Mexican metropolis, Mexican regional city: a study in metropolitan and urban imaginaries

Abstract In urban studies, the number of comparisons between large capital cities (whether ‘global cities’ or ‘mega-cities’) and regional centres have grown in the wake of globalizing tendencies since the 1990s. Scholars in the social sciences approaching this problem from different disciplinary backgrounds must confront fast-changing figurations of urban spaces, which have been challenging to theorize effectively and to research empirically. The ‘rise’ of regional centres as foci for policy making and economic and cultural development has been a key feature of many figurations of metropolises, city-regions, and regional cities. This article brings to this contemporary context of rapid urban change and challenges in urban planning two specific theoretical approaches. The article uses theories of metropolitan imaginaries and urban imaginaries to conceptualize and illuminate the distinctiveness of metropolises compared to smaller regional cities. The term “imaginary” is conceived here as a source that sparks patterns of city formation. Following the definition of key terms, I explore the two conceptual approaches and apply them in a case study in Mexico. Re-theorizing metropolitan imaginaries by examining the theories of Cornelius Castoriadis and urban imaginaries in the work of Néstor García Canclini, this article makes a case for distinguishing metropolitan from regional cities on the basis of their varying imaginaries. Arguing that metropolises are characterized by three processes emerging from (or sparked by) the metropolitan imaginary, I pinpoint migration, the metropolitan character of urban design, and the production of heritage as the basis of the imaginary creation of the metropolis as a formation of larger and more significant magnitude. I examine this metropolitan imaginary in the case of Mexico City. Then I move to explore the urban imaginary of regional Veracruz City. Aspects of the imaginary institution of both cities and their spatial relationships are discussed in the context of the overall argument that smaller regional cities are generated from urban imaginaries, while metropolitan imaginaries are the creative sources that sparks large scale metropolises like Mexico City. From the two imaginaries emerge distinct spatial patterns of migration, different heritage regimes, and variations in the development of built structures that give metropolises and regional cities divergent contexts and scales of social creation.