Resumen

SALINAS ARREORTUA, Luis Alberto  y  SOTO DELGADO, Lisette. Housing Policy in Mexico: Between Expansion and Return to the Center. Invest. Geog [online]. 2019, n.99, e59751.  Epub 25-Sep-2019. ISSN 2448-7279.  https://doi.org/10.14350/rig.59751.

The housing policy in Mexico is characterized by transiting between promoting the massive construction of housing in the urban periphery and the redensification in central areas. In the case of the Mexico City Metropolitan Area (MCMA), this has resulted in the confinement of low-income inhabitants in northern and eastern peripheral suburbs, characterized by poor urban equipment, infrastructure, and services, while various selected spaces in the central area are intended for middle-and high-income populations.

In the early twenty-first century, the conditions of the “facilitator State” (Puebla, 1999 and 2006), which set favorable conditions for the reproduction of capital, made of the real estate and financial sectors the primary agents in housing construction. The housing sector was considered as a major component of economic activity in the construction industry; therefore, the mass production model was given a significant boost. In the period 2000-2006, support for the real estate offer was stimulated by increasing the number of credits for the purchase of new houses. At that time, more households were built than in any other period, with nearly 1.8 million houses (Iracheta, 2015). In the period 2006-2012, the credit system was maintained, and even strengthened, evidencing the growing importance given to housing construction as a catalyst of the national economy from the beginning of this century.

This situation led to the expansion and excessive growth of the urban periphery in medium and large cities, resulting in various issues in the construction of housing areas. Many issues relate to poor infrastructure and urban equipment, few employment sources, and problems related to the quality of basic services such as education and healthcare (Arango, 2013; Cervantes and Maya, 2017; Linares, 2013). This has translated into an increase in abandoned houses.

To face this expansion and excessive growth at the periphery of Mexican cities, the discourse of government agencies started stressing the urgent need to mitigate and reverse the consequences of mass housing construction. In this context, at the end of the first decade of this century, a series of regulatory provisions were set forth aiming to promote redensification. The 2014-2018 National Housing Program will be the main instrument for this end. However, two aspects are worth mentioning. First, redensification has benefited middle-and middle-high income inhabitants; second, the discourse has stressed redensification as a factor that reduces expansion and, consequently, the known consequences of mass housing construction, while in reality construction in peripheral areas continues being a good business.

As regards the MCMA, the formal housing market scheme can be differentiated in two senses. In central areas, resulting from both federal and local policies - as was the case with “Bando 2” - the construction of households intended for middle-and middle-high income inhabitants was promoted (Benlliure, 2008). In parallel, northern and eastern areas in the urban periphery were allocated to the construction of housing projects for low-income sectors since the price of land is lower relative to delegations and municipalities in central areas of the city.

In all municipalities of the MCMA, excluding the 16 districts of Mexico City, the construction of 685,782 houses for more than 3,000,000 inhabitants has been approved from 2000 to 2015 (Secretaría de Desarrollo Urbano y Metropolitano, 2016). This situation reveals the urban expansion of the metropolitan periphery. Some aspects that characterize this massive construction include inadequate conditions in terms of infrastructure, equipment, and basic services, which have led to the abandonment of houses and represent key issues.

These dynamics in the center and the periphery can be interpreted as an unequal geographic development process (Harvey, 1990; Smith et al., 1984) that is producing differentiated spaces in the MCMA. The end result is the confinement of low-income inhabitants towards the periphery, while various selected spaces in the central area are intended for the high-income population.

Palabras llave : housing policy; unequal geographical development; urban expansion; return to the center.

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