SITE CONDITIONS IN AN EARTHQUAKE. MEXICO CITY SITUATION

Internationally, Mexico City is renowned for the peculiarity of its geotechnical conditions, which emanate from the emergence of a city in the middle of a lake, as evidenced by various artistic reproductions of the great city of Tenochtitlan, currently Mexico City. This situation that today represents the presence of soft clay deposits with atypical water contents, of the order of 250%, adds to the great territorial extension that the city has, approximately 1485 km2, which entails a geotechnical characterization constituted by three zones: Zone I or Lomas, Zone II or Transition and Zone III or Lake. Zone I or Lomas mainly concerns firm rock formations; deposited outside the lacustrine environment; Zone III or Lake is due to highly compressible clay deposits, separated by sandy layers.