Municipal and agrarian reforms, urban-regional expansion and management of urban land in Mexico

This paper analyses the legal and institutional framework of the urban planning process in Mexico and its deficiencies are explained. In particular, we revise and compare the 27th and 115th constitutional articles, which dictate and affect the role of the municipality in the urban development process. First, we briefly characterise both articles at different stages and then develop a more detailed account of their most recent changes. The results show that in spite of the breakthroughs achieved, the municipalities are still facing obstacles to performance in their urban management tasks. One of the most important pitfalls is the existing opposition in some aspects of the above mentioned articles. On top of this, we also have the ever-present centralism and the verticality in the federal public policies in the urban sector, in which the municipality still subordinates the other two levels of government. All this is preceded by a characterisation of the gap that the country has developed between urban and economical growth.