The rapidly growing Mexico City of the second half of the 20th century could not respond adequately to the mounting needs for housing and urban space. The sprawling and fragmented city that has come into being now faces the challenge to reintegrate the mosaic of segregated settlements and built typologies, to alleviate the still increasing housing shortage while at the same time controlling metropolitan expansion.

In 2001, the Federal District’s mayor addressed these issues through Bando Dos, a highly contested and fought over set of policy guidelines directed at the re-densification of the inner city and control of peripheral sprawl. Bando Dos promotes the construction of housing and commercial developments in the four central boroughs while putting a ceiling on the construction of new housing in the remaining twelve boroughs in the District. Between 2005 and 2006 more than 224 000 new residents will come to live in these four central boroughs in what has been the fastest development of housing in the urban core. A significant amount of this new housing has been developed through the demolition of old single family housing and their replacement with medium- and high-rise apartment buildings. This move has met fierce opposition – local residents have reacted strongly against the re-densification process arguing that their neighbourhoods cannot cope with the rising demand for sewage, electricity, water and transport infrastructure. The question that arises is whether design can be deployed both at the architectural and local scales to enable densification processes which bring about thriving urban environments without compromising quality of life.

Another crucial piece in the densification programme is the revitalisation of the historic centre, an area of the city that lost around 40% of its population between 1970 and 1995. The urban structure of the historic centre has been constantly deteriorating. This has been accelerated by the increasing presence of the informal economy and the millions of people that make up a transient population have added an enormous pressure on existing infrastructure. Recently, major public and private investments have been pumped into the area and a revitalisation programme has been implemented to reactivate the local economy, restore buildings and the streetscape, and to attract new residents. The main challenges to the historic centre’s regeneration are how to guarantee a percentage of affordable housing, how to solve the problem of the informal sector, and how to avoid the erosion of the city’s most important public and political spaces by incipient gentrification.

Although structural densification of the inner city and control of urban sprawl is without doubt the best step forward, the Bando Dos has become a victim of the lack of regional governance and ended up intensifying some of the problems it set out to solve. As a result of the initiative, the supply of housing has concentrated in the central boroughs of the city and these areas have experienced a significant rise in land and housing prices estimated at between 30% and 50%. Thus, a large sector of the population which is unable both to afford rising prices in the centre and to find housing in the rest of the Federal District, has been expelled to the neighbouring State of Mexico, where commercial builders are developing massive subdivisions of low quality affordable housing. These extensive developments are part of President Fox’s quantitative success story as regards to housing at the national level. Promoting the Mexican ideal of home ownership, there has been three times more housing construction per year since he took office in 2000 than in the previous administration. Although in quantitative terms these commercial developments have provided access to affordable home-ownership to a significant number of Mexicans, they are also the source of considerable problems. By reinforcing the existing segregation pattern of a rich west and south and a poor north and east, they are the new face of today’s urban sprawl in Mexico City’s metropolitan area. Being located at a considerable distance from their residents’ sites of employment, the new housing brings about increased pressures in transport and deepens unsustainable forms of car-oriented urban development in Mexico City. The low quality of this type of housing will increase the already high stock of deteriorating housing, thereby affecting their residents’ quality of life. Furthermore, the lack of integration of housing with other uses, the concentration of affordable housing and its physical isolation from other housing types, and the insufficient and low quality of open and green spaces, accentuate the segregated and fragmented urban structure of the city.

Today over 60% of the total population in the metropolitan area live in “popular” settlements – former squatter settlements characterised by a precarious legal status and service provision. The main challenge regarding the most recently formed settlements is the accumulated stock of low quality housing, the lack of services, and housing units with structural deficiencies that are vulnerable to environmental disasters. The settlements that were created approximately thirty years ago are no longer on the periphery and have undergone an important process of consolidation. Partially as a result of the Federal District’s housing improvement programme, these settlements are now experiencing rapid densification – however, this is often in the form of problematic extensions being added to existing units. The main housing initiative has been to provide loans, mainly for the expansion and improvement of already existing units, thus contributing to the acceleration of the self-help process. An important part of the programme is to provide technical guidance for the construction of these homes. It is the lack of appropriate technical guidance and design principles that has brought about considerable problems, such as: overcrowding, lack of privacy and ventilation and light deficiencies. The programme thus faces an important challenge as to whether it will be able to effectively raise the social and spatial conditions of people living in the consolidated settlements through improved design.

Author: Iliana Ortega-Alcazar