What is Historical Materialism

The purpose of this chapter is to analyze the empirical-theoretical approaches to shrinking cities in Mexico. The analysis intents to answer the challenges posed by economic and demographic tendencies according to economic changes, using the theories and models and no to fall down victim of simplistic projections and conjectures and theories based more in speculations rather than on facts. The method used here is critical analysis of economic, social, and political tendencies in relation to the situation of shrinking cities in México. The results of this analysis lead to the finding that the shrinkage process in México, as a developing economy does not follow the same patterns of well developed countries, where increase in shrinking cities occurs since the middle of the 1950s and the use of incentives in some localities to attract economic growth have had modest success in terms of turning around the shrinking process.