The cities of the Spanish colonisation represent the realisation of a project of urban order and of taking control of space and people. This common history still leaves a strong mark on the urban fabric: a large part of the cities were laid out according to a regular checkerboard pattern around a central square and the distribution of traditional functions followed the same pattern of structuring intra-urban space. The model of centrality and the colonial layout, which gave a certain homogeneity to the functioning of Mexican cities, have been challenged for several decades now by the pressure of urban growth, the dynamics of the housing markets and the fragmentation of central functions. In the contemporary city, the heritage policy has allowed the individualisation of a central urban sub-space, known as the "historic centre", and the Mexican practice of heritage protection appears to be one of the few systematic attempts to protect the entirety of urban spaces at the end of the nineteenth or beginning of the twentieth century. The integration of the central working-class neighbourhoods within protected areas sanctioned the end of major renovation programmes without, however, allowing the implementation of rehabilitation policies. While Latin American cities are often characterised by deficient public policies, by dynamics resulting from the free play of individual actors within the framework of investment, speculation or survival strategies, this work takes as its object the role of urban development policies. The actions of public authorities and the relationship of private actors to norms and regulations condition, as much as historical legacies and economic dynamics, the evolution of central spaces. The study of the specificity of the central spaces of Mexican cities and the analysis of the dynamics at work in the four main metropolises (Mexico City, Monterrey, Guadalajara and Puebla) makes it possible to give an account of a particular form of the relationship of Mexican society to its historicity and its future.