The Suburbanization of Poverty and the Access to Public Services in Mexico City

The aim of this study is to analyse the suburbanization of poverty in the Metropolitan Zone of Mexico City, this is a topic scarcely treated in the urban development literature on Latin American metropolis. Specifically the distribution of poor population by metropolitan rings is analysed, in order to identify the main concentrations of population with high and very high marginalization degrees; and these results are related to the access to two main public services, health and piped water inside dwellings. Trends are analysed with a comparison of census data for the years 2000 and 2010 at metropolitan level, confirming a concentration process of poor groups either in the suburban or the peripheral zones. One of the main findings is that interior and external suburban zones present the bigger concentrations of the population with the highest economic disadvantages with notable lack of access to public services. These results put in evidence the existence of large deteriorated suburban zones.