Chapter 7: The Peri-Urban Area of the City of Morelia: An Opportunity for the Implementation of Innovative Schemes of Socio-Environmental Inclusion in México

The growth of cities over their surrounding rural areas gives rise to the formation of extensive peri-urban areas where problems of insecurity, lack of services and infrastructure are manifested, which are related to the phenomena of residential segregation, social exclusion and environmental degradation present in Latin America’s urban peripheries (Aguilar, 2021; Ávila, 2016; Cruz Muñoz, 2021; Poncela et al., 2015; Robles et al., 2021; Ruiz-López et al., 2021). The move of urban lifestyles towards the rural environment implies the gradual disappearance of primary activities such as agriculture and livestock farming, as well as the loss of rural ways of life (Méndez et al., 2016; Vieyra et al., 2016). Institutionalism promotes a policy of rupture and systematic territorial separation, with the issuing of disjointed plans and programmes that do not contemplate the connection of the city centre with the peri-urban spaces dedicated to the primary sector of the economy. There is no scheme of connected rural areas, which in turn preserves their independence, in the sense of safeguarding their ways of being, living and subsisting. On the contrary, political action takes for granted the gradual disappearance of the agrarian nuclei located on the periphery of the cities (Rodríguez, 2020).