The Social Production of the Urban Structure of Mazatlan,Mexico

Abstract

In the processes of spatial transformation subject to the laws of capitalism, the rural field was displaced by the demographic concentration and centralization of productive activities in cities. In the growth of urban structure these register the decisive practices of the social agents (factions of capital, the state, including all its levels, and labor) – whose actions create the city and define its identity. The above assertions are illustrated by an historical analysis of the social production of space in Mazatlan, a city that could have been just like any other in the industrialized world, but that today presents the characteristics of a Third World place as a result of the weak development of its productive forces, but especially of the way state intervention brought resources to the area only to have them exploited by elements of private capital, including foreign extractive sources.