A brief look at Colonia El Sol, 1949 (Nezahualcóyotl, State of Mexico)

Abstract

Illegal construction of self-managed, unplanned housing in lower-class residential spaces in Mexico City has a common, flexible and evolving fabric. Peripheral lots are usually rectangular, which is a type of urbanization that is a constant in how cities are built, since a grid is the simplest and most common layout in flat cities, and its configuration is easily interpreted. There are also other zones of irregularly distributed closed blocks, mainly on the West Side of the city. This article analyzes a type of popular fractionation into regular lots in closed blocks, characterized by having originally been a neighborhood of lower-class one-family self-built housing. The El Sol housing development in Nezahualcoyotl in the state of Mexico, which dates from the late 1940s, was originally unplanned, and its development was characterized by slow access to public financing for its construction. Only after years of waiting was this development, like many others, taken into account in municipal planning, consolidating itself as officially part of the city. The housing development was the result of an invasion organized by private developers, which once sketched out with little regard for the free space or public domain, underwent a drastic process of internal restructuring. Access to the land was through intermediaries or real estate agents who claimed to be the owners. The layout of lots, both in Colonia El Sol and in the rest of the city, is overwhelmingly regular, responding to maximum use of the land and easier layout and distribution. It should be mentioned that the development coincides with a period of industrial expansion and intense growth of urban sprawl in Mexico City.