Yucatán exceeds two million inhabitants; the Yucatecan capital has grown almost 100 times to occupy 800 square kilometers

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The Japanese astronaut Wakata Koichi sent greetings to the inhabitants of Mérida after publishing photos of the Yucatecan capital taken from space and the International Space Station

According to the latest population censuses, the state of Yucatán exceeds two million inhabitants, of which 43 percent are concentrated in the city of Mérida, highlighted the researcher from the Social Sciences area of the Regional Research Center “Dr. Hideyo Noguchi” from the Autonomous University of Yucatan (CIR-UADY), Emmanuel Heredia González.

During the discussion panel “Mérida Yucatán: four centuries of transformations”, the expert explained that with more than 400 years, the city has grown in an excessive way because at the beginning of the 19th century this situation was not the same, because historically, from the colonial time, the three most important populations of the peninsula, until today, were Mérida, Campeche and Valladolid.  

He highlighted that at the beginning of the 19th century the area occupied by the city of Mérida within the territory of Yucatán was only seven square kilometers and during the 19th and 20th centuries it has grown almost 100 times, currently occupying an area of 800 km2.

“From a historical part, this has been a very remarkable change, for example, through the descriptions that travelers made and the cartography of the time,” he said.

For his part, Jorge Pacheco Castro, also a CIR Social researcher, explained why this urban growth has occurred, the impacts this expansion has had and the structural changes it has caused in the economy, social relations, culture and in the land use of the inhabitants of Mérida.

He emphasized that today, the development of urban infrastructure and the diffuse expansion of the city have spread more rapidly, both in residential settlements for families with high purchasing power, and through the opening of wide and extensive transportation routes. communication, modern shopping centers, hotels, and companies of various lines, including universities and private schools.

He detailed how the lands were occupied and the complexes grew more and more, for example, in the 1970s the first residential and sports complex for upper-class families began, the La Ceiba Golf Club, this being the first urbanization closed to the entire Mexican southeast.

“This was one of the first real estate developments to be built on the outskirts of the city of Mérida, when the henequen activity, although already in decline, was the basis of the economy of families in rural Mérida.”

Likewise, Pacheco Castro mentioned that it can be affirmed that the growth of the city towards the north occurred in an explosive way at the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the current century, since during those years numerous housing complexes such as Las Américas, Las Haciendas in Temozón Norte, Cocoyoles, Vía Montejo, Real Montejo and other private residential areas such as La Isla, Altosano, among others.

Source: Infoliteras