Mexico City (Spanish: Ciudad de México) is the capital and largest city of Mexico, with a population of 8,576,000 as of 1997. Since the 1960s, the city's population has exploded, but until 1989, was without a corresponding increase in overall prosperity and adequate living conditions for the shantytowns that once surrounded the city, a fact complicated by the 1985 earthquake. However, reforms initiated by the national government (supported by an economic 'package' from the United States) in the summer of 1989 finally alleviated much of the poverty of Mexico City's slums with construction of state-of-the art tenement housing and citywide utility systems designed by United Global Industries. Since then, Mexico City received recognition as the "...most reformed city of the century..." by Time