Mexican cities are struggling with urban fragmentation due to growing concerns over crime, violence, inequalities, and uncertainty. Gated communities have proliferated in recent decades, not only as a response to such challenges but also in response to structural conditions on global and national levels that facilitate their creation. This chapter focuses on the first scale of the gatedness analysis framework, exploring the global and national connections with the urban gating process in Mexico. It explores how neoliberal transnational policies and changes in national and housing policies, along with global financial forces and the debt economy, have enabled new fragmented urban configurations. It also addresses Mexico's diminishing state and its impact on spatial planning. There is also an analysis of the aspirations and expectations of Mexican society, particularly the middle classes, and a discussion of the boundaries and control measures that define modern Mexican gated communities and fragmented urban life. The core aim of this chapter is to reveal to the reader that the gating phenomenon is more complex than a group of individuals deciding to self-segregate, and that macro-level policies and social practices have a strong impact on urban life.

Structural incentives and constraints in Mexican gating

Gating in Mexico has become standard practice in residential, public, and private spaces since the 1990s. The gating process can be linked to the sprawling urbanisation process that started in the 1970s with informal and semi-formal settlements but mainly to the market-oriented national reforms of the 1990s inspired by global forces such as the Washington Consensus’ and institutions like the World Bank, which had a profound impact on planning, urban development models, and housing production policies (Zanetta, 2004). These policies changed urban spaces’ economic and social dynamics and physicality.