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Since the 1940s, the rate and level of urbanization in Latin America have increased rapidly, and the resulting problems of housing, employment, wealth inequality, and issues of social security have made the urbanization process in Latin America a typical negative case of overurbanization. Most existing studies pay a lot of attention to the disadvantages and lessons of urbanization in this region, and the consequentialist analytical framework often neglects the socio-cultural dimension of the dynamic process of urban development. Based on these ideas, this paper focuses on a case study of the historic center of Mexico City, and combines the “spatial theory” of Lefebvre with the changes that a city has undergone during the process of urbanization, to reveal an internal perspective towards the urban spatial practice realized by the “representations of space” and the “spaces of representation”. The inequitable development of the central area of Mexico City has caused a squeeze on and competition for physical space and resources. The conceived space constructed by capitalism has led to a spatial fragmentation and alienation. Local inhabitants resolve or counteract this “top-down” spatial violence by constructing and defending their lived space. In the process of growing into a metropolis, a city tends to experience rapid expansion and modernization in the narrow sense and the urban order and imbalance are reinforced by the convergence of politics and capital, while the real face of a city is the result of the two-way interaction and construction of different agents and spaces.
