Objective:

To highlight the importance that the approach of proximity has in the study of the relations of production and agrifood consumption between central and peripheral areas of the Metropolitan Zone of Mexico City. This approach contributed by the French school of economic geography focuses its interest on territoriality as a strategic resource of economic actors and on the organizational impact of urban-rural relations in a multidimensional sense.

Methodology:

Is based on two components, one of a conceptual nature that facilitated the construction of an interpretation model and some typology for the Mexican case. The other, is a descriptive component one through the analysis of geospatial data and cartographic representations, which allowed inferring the dimensions of the territorial interactions between the mayor's office of Milpa Alta (formerly Political Delegation), south of Mexico City, and the rest of the metropolitan area of ​​the big city. Both run under the perspective of geography and territorial studies in their connection with organizational institutionalism.

Results:

The central question questions whether the approach of proximity has a strategic value for the understanding of the new productive forms and demands of alternative food products that the urban consumer of middle class demands, for which the production of cactus and its derivatives was taken as an example.

Limitations:

scarce relational information on the circulation of merchandise between perimetropolitan areas and consumption centralities within the city.

Conclusions:

the correctness of the use of the conceptual and methodological approach used is proven; they are approximate regarding the measurement of the intensity of relations of geographic and relational proximity between rururban producers of Milpa Alta and metropolitan consumers in emerging areas of the big city.