Urban Preventive Governance and Constitutional Proportionality Ahead of the 2026 World Cup in Mexico City

Abstract

This article examines the impact of urban transformations associated with mega-events on the exercise of human rights, focusing on Mexico City in the lead-up to the 2026 FIFA World Cup. It argues that these interventions should not be understood merely as ordinary urban management policies, but rather as expressions of a specific mode of public power, conceptualized here as preventive urban exceptionality: a form of governance in which the anticipation of risk enables the intensification of state control over urban space in the absence of a formally declared crisis.

Drawing on a qualitative legal-analytical methodology, the article examines the articulation between the discursive production of risk, the material reconfiguration of urban space, and their differentiated effects on the fundamental rights of populations whose livelihoods depend on public space, including informal workers and sex workers.

Finally, it proposes an integrated constitutional standard for assessing such interventions from a human rights perspective.