by Jack Deal

Created on: January 23, 2009

Mexico City, the world's most populous city, just keeps growing and growing with no end in sight. In the next ten to twenty years, Mexico City may become the world's first urban area with 50 million residents.

If Mexico City currently has 25,000,000 people than the area within a hundred mile radius approaches 35,000,000 people. This is due to increased population growth and decreasing open areas including farmland.

The actual figures given by the Mexican Government do little to help answer the big number question. For example, Pachuca, a city about 60 miles northwest from Mexico City, is officially given a population of around 400,000.

Driving through the greater metro area of Pachuca one certainly can see the government figure is deflated.

The Mexican Government census is known for undercounting and not giving accurate estimates in between official census dates. Especially
undercounted are Mexico's marginal poor and those that do not have permanent addresses.

While there is some open land between
Pachuca and Mexico City, there is virtually no open land between Mexico City and its neighbor Toluca to the west. While the official government estimate for Toluca in 2005 is 1.6 million it is clear the region has many more people.

Not only are the official population figures consistently lower, the official figures do not count many surrounding towns and smaller cities. The official government figures for 2005 estimate the population of Mexico City at about 8.5 million.

To the southeast, the City of Puebla was estimated in 2005 to have almost 5.5 million inhabitants. While there still are some open spaces between Mexico City and Puebla, there aren't many and in a few short years it too will be one large Mexico City suburb.

To the south, Cuernavaca was estimated to have a little less than 1.0 Million inhabitants in 2005. That figure has certainly risen since then.

As the debate and polemics rage on about the actual demographics, the implications of this massive population growth are much clearer.

The municipal government of Mexico City is doing little to discourage this population growth. Under the PRD party and past Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and present Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico City has continued to grow.

And since Mexico City is a strong base for the PRD party, the party has done little to discourage this growth. To the contrary, the PRD party has made great efforts to increase and build on Mexico City's highway and subway system.

This continuing construction

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