Criticism of the registration of new urban incorporations

Abstract

Urban expansion, as one of the types of growth of the city, is analysed from the causes that deliver several possibilities of placement of the population, depending on its socio-economic level and preferences at choosing the place to live. In this way, urban space energizes its configuration by the constant creation of residential units that are added to the original city, occupied by populations of different social strata but with the common denominator of being immersed, at any of its levels, in the urban economic structure. In this sense, it is considered that the analysis of the current situation and the approach of future strategies, requires to capture quantitative information of the expansion process, in order to understand at least the urban dynamics and to try to exercise control over the rhythms and orientations of such growth. The proposal put forward concerns about the formulation and systematization of a register of units of expansion, from making a thoughtful critical reading to official demographic statistics, whose interests in population counts -altough efficient in their purposes- diverge from the reliable knowledge of the trends of expansion, by increasing the numbers of rural population and ignoring urban growth, by counting residential units, whether developments of social housing with high densification in the process of occupation or, in other cases, peri-urban real estate developments inhabited by urban population of high income and low densities, registering both realities as rural localities.