Abstract

ALVAREZ-LOBATO, José Antonio; TRUJILLO HERRADA, Armando  and  GARROCHO RANGEL, Carlos Félix. Urban Multifunctionality and the Elderly In the Mexico City Metropolitan Area. Invest. Geog [online]. 2018, n.96. ISSN 2448-7279.  https://doi.org/10.14350/rig.59611.

Population aging is the most important demographic phenomenon in Mexico in the twenty-first century (Ham, 2003; Ordorica, 2012); it will be predominantly urban, and its socio-spatial dimension is just starting to be investigated in detail (Garrocho and Campos, 2005, 2016; Negrete, 2003; Zamorano et al., 2012). This article aims to set the methodological bases to analyze this demographic phenomenon, using several indices such as segregation, marginalization and the multifunctionality evidenced spatially, in order to estimate the spatial of elderly people in the Mexico City Metropolitan Area (MCMA).

In this sense, the main objectives of the proposal are to: 1) estimate the multifunctionality of the segregation areas of highly-marginalized elderly people in the MCMA; 2) identify critical areas due to low multifunctionality; and, 3) outline socio-spatial policy measures aimed at improving the multifunctionality conditions and welfare of the elderly population living in these critical areas.

To carry out this research, the work is divided into four sections. The first addresses the theoretical approach, showing three perspectives to explain the issue of spatial segregation and marginalization through three basic approaches: (i) New Urbanism; (ii) Compact and Smart City; and (iii) Assets , vulnerability and opportunity structure (AVEO).

The second section proposes a methodology to explain how diversity and density of access to goods and services is expressed spatially through the concept of multifunctionality, understood as the diversity of opportunities in the everyday space to access and use ordinary goods and services (Batty et al., 2004), available for a specific group in the population (elderly people), assuming there is more than one activity or role in a given area and at the same time (coincidence in time and space: Batty et al., 2004). In this regard, we built a profile for elderly people according to their daily needs of access to goods and services.

The most important idea underlying this methodological proposal is the transportation cost to be borne by elderly people to access and use key goods and services. This cost is not only economic, but also includes other dimensions such as commuting time, effort, or risk, which can be more important than economic costs in the scale of everyday space, particularly for the population of elderly persons (Cascetta et al., 2014; Garrocho y Campos, 2016).

The cost of the above implications was explored through the concept of threshold distance, which considers the distances that elderly people can cover comfortably by walking. This threshold models the functional organization of the everyday space, and shows, through an analysis of displacement networks, the feasibility to reach goods and services.

The third section discusses the main results, analyzing the effects of multifunctionality as a spatial capital factor based on the information on segregation indices for elderly people presented by Garrocho y Campos (2006), as well as the marginality index (Conapo, 2017) in the MCMA. This analysis helped to know the degrees of both indices and the delimitation of areas of priority attention.

From this, the results are identified and correlated at a human scale, micropolitana (neighborhood) scale, in order to explain the results at a delegation and/or municipality level to subsequently identify neighborhoods, revealing their spatial structure in relation to the analysis of the indices (segregation and marginalization) and their multifunctionality.

Finally, section four deals with the findings and contributions from this work, highlighting the importance of establishing urban public policies specific to elderly persons.

This work localized areas with various degrees of segregation, exclusion and multifunctionality, which reveal diferences in spatial patterns between the periphery and the center of the MCMA. This first diagnosis identifies priority areas for the implementation of public policies for elderly persons, and also gives an overview of the diversity and density expressed in multifunctionality, which is reflected in the different levels of spatial capital for this population sector.

This research seeks to show the usefulness of methods involving a spatio-temporal approach over traditional (non-spatial) approaches for the study of aging at the urban scale.

Keywords : elderly persons; multitasking; accessibility; seggregation; Mexico City Metropolitan Zone.

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