Why doesn't Mexico have any major coastal cities?

[Yankee]

I know embarrassingly little about Mexico, so I decided to educate myself a little and learn more about the country's major metropolitan areas.

Well, the first thing I noticed is that all of them are inland. The only coastal cities are resorts, Tijuana and a few other small ones. That's quite an exception to the general rule, isn't it? All countries I can think of that have significant habitable coastlines have most or least some of their largest cities along the coast. From what I can tell from looking at Google Earth, Mexico has fine green pacific and gulf/atlantic coasts stretching for hundreds of miles on each side that seem very habitable, warm and beautiful (hence all the resorts)... So why no major cities? Instead the major cities tend to be inland in dry deserty areas. Seems quite odd. Anyone know more about this? Did it just happen or is there a reason why the coasts aren't exploited more?

[SHiRO]

Actually, Europe doesn't have that many major coastal cities either.

Barcelona, Naples, Athens. That's about it for the >5 million.

Malaga, Valencia, Marseille, Nice, Genoa, Palermo, Helsinki, Copenhagen, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Dublin for the >1 million.
Not sure if The Hague qualifies, it's not build directely at the coast.

[staff]

Istanbul?

[Policy Wonk]

Coastal cities were harder to defend and easier to raid then escape from - make your enemy and or pirates drag their shit miles inland.

[SHiRO]

Originally Posted by staff

Istanbul?

I guess we could include it.

[nouveau_Mauvilla]

I wonder if the periodic beatings from storms has anything to do with it? I know it hurts those resorts when they are hit.

[VivaLFuego]

Economic history surely plays a role, too. The lack of seaports probably says something about how Mexico's economy has been oriented i.e. to the extent there are exports and imports, they mostly occur to the north and south by land rather than east and west by sea. International passenger travel direction and magnitude didn't necessitate a seaport before airplanes made passenger seaports unnecessary (aside from the initial colonial entrypoint of Veracruz, I guess).

Geography is worth mentioning too - the rocky western coast of North America really doesn't have that many good natural ports with both a safely-navigable deep-water harbor and easy access to the interior for distribution. Remember, LA/Long Beach is basically man-made, achieved at the time only due to the wealth and engineering skill of the United States. There's a reason west coast urban growth was so concentrated around its small handful of viable ports until well into the twentieth century, and even then most were relatively specialized to serve specific resource export industries (e.g. logging from Seattle, minerals from Vancouver, and so on). I don't know Mexican geography, but I don't have any logical location that has both an ideal harbor and easy access to a productive hinterland whose products are bound for destinations reached more easily by sea than by land. Those ports that do exist are also highly specialized, e.g. Mazatlan serving nearby resource extraction, or just serving a baseline minimal level of seaborn passenger travel.

[TarHeelJ]

Cancun is a coastal city of 600,000...even though it is a tourism spot, it was a Mayan city long before the tourism industry. So there is more to it than simply being a resort. Similarly, Acapulco (700,000) is a large city and sea port on the Pacific Coast of Mexico with a recorded history dating back to the 1500s. Mazatlan is also a Pacific Coast city of 400,000 and not as much a tourist destination as Cancun and Acapulco. Tampico (300,000) is an industrial city and port on the Gulf of Mexico.

I'm sure there are others...

[ue]

Many cities, even in the US, even if they look on a map "on the coast" they usually aren't right on the coast and there's nothing for 1000s of miles. There are usually islands, peninsulas, bays, etc. that are in the way. Seattle is blocked by the Olympic Peninsula, San Francisco was developed on the inside of the bay, New York is amidst islands that prevent it from being completely oceanfront Atlantic. Houston is slightly inland, even LAs downtown isn't on the coast. Providence is in a sort of bay thing that turns into the river and isn't right on the coast either. A few cities are inland slightly on rivers (or have suburbs that stretch coast). I think it's because the oceans can have violent weather and big waves that could potentially destroy much of modern cities, so in order to keep good ports yet still be protected, many major cities would go slightly inland.

[Buckeye Native 001]

Ensenada has about 300,000 overall, IIRC?

[oliveurban]

Though more recent in evolution, Tijuana (now pop. 1.5 - 2 million) has become a very large and fast growing coastal Mexican city.

Currently, a massive deep water "mega-port" is under construction (or nearing construction) just a few miles south of the city, near Punta Colonet. I would imagine over the next decade or two, this swath of Mexican coastline will become quite the economic center.

[arbeiter]

Mazatlan is historically a major Mexican city, I believe. Veracruz as well.

The population center of Mexico leans closer to the Pacific Ocean, and the Pacific coast isn't exactly a broad plain, the mountains start up fairly closely to the water. Furthermore, the vast majority of minerals and agricultural regions are up on the plateau between the mountain ranges, which is where the big cities like Guadalajara and Mexico City are.

While today I would say there are a fair number of coastal cities of reasonable size, the center of power is still up in the plateaux. This resembles how Colombia is, a country where most of the major cities are up on the altiplano (Bogota, Medellin, Cali, Armenia, etc.) but there are a few larger cities on the coast - Baranquilla and Cartagena.

Across most of Central and South America, many of the cities are inland - Santiago, Quito, Sao Paulo, Belo Horizonte, Curitiba, Caracas (only about 20 miles inland but 2,000 feet up).

[R@ptor]

Originally Posted by SHiRO

Actually, Europe doesn't have that many major coastal cities either.

Barcelona, Naples, Athens. That's about it for the >5 million.

Malaga, Valencia, Marseille, Nice, Genoa, Palermo, Helsinki, Copenhagen, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Dublin for the >1 million.
Not sure if The Hague qualifies, it's not build directely at the coast.

St. Petersburg (4.6 million)
Lisbon Metro (2.7 million)
Porto Metro (1.7 million)
Odessa (1.2 million)

Also cities like Palermo, Tallinn,...

[staff]

Tallinn metro is smaller than Oslo, Göteborg, Malmö, Århus, Helsinki, Riga etc....

[new.slang]

none of those are really major cities.
Like in the US the majority of cities on the coast or withing maybe 30 miles (Boston, New York, DC, Miami, LA, San Francisco, Houston etc). In Europe Paris, Munich, Milan, Madrid, Frankfurt, Vienna, Amsterdam Berlin etc are all inland).

Barcelona is the only big city on the coast, Rome is pretty close like 30 km

[M II A II R II K]

Then there's Acapulco.

[SHiRO]

Originally Posted by R@ptor

St. Petersburg (4.6 million)
Lisbon Metro (2.7 million)
Porto Metro (1.7 million)
Odessa (1.2 million)

Also cities like Palermo, Tallinn,...

I didn't count Lisbon because it's more on a river estuary then the coast really. Tallinn is <1 million. Porto should have been included but I was to lazy to edit my post.
St Petersburg and Odessa didn't get included for the same reason I didn't include Istanbul the first time, but I guess they should be added.

There are more >1 million metros I didn't include btw...(mostly because they are coastal conurbations, I leave it up to you to guess)

[ChiMIchael]

Originally Posted by edmontonenthusiast

Many cities, even in the US, even if they look on a map "on the coast" they usually aren't right on the coast and there's nothing for 1000s of miles. There are usually islands, peninsulas, bays, etc. that are in the way. Seattle is blocked by the Olympic Peninsula, San Francisco was developed on the inside of the bay, New York is amidst islands that prevent it from being completely oceanfront Atlantic. Houston is slightly inland, even LAs downtown isn't on the coast. Providence is in a sort of bay thing that turns into the river and isn't right on the coast either. A few cities are inland slightly on rivers (or have suburbs that stretch coast). I think it's because the oceans can have violent weather and big waves that could potentially destroy much of modern cities, so in order to keep good ports yet still be protected, many major cities would go slightly inland.

I find it surprising as I was looking up the LA city limits, it doesn't necessarily have that much coastal area where as some great lakes cities are more absolute coastal cities.

[JDRCRASH]

^ Thats because Redondo, Torrance, etc. aren't part of the city.

Coastal major cities in Mexico....Puerto Vallarta?

[Kingofthehill]

Veracruz is a fairly large port, and IIRC, where most of Mexico's oil is shipped from.