Entrepreneurial urban governance and practices of power: Renegotiating the historic center and its plaza in Mexico City

Entrepreneurial urban governance and practices of power: Renegotiating the historic center and its plaza in Mexico City

Mexico City, historic centers, plazas, human geography, urban geography, entreprenurial urban governance

This dissertation examines socio-spatial exclusion in Mexico City’s Historic Center. Specifically, how new power structures are struggled over and negotiated in people’s everyday lives. This work centers on a recently implemented entrepreneurial policy in Mexico City called the Programa de Rescate (The Rescue Program). The prime objective of the policy is to revitalize the streets, buildings, and central plaza of the city’s Historic Center. Although this policy seeks an improvement in the quality of life for the local population, it excludes particular forms of social interaction that are central to the well-being of a large sector of the population, particularly street vendors who rely on public spaces for their daily survival. Much of the existing literature that focuses on socio-spatial exclusion in an entrepreneurial context has emphasized new structures of power and problems posed to excluded groups. However, I argue that despite the constraints placed upon different groups of affected citizens, excluded groups develop survival strategies that enable them to maintain a livelihood and in some cases empower them to thrive. Further, I question conventional thinking that views the state as monolithic and necessarily constraining to marginalized groups and certain (formal and informal) businesses. Rather, I show that state practices are shaped by different social groups, including those sectors of society who are typically viewed as excluded and disempowered. Through a historical analysis of the Mexican state, I show that excluded groups have managed to tap into the state and thus exert influence over the shape and workings of state policies. By analyzing a particular type of public space in the Latin American context – the plaza – my research asks if these spaces have been reconstituted physically or symbolically and if so, how. I critically synthesize Latin American literatures on the plaza and entrepreneurial urban governance; I connect this synthesis with the European and US literature on entrepreneurial urban governance and shed light on processes that this literature has overlooked; and I recast entrepreneurial urban governance by focusing on the role of agency and the multiple ways in which power is practiced by different social groups in everyday life.

Crossa, Veronica

Ohio State University

2006

Ettlinger, Nancy. Advisor

en

Dissertation

http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1150309607

http://lallier.msh-vdl.fr/theses/items/show/1073

http://lallier.msh-vdl.fr/theses/archive/files/6c0fb22360cbd316bacacc50a7b2b916.jpg