Planning, Politics, and Urban Mega-Projects in Developmental Context: Lessons from Mexico City’s Airport Controversy

ABSTRACT:

Using a focus on a failed airport project for Mexico City, this article explores the conditions that enable and constrain urban mega-project development in countries facing simultaneous political and economic transition. The article argues that the Mexico City airport project faced three major obstacles, each inspired by citizen efforts to influence planning decisions: (1) divisions within and between the political class and citizens, driven by democratization, decentralization, and globalization; (2) conflicts between local and national authorities over the relevance of citizen participation in project development; and (3) a strong coalition of local, national, and international allies using cultural identity, historical allegiances, and geographic location to build and expand struggle against the airport. In theoretical terms, this article suggests that the historical and institutional legacies of urban and national development in Mexico have created bureaucratic ambiguities and tensions over who is most responsible for major urban mega-project development. It also concludes that planning authorities have not yet developed institutional structures and processes that can enhance government legitimacy and allow the successful implementation of mega-projects in the face of forceful opposition.

Notes

The Federal District is the capital of Mexico. When we talk about the Mexico City region we are referring to what is known as the Metropolitan Zone of the City of Mexico (ZMCM), which consists of the Federal District as well as 53 municipalities in the State of Mexico and one municipality in the State of Hidalgo. Today, this area has somewhere between 16 and 26 million residents.

Congestion on the runways was exacerbated by the “mobile lounges” employed at 38 of the 71 gates at the AICM (i.e., passengers are transported to and from the terminal building to the parked airplane). This meant that more than 1,000 surface vehicles circulated within the airport property, transporting gas, crews, baggage and passengers. In 2000, 29.3% of the passengers were bused from the main terminal to their aircrafts, a transfer requiring an average of 15 minutes. Furthermore, the number of flights requiring remote boarding was expected to increase dramatically, as existing direct-contact gates could not accommodate the larger aircrafts that airlines were adding to their fleets. Finally, the main terminal buildings already served more passengers than their theoretical maximum of 20 million/year. As a result, passengers arriving from up to four different flights shared the same baggage carousel, and wait time to board taxis averaged 30 minutes, compounding the delay.

Details referenced in this paper about the size, cost and capacity of the proposed airport project come from archival documents such as power point presentations made available to the authors by officials at SCT, as well as personal interviews conducted in September 2012. Names of those interviewed cannot be shared owing to confidentiality agreements, but copies of documents are available upon request.

Internal documents at SCT describe the government’s vision for the new airport as a bold move to establish Mexico City as a “global gateway for transpacific traffic” (banking on expected technological improvements that would increase flight autonomy of planes by 25%–30%). For more on the source of this documentation, see note 3.

These figures were working estimates used by SCT officials at that time, referenced in documents accessed by the authors, as noted above (note 3).

Ejidos were established in the 1920s after the Mexican Revolution to give small farmers a share of the land. Farmers that partake in an ejido enjoy collective property rights, and are known as ejidatarios.

For a summary of this view see Innes and Booher ().

Conflicts over urban projects and policies did exist, but they were mostly intra-bureaucratic, among competing camps within the same federal government.

For more on these dynamics, see Davis ().

Twenty-eight private enterprises eventually expressed interest. In the end, 12 of them integrated into 6 consortiums that presented formal proposals before the project was cancelled.

The timing here is significant because it shows that the official decision to build the airport came after the 9/11 tragedy in New York City, an event that transport analysts argue changed the rush to build new airports, because it made a major dent in global demand for air travel. Because the Mexican authorities pushed for the airport project even after that date, we can be confident that it had little bearing on the later decision to cancel the project. The significance of this event for this project is discussed further later in this text.

Plans called for US$2,107 million to relocate an air force base located in the vicinity of Tizayuca, and to build infrastructure connecting the site to Mexico City.

This objective would become true for all three: Governors Montiel and Nuñez participated in a presidential primary in the PRI, while Lopez Obrador ran under the PRD, losing the general election in 2006 by a thin margin.

For example, consider this quote from an affected ejidatario: “There is no change in government, they are the same people pursuing economic interests by exploiting the poor. We the peasants no longer want dialogue with the authorities, we asked for that long ago and no one answered” (Vázquez, ).

Such endorsements were frequently mentioned in printed media (e.g., Salinas & Ramon, ; Rojas, ; Lazaro, ). For a focused analysis on the nature and motivations of social movements surrounding this case, see Davis and Rosan ().

See Thompson () and Edwards ().

It also is possible that powerful economic interests opposed to the site originally chosen by the federal government—such as hoteliers, retailers, and taxi companies serving the current airport—lent tacit support to the ejidatario resistance with behind-the-scenes funding, contacts, advice, or other forms of lobbying. This would have been particularly likely because, in the case of Mexico City, many such groups had important ties to the mayor, who also opposed the project. While we found no evidence of such collusion, the fusion of powerful political and economic alliances with grassroots actors in opposition to mega-projects has been documented in other airport construction controversies, for example in Denver (Altshuler & Luberoff, ). We thank an anonymous reviewer for raising this important point, but lacking more evidence we can only speculate.

Rodriguez and Herrera (); Herrera ().

The left-leaning authorities of Mexico City had links to the ejidatario groups and sympathized with their struggle on ideological grounds. However, they were careful not to publicly endorse the protests, nor to formally coordinate their legal strategies.

In fact, after a brief slump in demand, activity at the existing Mexico City airport promptly recovered from the September 11 shock, reaching an all-time high of 309,794 flight operations in 2002.

Applbaum () identifies the “good,” the “just,” and the “legitimate” as the three orders of moral reasoning and conflict.

See Mansbridge et al. (, p. 80) for a discussion of coercive power.

The first section of this urban highway (5 kilometers of tunnels and overpasses linking the south of the city to the up-and-coming high end sector in Santa Fe) will cross through environmentally sensitive areas. It has also required the expropriation of 126 plots in low- and middle-class neighborhoods. Again, this project was presented as a fait accompli and people were notified about expropriation without any consultation. In what seems a repetition of the airport story, the official in charge of the highway project declared that “if citizens had been informed earlier about the project, first they would have tried to stop it, and then they would have tried to increase the price of the land and thus of the project” (Robles, ).