Parallel Participation: A New Way to Engage in Mexico City’s Urban Planning

Abstract

My research examines how a group of middle-class Mexico City residents engaged in municipal planning by mobilizing against the Desnivel Mixcoac underpass (2014-2017). I argue that residents rejected formal “participatory” planning mechanisms such as master planning and neighborhood committees. Instead, protesters developed a new participatory planning framework by engaging academics, human rights agencies, the courts, the media, and civil society associations. I call this process “Parallel Participation” because activists engaged in urban planning through channels parallel to, but outside of, institutional citizen participation. Members of the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) political party came to support the protesters. As a result, parallel participation became a political strategy to contest Mexico City’s in-power Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) between 2015 and 2018.This new form of urban participation, however, largely excluded the city’s working-class residents. Parallel participation, therefore, exacerbated many of Mexico City’s sociospatial inequities.