Housing for the working class on the periphery of Mexico City: a new version of gated communities.

• Date: 22 September 2006
• Author: Peralta, Beatriz Garcia,Hofer, Andreas
• Published date: 22 September 2006
• Author: Peralta, Beatriz Garcia

THE EARLIEST VERSIONS OF GATED COMMUNITIES (1) IN MEXICO WERE THE COUNTRY clubs. Initially, these were golf clubs such as the Club Campestre in Mexico City, built in 1920, which had only a few residential plots on the peripheral areas of the golfing facilities. Later on, they were transformed into a real estate business, providing areas for the sale of plots of land for residential development. This type of urbanization was closely related to the search for exclusivity and social status, thus originating the process of social segregation in the city. Golf and riding clubs became attractive investment options for the real estate sector. (2)

In the 1970s, rising burglary and armed assault rates in inner-city residential areas led to a perception of insecurity--albeit often exaggerated. After the economic crisis that shook Mexico in 1982, the real estate sector perceived the need for residential protection and began to play a more active role in promoting high-security enclaves in enclosed developments for luxury housing. This sector enhanced its profitable business by selling plots of land on private developments where security was regarded as a key factor in sales. (3) This produced a shift among wealthy families to the outskirts and changed the structure of traditional residential areas in the city.

The country club as a prototype for a socially secluded and remote residential life developed parallel to the phenomenon known as gated communities in the U.S. (4) Due to the sharper social differences, Mexican gated communities tend to be exaggerated caricatures (by highlighting social and urban contrasts) of their U.S. siblings for the extremely wealthy: huge, well-maintained parks with sporting facilities such as golf clubs or riding clubs in their center as the only kind of infrastructure, surrounded by extravagant architecture in low-density, single-family villas. The fences and gates are high-tech borders with video surveillance. The guards are protected with bulletproof vests and armed with rapid-fire rifles.

In the more mixed middle- and upper-income inner-city residential areas, these techniques were adopted in milder forms. The population began to close off neighborhoods and streets and to protect the entrances with gates and guards. Anti-burglary systems were adapted to protect the traditional court houses, while windowless facades and massive garage gates turned the houses into fortresses surrounded by an ocean of perceived insecurity. These measures transformed former public streets into secluded, privatized spaces or simply lifeless approach roads.

From the mid-1990s onward, as in many European and U.S. cities, an "urban renaissance" changed the perception of inner-city areas. Roads were closed to traffic and turned into shopping malls, squares were upgraded to neighborhood centers and meeting points, and luxury condominiums in high-rise buildings became fashionable for a younger, rich social class that sought proximity to the cultural and commercial facilities of the city center. These new trends complemented the ongoing construction of gated communities on the periphery.

In a rapidly expanding metropolis such as Mexico City--where more than 50% of the housing is produced informally with only marginal participation by the building industry, and in a society with a very small upper class--the building of dwellings for the wealthy (although highly profitable) comprises a marginal share of the building sector as a whole. This changed when the building industry, together with powerful public financial institutions, made their products available to lower-income households and made up a new type of gated community: the gated community for the working class. Economic (especially in banking, real estate, and social housing policy), societal, and political changes were behind this new concept. Living conditions in these settlements, as well as their impact on the development of the entire metropolitan region, are also discussed in this article.

This article shows how the new gated communities resulted from a bad approach to housing policy. Since the 1960s, the first great social housing developments were promoted by the two main governmental housing agencies. However, their policies favored the private building sector and did not focus on providing proper housing to workers. However, the commercial criteria applied to land and housing costs--suggested by international agencies--allowed thousands of homes to be built far from the city. This situation was highly profitable for developers like Geo, which (from the 1990s on) built the aforementioned new gated communities, whose seed capital was provided by the workers' financing fund. Two housing estates in Ixtapaluca, a municipality in the eastern part of the Mexico City Metropolitan Area in the State of Mexico, are used as reference.

The Unsolved Housing Issue

Years of bloody civil war following the fall of dictator Porfirio Diaz in 1911, and revolts that endured beyond the Revolution (5) hindered economic development and hampered the construction of a civil society. National pride stood in sharp contrast to the living conditions of a large part of Mexican society. The Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, PRI), which ruled Mexico from 1929 to 2000, conveys in its very name this contradiction, the promise of unfulfilled expectations. Though the formation of a corporate state achieved major improvements in the fields of education and public health, the housing issue remained unsolved. The demands of a rapidly growing population and the dramatic urbanization process after World War II made the proliferation of decent housing for the masses an enormous task.

This is one of the reasons why the state never built up coherent social housing structures, but tried to link housing provision to the relation between the working class and their employers. Housing policy was seen as a part of the social provision of labor rights. Article 123 of the Constitution obliged the owners of businesses with over 100 employees to provide "comfortable, hygienic housing." Until recently, this scheme determined Mexican housing policy, albeit in an adapted form. Between 1930 and 1960, (6) the relationship between the state and the private housing construction sector acquired its current form. The first housing financing institutions were created to grant housing loans only to some civil servants.

Mexico's economy grew steadily between 1959 and 1970 and average income rose. This period saw unprecedented levels of urban population growth, particularly in major cities; the urban population exceeded the rural population by a ratio of 59 to 41%. (7) Urban expansion was marked on the outskirts of the country's three largest cities: Mexico City (the Federal District and its neighboring municipalities in the State of Mexico), Guadalajara, and Monterrey. Population growth throughout the period increased the demand for urban land, basic services, infrastructure, and housing.

In 1963, the Housing Finance Program, run by the Fund of Operation and Bank Financing for Housing (Fondo de Operacion y Descuento Bancario a la Vivienda, Fovi), was established, marking the start of large-scale housing production for social housing. Funds for implementing the program were obtained through an obligatory charge levied on banking institutions. The Housing Finance Program, a combination of public and private capital, financially supported the emergence of housing development companies that built the first large-scale social housing estates to be sold.

Unlike social housing in Europe, Mexican social housing is not for rent. Social housing means relatively affordable housing with assistance and regulations for giving loans to people who would not otherwise be able to finance the buying of a house on the free market. This...