Mexico City Travel Guide (Mexico City, Mexico)

As many as two million Mexicans died during the Revolution and many more lost their property, livelihood or both. In desperation thousands fled to the rapidly industrializing capital in search of jobs and a better life. Between 1910 and the mid-1940s the city's population quadrupled and the cracks in the infrastructure quickly became gaping holes. Houses couldn't be built quickly enough to cope with the seven-percent annual growth, and many people wouldn't have been able to afford them anyway, so up sprung shanty towns . The city became surrounded by shacks cobbled together from whatever scraps of metal and cardboard could be found. Most had little or no water supply and sanitation was an afterthought. Gradually, civic leaders tried to improve the lot of its citizens by improving the services and housing in shanty towns, but a new ring of slums mushroomed even more quickly just a little further out. As the city expanded, transport became impossible and the city embarked on building the Metro system, an ongoing process since the late 1970s.

Urban growth continues today: some estimate that there are a thousand new arrivals each day, and the city now extends beyond the limits of the Distrito Federal and out into the surrounding state of México. Despite the spread, Mexico City remains one of the world's densest and most populated cities with an unenviable list of major social and physical problems, and no sign of major improvement in the near future