Population, territory and sustainable development

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individuals valued cultural factors more; all groups valued neocultural factors (particularly landscape)
equally; (iv) the family was an even stronger stay factor than employment; (v) access to health and
education were important across the board, as were religious and lay celebrations, confirming a broad
spectrum of factors underling people’s decisions to stay in or migrate to medium-sized cities.
This analysis must be complemented by studies of investment and production location patterns,
since there are two-way relationships between the location of these factors and population location and
migration (Greenwood, 1997). In this sense, studies in Brazil have shown that the pattern of
deconcentration of formal employment has been less marked and more restricted (primarily to mediumsized
cities near the metropolises) than the pattern of population ‘diffusion’ toward medium-sized cities
(Matos, 2009). In other countries, such as Mexico, the shifting locations of dynamic, labour-intensive
economic sectors seem to have impacted deconcentration. The relocation and massive emergence of
manufacturing near the northern border, seeking proximity to the enormous United States market and
driven by investment flows and decisions by global and national conglomerates, has been a powerful
magnet to the labour force, which for decades has been migrating to a chain of border cities, some of which
do not even offer continuity with their sister city across the border (Tijuana-San Diego is the prime
example). Also in Mexico, booming global tourism to areas historically of secondary importance (or at
least far from the central plateau and Mexico City) explains the explosive growth of cities such as Cancún.
In many countries, the main city’s loss of pull (as this study both demonstrates and qualifies,
because in many countries the main city is still a strong draw) is due to a complex set of factors. These
include production and economic factors, because the shifting development model throughout most of the
region (away from State-driven substitution industrialization in favour of market-driven, primarily exportoriented
economies) hit the big cities (where the substitution industry was located) especially hard.
Political factors, particularly decentralization and the shrinkage of the State, have also affected
employment in the metropolises, where the seat of government and government agencies are found.
Altogether these trends meant that the economic crisis of the 1980s was particularly strong in the
metropolises, significantly reducing their ability to “function”.
The natural result of this complex scenario was that the big cities lost some of their draw or even
shifted to net emigration status.9 Now that 20 years have gone by since those crises and their migration
signals, conditions have changed. Large cities survived and are recovering. In several, chaotic public
transport systems have undergone profound transformations that should bring improvements. In others,
public housing programmes are reversing long-standing deficits. All of these cities are seeing slower
population growth, thus easing this potential pressure factor. Globalization has put them back in the
centre, given their widely recognized capacity for centralizing control and management functions, modern
services, and the broad spectrum of low-cost, labour-intensive support services. They still face serious
problems (including unsafety, pollution, poverty and segregation), but their future is now more open than
suggested by the obituaries written in the late 1980s.
Perhaps the most complex segment is that of small cities. This study has clearly demonstrated
their relative disadvantages and persistent challenges when it comes to drawing migrants from other
cities. More research into the specifics of each national case is required, to identify the production and
sociopolitical processes behind this situation and plan for probable future scenarios for this segment
within the system of cities.
9
Nonetheless, in some countries, particularly those that experienced internal armed conflict (Colombia and Peru,
but also El Salvador and Nicaragua), the large metropolises became a refuge, thus reinforcing their draw
for migrants.