Buying Development: Housing and Urban Growth in Guadalajara, Mexico

Abstract

This study analyzes how Mexican federal housing policy affects the production of space and the housing landscape in Guadalajara, Mexico. Using a wide-ranging database of parcels developed in metropolitan Guadalajara, we map all housing developments from 1970 to 2000 and classify them into three categories that reflect different development processes. The greatly increased number of social-interest houses, and the large extension of land area developed since 1990 are explained by federal housing program reforms. Informal settlements remain a major path to home ownership, but the percentage of housing developments that are informal and the percentage of informally developed land have declined since the 1980s. We also discovered a trend of increasing land area devoted to low-density, élite enclaves, and analyzed marketing strategies and land use patterns that occurred in these newer developments. All of these outcomes reflect a neoliberal ideology that promotes consumption and the privatization of space, but largely excludes the urban poor. The result is higher rates of home ownership, but in an increasingly segregated and fragmented landscape poorly served by public infrastructure and lacking in amenities.