Solid waste for incineration and wastewater from the country's largest city, Mexico City (CDMX), are transported to the southern region of Valle del Mezquital (MV). This area also hosts an oil refinery, a thermoelectric plant (PEMEX-CFE), cement factories, industrial corridors, and mining operations, all of which harm environmental and public health. From a Political Ecology (PE) perspective, we examine the mechanisms of accumulation, emphasizing the allocation of property titles and the extraction of rent as an environmental reservoir. We also explore the power of socio-environmental movements to provide a comprehensive understanding of environmental conflict. Based on economic power structures, we identify a geopolitical configuration that deepens the spatial divisions between labor in the MV and consumption in CDMX, exacerbating health disparities. We conclude that an unequal geography has been built that produced capitalist and rentier landowners who are exempt from the externalities that have produced an environmental hell. The Mexican State is a key stakeholder, collaborating with the industrial elite in both legal and illegal spheres. Within this sacrifice zone, the inhabitants of the MV have resisted pollution and industrial accidents for over 50 years. Despite publicizing their struggle internationally and collaborating with academics, members of the movement have been assassinated.

La arquitectura destinada al turismo busca ofrecer propuestas innovadoras, dar un plus a los visitantes, más allá que los servicios de hotelería o de los atractivos naturales, históricos o culturales que el sitio ofrece. En esta búsqueda se han generado desde las más tradicionales propuestas arquitectónicas, hasta las más vanguardistas o extravagantes. Sin embargo surgen varios cuestionamientos al respecto, por ejemplo la pertenencia del edificio turístico con el sitio donde se emplaza, en la búsqueda por ofrecer productos novedosos para el negocio turístico, se recurre a retomar fórmulas arquitectónicas del pasado o referentes ajenos al contexto. En éste trabajo se busca interpretar aquellas tipologías que en el imaginario social hacen dichas prácticas posibles y significativas. Como análisis empírico de los lugares turísticos, se ha realizado un acercamiento a la ciudad de Puerto Peñasco, México. El estudio se soporta en las propuestas de la arquitectura mexicana, tomando en cuenta la herencia cultural como legado de autenticidad, para la creación de los nuevos emplazamientos turísticos, ligado a las categorías de imaginarios sociales y autenticidad. El método, de corte cualitativo, parte de las investigaciones sobre imaginarios urbanos, utilizando herramientas como entrevistas, cuestionarios y ejercicios, para conocer la percepción de los actores sociales que intervienen en el desarrollo turístico del caso de estudio. Entre los hallazgos de investigación, se concluye la creación de productos tipo, poco originales que contribuyen a la homogenización del espacio urbano, transformando localidades, para buscar su tematización y su proyección para el consumo turístico. L’arquitectura destinada al turisme busca oferir propostes innovadores, donar un plus als visitants, més enllà que els serveis d’hoteleria o dels atractius naturals, històrics o culturals que el lloc ofereix. En aquesta cerca s’han generat des de les més tradicionals propostes arquitectòniques fins les més avantguardistes o extravagants. No obstant sorgeixen vàries qüestions al respecte, per exemple la pertinència de l’edifici turístic amb el lloc on s’emplaça, en la cerca per oferir nous productes pel negoci turístic es recorre a tornar a fórmules arquitectòniques del passat o referents no vinculats al context. En aquest treball es busca interpretar aquelles tipologies que en l’imaginari social fan les citades pràctiques possibles i significatives. Com anàlisi empíric dels llocs turístics, s’ha realitzat un apropament a la ciutat de Puerto Peñasco, Mèxic. L’estudi es suporta en les propostes de l’arquitectura mexicana, tenint en compte l’herència cultural com a llegat d’autenticitat, per la creació de nous emplaçaments turístics, lligat a les categories d’imaginaris socials i autenticitat. El mètode, de tall qualitatiu, parteix de les investigacions sobre imaginaris urbans, utilitzant eines com entrevistes, qüestionaris i exercicis, per conèixer la percepció dels actors socials que intervenen en el desenvolupament turístic del cas d’estudi. Entre les troballes d’investigació, es conclou la creació de productes tipus poc originals, que contribueixen a la homogeneïtzació de l’espai urbà, transformant localitats per buscar la seva tematització i la seva projecció pel consum turístic. The architecture intended to tourism seeks to offer innovative proposals giving added value to visitors, beyond the hotel services or the natural, historical or cultural attractions that the place itself offers. In this pursuit has been generated from traditional to the latest lifestyle or extravagant architectural proposals. However, several questions arise in this regard, for example the belonging of the tourist building to the site where it is located, in the quest to provide innovative products for the tourism business when is often used to return to past architectural formulas or using landmarks unrelated to the context. This paper attempts to interpret those typologies that such possible and meaningful practices make in the social imaginary. As empirical analysis of tourist sites, has been made ​​an approach to the city of Puerto Peñasco, Mexico. The study is supported on proposals of Mexican architecture, taking into account the cultural heritage as a legacy of authenticity, for the creation of new tourism sites, linked to the categories of social imaginaries and authenticity. The qualitative method is based on urban imaginaries research, using tools such as interviews, questionnaires and exercises to understand the perception of the social actors involved in tourism development in the case study. Among the research findings, is concluded the creation of unoriginal type products that contribute to the homogenization of urban space, transforming localities, to find its theming and its projection for tourist consumption.

Solid waste for incineration and wastewater from the country’s largest city, Mexico City (CDMX), is transported to the southern region of Valle del Mezquital (MV). This area also hosts an oil refinery, a thermoelectric plant (PEMEX-CFE), cement factories, industrial corridors, and mining operations, all of which harm environmental and public health. From a Political Ecology (PE) perspective, we examine the mechanisms of accumulation, emphasizing the allocation of property titles and the extraction of rent as an environmental reservoir. We also explore the power of socio-environmental movements to provide a comprehensive understanding of environmental conflict. Based on economic power structures, we identify a geopolitical configuration that deepens the spatial divisions between labor in the MV and consumption in CDMX, exacerbating health disparities. We conclude that an unequal geography has been built that has produced capitalist and rentier landowners who are exempt from the externalities that have produced a sacrifice zone. The Mexican State is a key stakeholder, collaborating with the industrial elite in both legal and illegal spheres. Within this sacrifice zone, the inhabitants of the MV have resisted pollution and industrial accidents for over 50 years. Despite publicizing their struggle internationally and collaborating with academics, members of the movement have been assassinated.

Tijuana: Border, Migration, and Gated Communities Brisa Violeta Carrasco Gallegos Northern Mexico’s border cities have experienced the most accelerated demographic growth of any region in the country as a result of internal migration. Many among this migrant population arrive at the border looking for an opportunity to cross into the United States. But, when faced with the difficulties that this entails, they end up settling temporarily in border cities, eventually taking on work and other commitments there. What was to be a temporary stay thus becomes permanent . Government initiatives, such as the 1942 Bracero program and the 1965 Border Industrialization Program (BIP) figure prominently in the diverse range of factors stimulating the mass migration of workers into northern Mexico (Zenteno 1993: 15–19; Verduzco, Bringas, and Valenzuela 1995: 88). This paper analyzes the most recent trend affecting demographic change: Tijuana’s real estate and construction boom, its effects on the rapid expansion of the city’s surface area, and the relationship of such expansion to the growth of gated communities. It takes as a point of reference data generated in a field study conducted in Tijuana during October 2004 and March 2005.1 Tijuana evinces all of the processes of big border cities: large-scale population growth and expansion of its urban surface area, increased opportunities for work, and fast-paced exchange of goods and services. The city developed much later than many other cities in Northwest Mexico, but its growth has been explosive. In 1900 Tijuana had 242 inhabitants (Zenteno 1993: 13). By 2005, this number had skyrocketed to 1,448,944 (CONAPO n.d.). Within these dynamics of population growth the border city becomes a context of multiple realities and multiple lifeways, a place expressing the restlessness and fears of its diverse inhabitants. For many of those residents native to the border cities, or at least with deeper roots there, the floating population seems dangerous, Brisa Violeta Carrasco Gallegos is a Ph.D. candidate in social sciences at the Universidad de Guadalajara. Journal of the Southwest 51, 4 (Winter 2009) : 457–475 458 ✜ Journal of the Southwest problematic, and harmful. Long-term residents understand the latter as temporary inhabitants poised at a point of crossing. Migrants are thus often blamed for the urban problems, traffic jams, apparent misery, delinquency, and insecurity experienced every day in cities like Tijuana. This association becomes part of the urban imaginary and, indeed, the built environment: different social groups struggle to maintain some semblance of community, creating spaces within which they are able to identify with and understand their peers. In the border cities, we thus see a proliferation of restricted or gated housing developments, creating places only social equals have the right to inhabit. They are based on an ideal of security within a carefully delimited space. While the phenomenon of the gated development is not specific to the border, it nevertheless takes on greater meaning in cities with high indices of insecurity like the border cities. For residents of gated communities , the car is critical for managing the family’s security and its property. Social segregation is a characteristic of the border urban zones, with the housing and service districts characterized by social groups of similar income levels and ethnic background, among other things. “The reality of each city, its urban history, has generated both mixed areas and other areas of homogeneity” (Borja and Muxí 2000: 63). The novelty that this model presents lies in the physical materialization of distinct boundaries separating peer groups, the meticulous vision of the future in housing choices, and the tacit limitations to access. As J. Blakely and M. G. Snyder argue, Economic and social segregation are not new. In fact, zoning and city planning were designed, in part, to preserve the position of the privileged with subtle variances in building and density codes. But gated communities go further in several aspects than other means of exclusion. They create physical barriers to access. They also privatize community space, not merely individual space. Many gated areas also privatize civic responsibilities like police protection and communal services such as street maintenance, recreation and entertainment. The new developments can create a private world that need share little with...

Las ciudades turísticas intentan recrear los imaginarios internacionales sobre culturas determinadas, adaptándose a las expectativas que se tengan sobre el sitio a visitar. Los imaginarios son la realidad social construida desde los ciudadanos. A través de ellos las personas aprehendemos y explicamos las percepciones que nos formamos sobre los otros, los eventos y relaciones, así como sobre las obras y objetos. En las ciudades del turismo emergentes, la construcción de los equipamientos turísticos, tanto públicos, como privados, hace tabula rasa de la ciudad preexistente, dejando de lado las experiencias culturales locales, para preparar un escenario óptimo, que haga atractivo el sitio al público extranjero. En ese sentido los referentes culturales de lo mexicano, plasmados en la arquitectura, retoman elementos de distintas regiones y momentos históricos, acordes al imaginario internacional. Esos lenguajes arquitectónicos funcionan como referencia de autenticidad del espacio consumido, validando la experiencia turística. El objetivo de este trabajo es dar luz sobre el origen de las formas arquitectónicas –la morfogénesis- de una ciudad turística emergente. Es decir, observaremos los lenguajes urbanos y arquitectónicos, y la relación que los diseños exhibidos guardan hacia el imaginario internacional de la cultura mexicana. Para ello, utilizaremos como instrumentos los recorridos que los turistas hacen para acceder a los desarrollos turísticos, las imágenes expuestas en lugares específicos, así como el análisis del relato emitido por el turista en relación a la experiencia vivida. Nuestros medios de acceso serán las imágenes reales (tomadas in situ por las autoras) y aquellas recogidas de los sitios web de las cadenas hoteleras y de las bitácoras personales (blogs) de turistas disponibles en Internet. Con estos instrumentos pretendemos asociar los lenguajes plásticos del sitio con aquellos provenientes de imaginarios internacionales sobre la cultura mexicana, más allá de los de la realidad del sitio analizado. Retomamos a manera de ejemplo dos puntos de vista: el del promotor inmobiliario y del turista. El caso de estudio es Puerto Peñasco, Sonora, ciudad que ha sufrido una fuerte conversión a las actividades turísticas en los últimos diez años y cuyo auge inmobiliario, representa un caso emblemático del turismo en el noroeste mexicano. Adelantándonos a manera de breve conclusión, podemos señalar que las imágenes montadas en el armado y diseño del puerto anterior cumplen la paradójica función asentarse en la memoria del viajero (crear una ciudad memorable y singular), a la vez que autentifican la experiencia turística, es decir, son imágenes congruentes con el imaginario que el turista se ha formado aún antes de iniciar su recorrido, ya sea a través de los relatos de otros viajeros o del discurso del promotor inmobiliario. Ambos disponibles con la facilidad de un clic. Por otro lado, los referentes buscados por los promotores turísticos, están ligados, mediante la arquitectura y el urbanismo a la antigua arquitectura mexicana, de las culturas prehispánicas, las haciendas rurales y la arquitectura colonial, que poco o nada tienen que, ver con las actualidad de las ciudades mexicanas y mucho menos con el entorno regional de Puerto Peñasco. Sin embargo, ese tratamiento permite la creación de un ambiente "ideal" para el acercamiento a la cultura mexicana que los turistas esperan. Al contrastar los puntos de vista de un viajero y de un promotor inmobiliario de esta localidad portuaria, daremos cuenta de la ciudad deseada y de la ciudad ficción, acercándonos de esta manera a la "ciudad real", que bien pareciera la copia de las dos anteriores. The tourist cities intend to recreate the international imaginaries about certain cultures, adapting to the given expectations of the visiting place. The imaginaries are the social reality built by the citizens. Through them, people seize and explain their perceptions on others, on events and relationships, and as well as on objects. In the emerging cities of tourism, the building up of equipment, public as well as private, ignores the preexisting city. Cultural local experiences are left aside to prepare an optimal scenario that would make the place attractive for the foreign visitors. In this sense, the cultural references for “the Mexican” are captured trough architecture. They take elements from different regions and different historical momentums, according to the international imaginary. These architectural languages works as an authenticity reference for space, validating the tourist experience. The objective of this paper is to throw light on the origin of architectural forms –the morphogenesis- in an emerging tourist city. We will look at the urban and architectural languages, as well as the connexion that the exhibit designs keep towards the Mexican culture international imaginary. In order to do so, we will take advantage of the itineraries the tourists follow to get to the tourist developments, of the images exposed in specific places, and of the tourists account of their experiences. Our means of access will be the real images (taken by the author of this paper) and those collected in web sites of hotel chains and personal tourist journals (blogs). With these instruments we intend to associate the place plastic languages with those derived from international imaginaries on the Mexican culture. As an example we take into account to points of view: the real estate promoter’s and the tourist’s. The case of study is Puerto Peñasco, Sonora, a city that has suffered a tough switch to the tourist activities within the last ten years, and of...

Dado el cada vez mayor interés en materia de conciencia de la contaminación en el ambiente y sus repercusiones en la salud pública, se sugiere la creación de una aplicación con inteligencia artificial en donde se monitoricen niveles de contaminación en el Estado de México, cuyo enfoque es identificar relaciones entre factores ambientales y de salud, y brindar capacidades para el diseño de políticas públicas efectivas. Lo anterior, implica la integración de bases de datos socioeconómicos, de carencia, ambientales y de salud, la aplicación de IA de modelado predictivo, y el examen de análisis cualitativos en gobernanza y activismo social. Como resultado, se expone que el uso de alta tecnología simplifica la identificación de áreas en peligro y fomenta la participación pública en tácticas y estrategias para la gestión en la ambiente, por lo que se puede deducir que el proyecto propuesto tiene un destacado potencial positivo en la aporte y replicabilidad.