Left Behind but Filling the Voids: Rethinking Northern Mexican Urban Peripheries

Mexican urban peripheries grew exponentially after an agricultural land-ownershipderegulation derived from NAFTA and after 12 years of a federal policy determinedon diminishing housing deficits by the construction of millions of subsidized homes.The physical outcome of this policy are hundreds of low income subdivisions maroonedand isolated in wide and largely vacant peripheries, far away from employment,service, commerce, and recreational centers.This policy was favored by 2 presidents coming from the same political party between2000 and 2012. In late 2012 a new president came to office from a differentpolitical party. The new government immediately acknowledged the urban and socialdisaster provoked by the centrifugal growth policy and created a new federalministry for urban and territorial development to address these issues. This newministry is currently developing policies and guidelines to reverse growth to a centripetal,subsidized urban infill pattern. This change is promising given the graveproblems derived from lack of infrastructure, social cohesion, and weak economy.The situation is particularly unique in northern Mexico, where in those same yearsand against the backdrop of a barren landscape, crime and violence surged, emptyingmany peripheral subdivisions.What will happen with the hundreds of subdivisions and millions of homes andpeople scattered in ample peripheries which will take many years, if ever, to becomeintegrated components of the city?This paper first maps, measures, and characterizes the current conditions of thesefringes in 5 cities of northern Mexico. Local planning institutes and the National Institutefor Statistics and Geography (INEGI) provide with up-to-date maps, historicalmaps, and urban data, while the former also supply their preliminary responses tothe new federal policy. This initial analysis confirms regional patterns and a repertoireof issues and stimuli. Secondly, the investigation proceeds to conceptually intersectthese conditions with contemporary ideas of urbanism such as SustainableUrbanism, Landscape Urbanism, and Ecological Urbanism. This conceptual testingdetermines unforeseen opportunities for the urban peripheries in the economydriven / media heavy public perception of the problem.Finally, one prototypical urban periphery is visualized in diagrams, maps, and renderingsexploring its integration with the landscape and the city, from the insideoutand outside-in. Envisioning decaying subdivisions turned resilient communitiestied to their ground by a mix of top-down and bottom-up actions to appropriatevacancies both outside of their limits and inside, with a mixed use, dense, intense,and diverse development where abandoned lots and buildings are retrofitted intocommunity programs, while site specific qualities relate to regions and ecosystems.This detailed testing also operates as a catalyst to understand the conditionsthat separate those subdivisions with a capacity to thrive in the new urban growthpolicy against those that do not.In a XXI century plenty of red-fields being conceptualized as green-fields, millionsof foreclosed homes and unfinished housing developments; the neighborhoodsand communities of the expanded Mexican peripheries provide an invaluable laboratoryto investigate the sustainability and recovery of the many now left behindin both the developing and first worlds.

Volume Editors
Alice Kimm & Jaepil Choi

ISBN
978-0-935502-91-6