(Re)constructing Informality and “Doing Regularization” in the Conservation Zone of Mexico City

Abstract

This paper examines the introduction of land-use planning requirements into the regularization process of informal settlements in areas designated as "conservation land" in Mexico City. Since 1997, the government has increasingly deployed digital technologies to map and track informal settlement in conservation land in order to select those eligible for reclassification as "residential land use": a prerequisite for other stages in the regularization process, including property titling, access to urban services and subsidised loans for home improvements. We argue that the incorporation of land use planning into the discursive and material enactments of regularization continues to reproduce the social class divisions behind the otherwise rather tenuous distinction between formal and informal urban development. Although presented as a technical concern by planners, regularization remains embedded in political processes and outcomes, a characteristic long recognised in the abundant literature on the subject. What is new is the geo-referencing of informality as part of land use planning, as this alters the dynamics of regularization processes, now involving the everyday planning practices of local government. This experience thus suggests the need for re-conceptualising informality as a form of selective spatial regulation and governance integral to the planning and urban development process. © 2017 The author(s). Published by informa UK limited, trading as Taylor & Francis group.This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noDerivatives license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.

Mental Models, Meta-Narratives, and Solution Pathways Associated With Socio-Hydrological Risk and Response in Mexico City

“…For example, the rapid expansion of settlements onto the southern watershed and conservation zone is often attributed to a neoliberal shift in Mexico City's public housing policies (Guillermo Aguilar and López, 2009;Wigle, 2010;Guillermo Aguilar and López Guerrero, 2013), a shift that increased the scarcity of affordable housing in the city and left economically marginal populations with no alternatives. Land use in the urban periphery is also suspected to be manipulated by votebuying behavior (Connolly and Wigle, 2017). Others have criticized the incentives that the city has provided to private sector housing developers at the expense of investment in public housing (de Mattos, 2007;Delgadillo Polanco, 2012).…”

“…The southern part of the city is the geographic target of this meta-narrative; over 50% of the city's protected watershed (the conservation zone) is in the southern boroughs, and urbanization of this zone thus often receives disproportionate policy attention. There have been a variety of policy initiatives to control growth and discourage settlement; nevertheless, analyses of land change in the city demonstrate that these areas continue to show urban expansion within the protected areas at rates that typically exceed growth of formal consolidated areas (Aguilar, 1999;Gilbert and De Jong, 2015;Connolly and Wigle, 2017).…”

Informal Settlements in the Age of Digital Cartography: Insights from Mexico City

“…New informal urban development has also been discouraged in the DF by new planning practices that complicate the normal regularisation processes (see Salazar in this volume). Before any land titling can take place, informal settlements inside the DF need to obtain a change in their land use status, an extremely complicated and drawn-out procedure which is seldom fully completed (Wigle, 2013;Connolly and Wigle, 2017).…”

“…Perhaps the strictest conditions exist in Mexico City (DF). Here, the regularisation of property titles has been subject to compliance with planning regulations since the 1987 Urban Development Plan defined which areas were 'urban development zones' and which were 'conservation lands' (Wigle, 2013;Connolly and Wigle, 2017). With Mexico very much in mind, Figure 1 illustrates the wide range of situations whereby an individual house, or a whole neighbourhood, might be considered 'informal'.…”

Real Estate Industry as an Urban Growth Machine: A Review of the Political Economy and Political Ecology of Urban Space Production in Mexico City

“…The well-known peripheral urban expansion, that includes the informal occupation of land of social property and ecological value, has continued despite the implementation of certain measures such as the so-called "Bando 2", a political measure that was intended to limit urban sprawl in ten of the sixteen municipalities that comprise Mexico City [34][35][36][37]. It is true, though, that due to the low availability of land within Mexico City and its high prices, most of the formal low-cost peripherical urban growth has progressively moved to the metropolitan area borderlines [38][39][40].…”