO on December 14, 2011

2198

MANUEL SUREZ AND JAVIER DELGADO

without using alternative forms of transport. It is also, in general, the maximum by-law allowable walking distance to schools and the longest walking option between transit points in most Internet trip planners in the US. No information of this sort is available for Mexico, although it is probable that acceptable walking distances are longer in Mexico City than in any US metropolitan area. To generate neighbourhoods, we calculated job and working resident densities (per hectare) for each tract in our study area. Vector information was then converted into onehectare grid cells. This resulted in a series of maps that show how many jobs and how many working residents are located within each hectare of the city, assuming a homogeneous distribution within tracts. The next step was to create 1.6-km-radius neighbourhood sums of working population and jobs. This operation produced base maps that indicate the number of jobs and working residents that are within 1.6 km of each hectare of the city. Both a formal employment and total jobs map (formal plus informal) were generated, as well as three other maps indicating the number of industrial, commercial and service jobs, in order to identify economic specialisation.
4.3 Centre and Sub-centre Identication

To identify attraction areas, we divided the job map by the resident map. Their quotient represents the jobs to working residents ratio within a 1.6-km radius of each urban hectare. Hectares with values greater than one (more jobs than working residents) met the rst criterion and thus were considered attraction areas. The average density gradient (within a 1.6 km radius of each urban hectare) was calculated using OLS regression. The regression used the natural log of employment density as a dependent variable which, according to McDonald and Prather (1994), gives the best functional form under the assumption

of monocentricity. Following the analysis by McMillen (2001) to control for urban construction limits, due to steep hills and protected natural areas in the south and west of the city, four distance predictors were used, each representing the four cardinal bearings to the CBD.5 In using four distance sets, the distance value to a bearing becomes negative when its opposite bearing is positive. Thus, to avoid colinearity, all negative distance values were coded as zero. For example, all sites that are located to the north-east would have south and west distances coded as zero, while sites located to the south-west would have zero values for north and east distances. Given that all our cases represent areas of the same size, it is not necessary to assign weights to different cases (see McDonald and Prather, 1994; and Frankena, 1978). Since we performed the analysis for both formal and total jobs, two separate employment density regressions were run. Hectares with formal job densities that exceeded the predicted formal density gradient at the 95 per cent condence level were selected in one map as high formal job concentration areas. Likewise, hectares with total job densities that exceeded the predicted total jobs density gradient were selected in another map as high total job concentration areas. Finally, areas that met both trip attraction and density criteria were considered as part of the centre, as sub-centres, or as corridors, depending upon their contiguity to the CBD and their shape, again in two separate maps: one representing formal job agglomerations and another representing total job agglomerations, which we expected to reveal somewhat different urban forms.
4.4 Classication of Sub-centres

Once we identied job agglomeration areas, we proceeded to classify them into three types: either as part of the centre, as sub-centres, or as corridors. The extent of the centre was

Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at DIRECCION GENERAL DE BIBLIO on December 14, 2011

IS MEXICO CITY POLYCENTRIC?

2199

identied as the job agglomeration area contiguous to the CBD. Sub-centres were identied as those agglomeration areas having a physical separation from the centre of more than 1.6-km. Corridors were identied mainly by shape and were classied into three sub-types. Adjacent corridors (ACs) would be those contiguous to the centre where, along a main road or highway, there is an agglomeration through which the centre loses its overall shape. Segmented corridors (SCs) were considered a series of job agglomeration areas having a distance of no more than 1.6-km between them, aligned along main roads or highways. Finally, adjacent segmented corridors (ASCs) are the result of combining the two previous types. Additionally, we classied job agglomeration areas into industrial, commercial or service, according to the highest location quotient in the area. Finally, we calculated the proportion of jobs in each type of agglomeration, in order to determine the extent to which each explains the overall urban form.
4.5 Comparison with Previous Methods

Since our methodology differs from previously used methods in the use of GIS-generated neighbourhoods and the trip attraction criterion, we found it necessary to compare our results with those of other methodologies. Thus, we compared our identified centre and sub-centres with those found by Aguilar and Alvarado (2005). Additionally, we ran a separate analysis using the hybrid method proposed by McMillen (2003), which combines the McMillen (2001) and Giuliano and Small (1991) methodologies for identifying employment centres. The hybrid methodology consists in running a locally weighted regression (LWR) on the natural log of employment density, using the X and Y co-ordinates of the tract centroids as predictors. Sites that exceed the predicted density at the 95 per cent condence

level are selected as potential sub-centres. In a second step, contiguous tracts that meet the rst criterion and that, together, meet an employment volume threshold, are selected to comprise the final list of sub-centres. Interested readers should consult McMillen (2003, 2001) and McMillen and McDonald (1997) for a complete description of this methodology. In our case, we followed the hybrid methodology. However, in the LWR step, we used a bicubic weighting function on a window size of 50 per cent of the nearest cases, instead of the tricubic function used in the original methodology. According to McMillen (2003), any weighting function can be used without signicantly altering the results. A second difference is that we used four distance to the CBD predictors (as described previously), because they provide a higher correlation (more than double) between the smoothed densities surface and the observed surface, without inducing additional colinearity, when compared with the model that only uses X and Y distances as predictors. We ran two separate LWRs, one for formal employment and a second one for the combined formal and informal sectors. Our volume of employment threshold criteria involved selecting adjacent tracts that exceeded the predicted density surface at the 95 per cent condence level and which, together, summed more than 5500 jobs for formal employment and 10 000 jobs for total employment. These thresholds were chosen since Giuliano and Small (1991) suggest that a 10 000 jobs threshold should be used, as it represents the size of a large factory. However, since the number of jobs in the economic census represents only 58 per cent of all jobs, a 5500 jobs threshold seems adequate in terms of comparing methodologies when using only formal employment data. It is also the threshold used by Aguilar and Alvarado (2005) for Mexico City.

Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at DIRECCION GENERAL DE BIBLIO on December 14, 2011

2200

MANUEL SUREZ AND JAVIER DELGADO

5. Results
5.1 Formal Centre and Sub-centres

Figure 4 shows the formal employment centre and sub-centres. It additionally shows the average trip attraction capacity from areas outside the 1.6-km radius of each hectare, represented as a job to working resident ratio. Results reveal a large Central Agglomeration

(CA) that elongates to the north and south of the CBD and which turns into three corridor-like shapes. An AC lies to the east, in the Iztacalco and Iztapalapa area; an ASC to the west, in the LomasSanta Fe area; and a second ASC to the north-west, in the NaucalpanTlalnepantla area. Within the CA, there appear to be areas with higher job density that form inner nodes and

Figure 4. Mexico City: formal employment centres and trip attraction capacity in 1.6-km radii Sources: authors methodology using the 1999 Economic Census and the 2000 Population Census.
Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at DIRECCION GENERAL DE BIBLIO on December 14, 2011

IS MEXICO CITY POLYCENTRIC?

2201

corridors that are situated along main roads of the city. The CBD elongates from east to west across Reforma Avenue (see main roads in Figure 1) into the LomasSanta Fe area and then turns along the highway to Toluca, a city located 40 km west of Mexico City. From north to south, the CA shows a higher job concentration along Insurgentes Avenue, a 50-km road that connects the south of Mexico City with the highway to the city of Pachuca, crossing the centre of the city and the Ecatepec area. Similarly, the IztacalcoIztapalapa corridor is situated along Zaragoza Avenue, which then becomes the highway to the city of Puebla. According to the results, there are eight areas that may qualify as sub-centres: four of them are very close to the CA and four others are at greater distances from it. The largest concentration of jobs in these sub-centres is found to the north, in the Cuautitln area, an industrial park (see Table 2). The Perifrico beltway appears to delimit the overall form of the CA. To the west, the area around the Perifrico, which does not show up as an employment centre, lies in the segment of the beltway that was built during the 1990s. The rest of the beltway was built during the 1960s and 1970s. Considering only formal employment, the areas identied as employment centres and sub-centres account for 13 per cent of the urban area of the city (Table 2). Together, they hold close to 58 per cent of formal jobs, of which only 5 per cent are concentrated in sub-centres that account for 2.6 per cent of the urban area. These same areas, as a whole, account for the location of only 15 per cent of working residents. Within the CA, only 13 per cent of jobs are concentrated in ACs and ASCs, and these corridors show a smaller job to resident worker resident ratio than the rest of the CA (Table 2). The highest jobs to resident workers ratios appear in the Cuautitln, Ecatepec and NaucalpanTlalnepantla areas. This is probably

due to the fact that industrial areas permit mixed uses to a lesser extent than employment centres with tertiary activity, as well as to data aggregation effects.
5.2 Employment Centres and Sub-centres Adjusting for Informality

Figure 5 shows results adjusting for informality. Using this approach, the Naucalpan Tlalnepantla corridor becomes the Naucalpan Cuautitln ASC, as it practically converges with the Cuautitln area. The southern edges of the formal CA, depicted in Figure 4, connect along the Perifrico beltway. The Coapa and Xochimilco sub-centres actually become nodes within the CA. Similarly, the Iztacalco Iztapalapa formal corridor joins the Perifrico corridor and is almost completely integrated into the CA. To the north-east of the CA, the Ecatepec area also appears to have the form of a corridor, not of a sub-centre. Four additional sub-centres may be identied when adjusting for informality: Ixtapaluca and La Paz, along the highway to Puebla; Chiconcuac, an artisan textiles town; Coacalco, a small industrial area along the highway that connects the Ecatepec and Cuautitln industrial parks; and one more in the Tepotzotln area. The latter appears to be consolidating into a corridor. Within the CA, the inner corridor and node structure are maintained. Adjusting for informality, 70 per cent of all jobs in the metro area are agglomerated in the CA, including ACs and ASCs, while less than 2 per cent are concentrated in sub-centres (Table 3). These areas represent 23 per cent of the urban area of the city and hold close to 26 per cent of resident workers. Job to resident worker ratios are considerably higher when considering informal jobs in all employment centres as a whole.
5.3 Economic Specialisation

Figure 6 shows job specialisation as the highest location quotient in the area. The CA is predominantly tertiary, with services along

Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at DIRECCION GENERAL DE BIBLIO on December 14, 2011

2202

Table 2.

Mexico City: selected characteristics of formal employment centres

Denomination Formal jobs 2 053 970 25 868 104 953 362 375 58 609 2 021 29 733 52 944 12 039 10 137 13 515 834 1 560 774 493 196 179 832.0 2 233 802 3 880 420 57.6 100.0 19.8 52.4 75.7 22.5 5.8 47.8 44.7 33.5 17.0 32.3 13.5 87.7 60.9 29.0 69.6 16.3 0.2 0.6 3.3 0.3 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.2 0.1 0.1 0.0 9.4 4.2 1.4 14.9 100 0.7 2.7 9.3 1.5 0.1 0.8 1.4 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.0 40.2 12.7 79.3 13.6 52.9 10.9 0.5 0.8 2.0 1.1 0.1 0.3 0.5 0.2 0.3 0.2 0.0 7.5 3.4 2.6 13.5 100.0 895 686 13 371 42 303 219 717 20 858 916 11 963 29 684 11 760 6 219 8 327 413 620 295 275 391 90 140.0 985 826 6 603 811

Typea

Working residents

Formal job density (jobs/ha)

Percentage of working residents of MA

Percentage of formal jobs of MA

Percentage of area of MA (urban)

Jobs:WR 2.3 1.9 2.5 1.6 2.8 2.2 2.5 1.8 1.0 1.6 1.6 2.0 2.5 1.8 2.0 2.3 0.6

MANUEL SUREZ AND JAVIER DELGADO

Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at DIRECCION GENERAL DE BIBLIO on December 14, 2011

Central agglomeration (CA) LomasSanta F NaucalpanTlalnepantla IztacalcoIztapalapa Cuautitln Tepozotln Ecatepec Coapa Xochimilco Texcoco Chalco Atizapn de Z CA without corridors All ACs and ASCs All sub-centres All employment centres Metro area total

Centre + ACs and ASCs ASC ASC AC Sub-centre Sub-centre Sub-centres (2) Sub-centre Sub-centre Sub-centre Sub-centre Sub-centre

AC: adjacent corridors as dened in text; ASC: adjacent segmented corridors as dened in text. Sources: authors calculations using data from the 1999 Economic Census and the 2000 Population Census.

IS MEXICO CITY POLYCENTRIC?

2203

Figure 5. Mexico City: combined formal and informal employment centres and trip attraction capacity in 1.6-km radii Sources: authors methodology using the 1999 Economic Census and the 2000 Population Census.

Insurgentes Avenue and with commercial activity to the sides of the services areas. Industry is concentrated in the corridors, except in the Lomas-Santa Fe area, which shows tertiary activity. Five of the eight subcentres are essentially manufacturing towns, while Texcoco, Tlahuac and Chiconcuac show mainly tertiary activity.

5.4 Comparison with Previous Methods

A comparison of our results with those of previously used methods is depicted in Figure 7. The sub-centres identied by Aguilar and Alvarado (2005) are mostly contained within our identied formal CA. For the specic case of Tlalpan, the areas of this municipality that show up as part of an employment

Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at DIRECCION GENERAL DE BIBLIO on December 14, 2011

2204

Table 3.

Mexico City: selected characteristics of combined formal and informal employment centres

Denomination

Typea

Working residents

Jobs

Job density (jobs/ha)

Percentage of working residents of MA

Percentage of jobs of MA

Percentage of urban area of MA

MANUEL SUREZ AND JAVIER DELGADO

Central agglomeration 30 902 232 055 54 634 155 636 4 950 2 265 423 4 176 13 805 7 942 9 792 849 10 126 8 734 1 170 845 478 177 58 112 1 707 134 6 603 811 3 505 668 1 108 956 104 676 4 719 300 6 603 811 122.9 49.1 24.2 85.1 27.8 17.7 7.2 0.9 25.9 100 53.1 16.8 1.6 71.5 100 12.0 9.5 1.8 23.3 100 71 278 622 319 118 495 291 826 5 038 8 496 573 5 990 25 196 17 094 15 905 1 224 14 117 16 081 23.4 57.1 47.7 49.4 20.9 9.8 23.9 17.9 21.4 35.5 37.2 20.7 27.4 36.4 0.5 3.5 0.8 2.4 0.1 0.0 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.1 0.1 0.0 0.2 0.1 1.1 9.4 1.8 4.4 0.1 0.1 0.0 0.1 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.0 0.2 0.2 1.3 4.6 1.0 2.5 0.1 0.4 0.0 0.1 0.5 0.2 0.2 0.0 0.2 0.2

1 649 022

4 614 624

90.3

25.0

69.9

21.5

Services/Industrial Services/Commercial Industrial Industrial Services Industrial/Commercial Industrial Industrial Commercial Services/Commercial Industrial Services Industrial Industrial/Services Industrial Services/Commercial Industrial/Services Industrial/Services Industrial/Services

Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at DIRECCION GENERAL DE BIBLIO on December 14, 2011

LomasSanta F NaucalpanCuautitln Ecatepec Perifrico Iztapalapa Tepozotln Coacalco Chiconcuac Texcoco La Paz Tlahuac Ixtapaluca Chalco Atizapn de Z

Center plus ACs and ASCs AC ASC ASC AC ASC Sub-centres (2) Sub-centre Sub-centre Sub-centre Sub-centre Sub-centre Sub-centre Sub-centre Sub-centre

CA without corridors All ACs and ASCs All sub-centres Total Employment centres Metro area total

a AC: adjacent corridors as dened in text; ASC: adjacent segmented corridors as dened in text. Sources: authors calculations using data from the 1999 Economic Census and the 2000 Population Census.

Primary/ secondary specialisation

IS MEXICO CITY POLYCENTRIC?

2205

Figure 6. Mexico City: economic specialisation in employment centres Source: authors calculations with data from the 1999 Economic Census.

centre are, in our results, aligned to the south of the Perifrico Corridor. Aguilar and Alvarado, however, place the centre further south, towards the municipalitys administrative centre. The rest of Aguilar and Alvarados subcentres are mostly aligned along the higher jobs to resident workers ratio areas, along Reforma and Insurgentes Avenues, depicted in Figure 4. They are also mostly contained within the areas that would be identified if using the hybrid McMillenGiuliano methodology. However, since between these points the observed densities surpass the density gradient, and since the areas around them show similar characteristics in terms of job concentration, it is likely that Aguilar and Alvarado (2005) found potential nodes

within the bounds of the CA, not sub-centres as such. In the case of the results of the hybrid McMillenGiuliano method, we found no signicant difference between the nal list of centres produced using the formal and the combined formal and informal employment. Only 10 additional tracts showed up as economic centres when controlling for informality at the edges of the identified formal employment centres. Thus, for simplicity, we only depict the results of the combined formal plus informal jobs analysis in Figure 7. This no-dissimilarity result is explained by the fact that the differences between the chosen employment volume thresholds are basically proportional to the ratios of the formal to combined formal and

Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at DIRECCION GENERAL DE BIBLIO on December 14, 2011

2206
MANUEL SUREZ AND JAVIER DELGADO

Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at DIRECCION GENERAL DE BIBLIO on December 14, 2011

Figure 7. Mexico City: comparison of employment centres between three methodologies

Sources: Aguilar and Alvarado (2005) and authors calculations using data from the 1999 Economic Census and the 2000 Population Census.

IS MEXICO CITY POLYCENTRIC?

2207

informal sectors. In our view, this reveals an additional limitation to the employment volume threshold approach. Relative to our methodology, the hybrid McMillenGiuliano method would seem to overestimate the extent of the centre, its corridors and sub-centres. For example, using that methodology, the Nezahualcoyotl, Izatapalapa La Paz and V. Chalco areas, to the east, show up as large employment centres, almost connected to the CA. However, the working residents densities in these areas are so much higher than the job densities that they have higher trip generation rates than attraction rates. Thus, a proportion of resident workers will end up making work trips to the centre, because there are simply not enough jobs nearby to accommodate them all. For this reason, these areas cannot be considered employment centres, even if they do show high job concentrations. Indeed, Iztapalapa and Netzahualcoyotl are among the densest and most populated municipalities of the metropolitan area. Together, they hold more than 16 per cent of the citys population, at densities that exceed, by more than double, the average gross urban population density of the metro area. It follows that there will be a high concentration of local services and commerce to meet the local demandnot enough, however, to make sub-centres out of them.

6. Discussion
6.1 About the Methodology

We have proposed an alternative criterion for identifying employment centres. It is based on identifying peaks in the density gradient, in combination with determining the areas that have a trip attraction to trip generation ratio greater than one. Due to the nature of this method, we use GIS-generated neighbourhoods of 1.6-km radius. We consider that we have resolved the issue of arbitrarily setting a volume of employment

in contiguous xed areas present in previous research, by introducing a more objective criterion that also responds to population location dynamics in the city. Still, a question arises as to how to establish objectively the self-containment radius, which we have set at 1.6-km. For Mexico City, setting the radius at half that distance (800 metres) slightly increases the number of sub-centres (especially at the edges of the CA) and also increases the number and length of ASCs.6 Conversely, using double the distance (3.2 km) slightly reduces the number of sub-centres and expands the area of the CA. At least for our study area, the results produced using the three different radii do not reveal material differences that would cause us to re-evaluate our general conclusions on urban form. A second question is whether an LWR could be used in predicting the density surface that is already the product of GIS employment neighbourhoods. In our analysis, we used an OLS regression that predicted the log of employment density, since our initial assumption was that the city was still in a monocentric stage. However, it remains inconclusive whether using LWR with this form of aggregate data may potentially enhance results. Finally, we should add that some highincome residential areas might well be employment centres for some types of informal jobs (domestic service, gardeners, chauffeurs), which our methodology is not able to capture.7 This form of disaggregated employment represents very low density and dispersed job centres for a very specic sector of the informal working population. Identication of such job centres would require a different methodological approach.
6.2 Is Mexico City Polycentric?

Based on our criteria, it is difcult to ascertain whether Mexico City is indeed a polycentric city. If anything, polycentrism would have to be in its initial stages. Although we have identied several potential sub-centres, these

Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at DIRECCION GENERAL DE BIBLIO on December 14, 2011

2208

MANUEL SUREZ AND JAVIER DELGADO

only account for less than 5 per cent of formal employment and less than 2 per cent of the total number of jobs in the city when additionally considering informal economic activity. Instead, nearly 60 per cent of formal jobs and over 70 per cent of total jobs are located within what we have denominated the central agglomeration, which includes a very large area contiguous to the CBD that meets our density and employment concentration criteria. This area includes a series of corridors along highway exits that connect Mexico City with four other cities of central Mexico. Corridors account for 13 per cent and 17 per cent of formal and total jobs respectively. The rest of the CA accounts for 40 per cent and 53 per cent of these job type divisions respectively. The internal structure of the CA seems to be composed of a subset of inner corridors and nodes that show higher densities and higher trip attraction capacity. Due to these characteristics, it is our hypothesis that the CA evolved from a small centre with a set of corridors that have expanded linearly and concentrically through the years to amass the area that we have now identied. This would also explain, at least in part, the elongated nature of its shape. More research is required in this respect. Results suggest a hybrid urban form. The CA is a dispersed centre, with strip development characteristics at its edges along main highways, and with very small employment sub-centres, most of which could actually be considered only local centres. Although the central agglomeration is far from being round, the way jobs are agglomerated prompts us to conclude that Mexico City is still in a primarily monocentric stage. Results using the hybrid McMillenGiuliano methodology would lead to that same conclusion, but with a larger CA, longer corridors and fewer subcentral employment agglomerations. Our interpretation of maps and gures is, nevertheless, subject to discussion.

As regards informality, we are aware of the rough nature of our adjustment algorithm. It is likely, however, that the efciency of its t increases with distance to the CBD, because the proportion of urban areas within municipalities also diminishes with distance. In any event, it is still worth noting the differences found between formal employment and total job agglomerations. While, when controlling for informality, the percentage of jobs concentrated in the central agglomeration is higher, more sub-centres appear. Also, the CA that includes informal jobs is larger than the formal CA. This suggests that job accessibility increases when including informal economic activity and would, in turn, imply that workers in the informal sector have shorter work trips. This is consistent with the ndings of Surez (2007), who found that low-income workers in the informal sector have shorter trips, probably due to location strategies of informal work activities as a function of residential location.
6.3 Further Research Agenda

Our ndings on urban form suggest that any policy intents to generate sub-centres in the Mexico City metro area have not been quite successful, especially if less than 5 per cent of jobs are located within our identied subcentres. Still, it is worth asking, whether the higher attraction areas within the CA have developed as such because of the effects of planning policies and transport infrastructure, or if their development has been market driven. That is, what are the historical, economical and political determinants of current urban structure and form, including the location characteristics of the informal sector? Further research should also look at the effects of urban form on travel time, urban efciency, economic development and the environment. Who benets from the current urban form? How efcient is the spatial arrangement of the city in terms of transport?

Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at DIRECCION GENERAL DE BIBLIO on December 14, 2011

IS MEXICO CITY POLYCENTRIC?

2209

And, in any case, what policy measures should be taken to improve access to jobs? Do existing employment agglomerations provide the dynamism needed for the citys economic development potential? Finally, with regard to the environment, what is the effect of the jobshousing spatial arrangement on emissions and exposure? These are, among others, questions whose answers will determine what some of the future metropolitan-wide planning needs will be.

Notes
1. Delgados urban rings are based on historical stages of conurbation. Alternative ring congurations show slight changes of municipalities within rings, but none that would affect signicantly the statistics we present. 2. All our calculations exclude the agricultural sector. 3. NAICS codes: 211, 221, 222, 481, 482, 3254, 517, 52, 54, 55, 61 and 62. 4. A correlation between Economic Census (established) jobs per municipality and our selection of formal jobs in the 10 per cent census database revealed a Pearsons coefcient of determination of r2 = 0.83. 5. The cited study originally uses X and Y distances to the CBD as predictors. However, using four distance predictors increases the t of the model from an R2 of 0.35 to an R2 of 0.58. 6. We performed a sensitivity analysis using different distance radii. We do not present these results, since they add no signicant insights regarding our main research question. 7. We thank an anonymous referee for making this point.

References
Aguilar, A. G. and Alvarado, C. (2005) La reestructuracin del espacio urbano de la Ciudad de Mxico. Hacia la metrpoli multimodal, in: A. G. Aguilar (Ed.) Procesos Metropolitanos de

Grandes Ciudades: Dinmicas Recientes en Mxico y Otros Pases, pp. 265308. Mexico: Porra. Alonso, W. (1964) Location and Land Use. Boston, MA: MIT Press. Anas, A. and Kim, I. (1996) General equilibrium models of polycentric urban land use with endogenous congestion and job agglomeration, Journal of Urban Economics, 40, pp. 232256. Batty, M. (2001) Polynucleated urban landscapes, Urban Studies, 38(4), pp. 635655. Bazant, J. (2001) Periferias Urbanas . Mxico: Trillas. Bertaud, A. (2004) The spatial organization of cities: deliberate outcome or unforeseen consequence? Working Paper No. 2004-01, Institute of Urban and Regional Development, Berkeley, CA. Bogart, W. T. and Ferry, W. C. (1999) Employment centres in Greater Cleveland: evidence of evolution in a formerly monocentric city, Urban Studies, 36(12), pp. 20992110. Cervero, R. (1996) Jobshousing balance revisited: trends and impacts from the San Fransisco Bay Area, Journal of the American Planning Association, 64(4), pp. 492511. Cervero, R. (1998) The Transit Metropolis: A Global Inquiry. Washington, DC: Island Press. Cervero, R. and Wu, K. L. (1997) Polycentrism, commuting, and residential location in the San Francisco Bay Area, Environment and Planning A, 29, pp. 865886. Cervero, R. and Wu, K. L. (1998) Sub-centring and commuting: evidence from the San Francisco Bay Area, 198090, Urban Studies , 35(7), pp. 10591076. Cervero, R., Rood, T. and Appleyard, B. (1997) Job accessibility as a performance indicator: analysis of trends and their social policy implications in the San Fransisco Bay Area. Working Paper No. 692, Institute of Urban and Regional Development, University of California, Berkeley, CA. Cruz Rodriguez, L. and Duhau, E. (2001) Los procesos de urbanizacin perifrica y la relacin entre vivienda y empleo en la Zona Metropolitana de la Ciudad de Mexico, in: E. Duhau (Ed.) Procesos Metropolitanos , pp. 123153. Mexico: RID UAM-A.

Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at DIRECCION GENERAL DE BIBLIO on December 14, 2011

2210

MANUEL SUREZ AND JAVIER DELGADO

Cruz Rodriguez, M. S. (2001) Propiedad, poblamiento y periferia rural en la Zona Metropolitana de la Ciudad de Mxico. Puebla, Pue, Mexico, D.F., Programa Editorial de la Red de Investigacion Urbana, Universidad Autnoma Metropolitana. Delgado, J. (1988) El patrn de ocupacin territorial de la Ciudad de Mexico al ao 2000, in: O. Terrazas and E. Preciat (Eds) Estructura Territorial de la Ciudad de Mxico. Mexico: Plaza y Valdez. Dunphy, R. (1982) Dening regional employment centers in an urban area, Transportation Research Record, 861, pp. 1315. ESPON (European Spatial Planning Observation Network) (2004) ESPON 1.1.1. Potentials for polycentric development in Europe (http:// www.espon.lu; accessed March 2008). ESPON (2005) European territorial research in progress. Conference proceedings of the 1st ESPON Scientic Conference, Luxembourg, October. Frankena, M. (1978) A bias in estimating urban population density functions, Journal of Urban Economics, 5, pp. 3545. Fujita, M., Krugman, P. and Venables, A. J. (2001) The Spatial Economy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Giuliano, G. and Small, K. (1991) Subcenters in the Los Angeles region, Regional Science and Urban Economics, 21, pp. 14851500. Giuliano, G. and Small, K. A. (1993) Is the journey to work explained by urban structure?, Urban Studies, 30(9), pp. 14851500. Gordon, P., Richardson, H. W. and Jun, M. (1991) The commuting paradox: evidence from the top twenty, Journal of the American Planning Association, 57, pp. 289295. Gordon, P., Richardson, H. W. and Wong, H. (1986) The distribution of population and employment in a polycentric city: the case of Los Angeles, Environment and Planning A, 18, pp. 161173. Graham, S. and Marvin, S. (2001) Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the Urban Condition. London: Routledge. Graizbord, B. and Acua, B. (2005) La estructura polinuclear del rea metropolitana, in: A. G. Aguilar (Ed.) Procesos Metropolitanos Grandes

Ciudades: Dinmicas Recientes en Mxico y Otros Pases, pp. 309328. Mexico: Porra. Graizbord, B. and Santillan, M. (2005) Dinmica demogrca y generacin de viajes al trabajo en el AMCM: 19942000, Estudios Demogrcos y Urbanos, 20(1), pp. 71101. Hamilton, B. (1982) Wasteful commuting, Journal of Political Economy, 90, pp. 10351053. Iracheta, A. X. (1997) Planeacin y Desarrollo: Una Visin del Futuro. Mexico: Plaza y Valdes. Legorreta, J. (1994) Efectos ambientales de la expansin de la Ciudad de Mxico. Centro de Ecologa y Desarrollo AC, Mexico. Levinson, D. and Kumar, A. (1994) The rational locator: why travel times have remained stable, Journal of the American Planning Association, 60, pp. 319332. McDonald, J. F. (1987) The identication of urban employment subcenters, Journal of Urban Economics, 21, pp. 242258. McDonald, J. F. and Prather, P. (1994) Suburban employment centres: the case of Chicago, Urban Studies, 31, pp. 201218. McMillen, D. P. (2001) Nonparametric employment subcenter identication, Journal of Urban Economics, 50, pp. 448473. McMillen, D. P. (2003) Identifying sub-centres using contiguity matrices, Urban Studies, 40(1), pp. 5769. McMillen, D. P. and McDonald, J. F. (1997) A nonparametric analysis of employment density in a polycentric city, Journal of Regional Science, 37, pp. 591612. McMillen, D. P. and McDonald, J. F. (1998) Suburban centers and employment density in metropolitan Chicago, Journal of Urban Economics, 43, pp. 157180. Perroux, F. (1950) Economic space: theory and applications, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 64, pp. 89104. Saxenian, A. L. (1996) Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128. Boston, MA: Harvard University Press. Scott, A. J. (Ed.) (2001) Global City Regions: Trends, Theory, Policy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Song, S. (1992) Spatial structure and urban commuting. Working Paper No. 117, Transportation Center, University of California.

Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at DIRECCION GENERAL DE BIBLIO on December 14, 2011

IS MEXICO CITY POLYCENTRIC?

2211

Surez, M. (2007) Mercados de trabajo y 1ocalizacin residencial en la ZMCM. PhD thesis, Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mexico. Surez, M. and Delgado, J. (2007) Estructura y eciencia urbanas: accesibilidad a empleos, 1ocalizacin residencial e ingreso en la ZMCM 19902000, Economa Sociedad y Territorio, 6(23), pp. 693724. Thurstain-Goodwin, M. and Unwin, D. (2000) Dening and delineating the central areas of towns for statistical monitoring using continuous surface representations. Working Paper No. 18, Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London. Wachs, M., Taylor, B., Levine, N. and Ong, P. (1993) The changing commute: a case study of the jobshousing relationship over time, Urban Studies, 30, pp. 17111729. Ward, P. M. (1998) Mexico City , 2nd edn. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. Ward, P. M. (2000) De clientelismo a tecnocracia: cambios receintes y nuevos retos de la gobernabilidad municipal en Mexico, in: J. Bailon, C. Martinez Assad and P. Serrano (Eds) El Siglo de la Revolucion Mexicana. Secretaria de Gobernacion, Mexico.

Appendix
The suburbanisation index measures the normalised distance from the centre at which jobs or residents are, on average, located in the metropolitan area, relative to the centre of the city and its farthest edge. It varies from zero (all jobs or residents concentrated at the centre) to one (all jobs or residents concentrated at the farthest edge of the city). Intermediate values may be interpreted as the proportion of the distance between the citys CBD and its farthest edge where jobs or working population are located, on average. I ki = Pj D j
j

where, Iki is the suburbanisation index of economic sector i [manufacturing, commerce, services] of category k [jobs or working population in economic sector i]; Pj is the proportion of jobs or working population in economic sector i in zone j relative to the metropolitan area; Dj is the normalised distance between zone j and the CBD.

Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at DIRECCION GENERAL DE BIBLIO on December 14, 2011