Life Above, Rubble Below: A Case of Historically Produced Risk &amp; Perception in Mexico City

Carranco, María Moreno; McElvain, Beki

doi:10.17454/ardeth06.12

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…The impression that the most socioeconomically precarious people in Mexico City are living in high disaster risk areas far from the city's central areas is accurate. Peripheral neighborhoods experience increased disaster risk because of poorly maintained infrastructure, poor or nonexistent building code enforcement, neglect by official programs, and higher vulnerability due to poverty and unbalanced economic power made possible by historical settlement processes that produce disaster risk (Moreno Carranco and McElvain, 2020).…”

Section: Disaster Urbanizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Mexico City is prone to a range of hazards, which includes frequent earthquakes and climate-related flooding as well as less frequent but still significant landslides and wildfires in the broader region. There have been and continue to be socioeconomic and political factors that affect vulnerability and distribute risk for these events unevenly throughout the city (Castro, 2004; Moreno Carranco and McElvain, 2020), many of which are directly related to official capacity for implementing recovery efforts and funding priorities after a disaster. The city’s disaster risk is further complicated by government disinvestment in its deteriorating infrastructures, uneven development, and the materially hazardous autoconstructed homes prevalent throughout the city’s peripheries.…”

Section: Urbanization and Disaster In Mexico City’s Peripheriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Autorecovery and everyday disaster in Mexico City’s peripheries

McElvain¹

2023

Environ Plan D

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This article is concerned with urbanization as it shapes and is shaped by disaster finance instruments. It takes a critical look at the specific urbanizing qualities of these instruments by bringing an established theory of peripheral urbanization together with recent work on disaster urbanization to advance a theory of ‘everyday disaster’—or smaller-scale events that occur repeatedly in the same areas, or events with extended recovery periods so prolonged that they integrate with the precarities of everyday life; and ‘autorecovery’—or recovery processes that self-organize and improvise in response to the uneven distribution of state resources. It grounds these theories in extended ethnographic work done in Mexico City. It argues that where localized everyday disasters are ongoing, they fall through the cracks of existing financing schemes because of ongoing scalar mismatches between instruments and actually existing disaster conditions. These mismatches are compounded by state neglect and facilitated by the disconnectedness that defines peripheries. As disaster governance in global Southern states is pushed to global markets through risk transfer instruments, failure to effectively insure everyday disasters expands spaces of precarity that reproduce peripheral processes. These forms of governance affect urban spatial configurations, not only through disaster itself, but through modes of repair like autorecovery.

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Section: Disaster Urbanizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Urbanization and Disaster In Mexico City’s Peripheriesmentioning

confidence: 99%