To be frank, when compared our April Metropolis of the Month, New Orleans, the Journal of Urban History’s record of publication in regard to Mexico City is not as robust. During the 1990s, the JUH published articles on the city’s demographics in 1811, class and urban space in the Porfirian era, and an epic essay by Diane Davis exploring the DF’s social construction during the mid-20^th century.

Reflecting broader changes in the field, over the past twenty years or so, historians have focused to a greater degree on gender and sexuality–notably their relationship to political meaning and expression–while others have examined the city in a more transnational and regional context. Provided below is a listing of those articles on or related to Mexico City published since 2000. As always, members might need to login into the UHA website to gain access.

Articles Since 2000

Juan Carlos Sola-Corbacho, “Urban Economies in the Spanish World: The Cases of Madrid and Mexico City at the End of the Eighteenth Century”, 27.5: 604-632.

Harold L. Platt, “Exploding Cities: Housing the Masses in Paris, Chicago, and Mexico City, 1850-2000”, Journal of Urban History 36.5: 575-593.

Anton Rosenthal, “The Street Car in the Urban Imagery of Latin America”, Journal of Urban History 42.1: 162-179.

Kathryn A. Sloan, “Death and the City: Female Suicide and Meaningful Space in Mexico City”, Journal of Urban History 42.2: 396-418.

Ageeth Sluis, “Projecting Pornography and Mapping Modernity in Mexico City”, Journal of Urban History 38.3: 467-487.

Review Essays

Jeffrey Bortz, “Mexico’s Urban Revolution”, Journal of Urban History 29.6: 750-759.

Thomas H. Holloway, “Immigrants in Latin American Cities”, Journal of Urban History 32.1: 147-151.

Andrew G. Wood, “New Approaches to Crime, Health, and Poverty in Mexico City”, Journal of Urban History, 33.3: 527 – 531.

This concludes our coverage of CDMX as May’s Metropolis of the Month. The scholarship that our contributors have highlighted represents the newest wave of research on the city. Read together, Sharon Bailey Glasco’s piece on eighteenth century efforts to reform drunken behavior at pulquerias and David Yee’s description of the city’s attempts in the twentieth century to develop affordable housing reveal continuities in how the city’s governors used architecture to influence the behavior of the lower classes. Sarah Selvidge’s close reading of three examples of integración plastica, the use of art and sculpture in architecture, similarly reveals how the city’s developmentalist goals often overshadowed humanist values. Matthew Vitz’s intellectual history of how Mexican environmentalists and engineers viewed the city’s precarious water conditions highlights how a Mexican elite existed that was deeply critical of this development policy. And Pablo Piccato’s newest book, which he wrote about for us, provides insight into the popular critiques of the crime and corruption that were rampant in the modernizing, mid-twentieth century Ciudad de México.

Next week, we will head northwest to Seattle—our Metropolis of the Month for June. As always, we will kick off our coverage with a bibliography of essential historical texts about the city. Throughout the month we will feature new research on Seattle, including a historiographical piece by Maki Smith that positions the city transnationally. We hope you’ll pull out your flannel, pour a nice cup of coffee, and enjoy exploring the Pacific Northwest with us.