URBAN TRANSPORT, DEPENDENT DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE - LESSONS FROM A CASE-STUDY OF MEXICO-CITY SUBWAY

From a case study of the 1965 decision to build Mexico City's subway and the conflicts it engendered between 1964 and 1976, we see the political origins and developmental effects of mass rapid transit in LDC's. The paper validates basic premises of the political economy perspective; but instead of situating the subway policy's implementation in the context of interclass conflicts between capital and labor, it shows that cross-class alliances, intraclass divisions, and state-class alliances determined transport policy stances, and that these problematic alliances and divisions emerged from unique patterns of urban concentration, class formation, and state composition associated with Mexico's peripheral status in the world economy. It also shows that the subway's contentious introduction altered national development trajectories, not by changing land use or labor force mobility but by modifying the balance of state and class power in Mexico.