A proposed inclusive zoning tool for low-income housing in Mexico City

Salvador Herrera 

CEO, founding partner, Urbanistica, Mexico

December 4, 2023

This article introduces a proposed zoning tool designed for the new Territorial Planning Program of Mexico City designed to operate in areas of high social vulnerability. The tool focuses on addressing housing needs through the maintenance, rehabilitation, and adaptation of single-family low-income houses. The tool also aims to contribute to guaranteeing their security of tenure and promoting the recovery and recycling of those properties with structural, physical or in areas of social risk; that are abandoned; or in extreme degradation.

Mexico City's housing growth rate has slowed between 2000 and 2015 from 1.7 to 1.2 percent for various reasons, including the lack of affordable land. In 2015 the city had more than 2.6 million houses. To buy an affordable house in Mexico City a low-income person requires, on average, more than 30% of his income to be able to make the monthly payment of a mortgage loan with a term of 20 years. The Mexico City Housing Authority estimates that the annual demand for new homes is 45,000 to 48,000 units. In 2019, it attended to 16,147 requests for new housing and improvements.

This article explains the technique used to identify target areas, though it does not describe the incentive toolbox designed for this purpose. Through a prioritization exercise based on: 1) existing regulations of the life cycle of construction materials, which is capped at 50 years for single-family housing; 2) the lot surface for residential use, and 3) the seismic risk per neighborhood, a priority attention area was proposed: Zones of Public Interest for Rehabilitation (ZIPRI). 

A detailed analysis of the information provided by the Mexico City cadaster and the land uses present in the Borough and Partial Urban Development Programs (PDUs) was conducted. Residential zoning covers 46% of the urban surface.  The cadaster presents data such as lot size, land use, basic land use, and life cycle. The life cycle is expressed as the year of construction or registration of the last construction license issued to the property. 

Among the most relevant findings in the PDUs are inconsistency and lack of judgment in the assignment of land uses and their construction intensities. Additionally, there are more than 30 uses of housing zone types in the programs. The PDUs regulate construction intensities through densities, which excludes smaller housing, which usually belongs to low-income residents. Likewise, they regulate the intensity of construction rather than the type of unit making it difficult for low-income multi-family housing to be built. 

Within ZIPRI zones, properties with obsolete characteristics were identified according to the life cycle criteria of 50 years. These properties were categorized into four categories as shown in Table 1 and add up to a total surface of 84,786,656 m2.

Based on cadastral information, linking the cadaster of Mexico City, ZIPRI mapped and first targeted the more than 13,000 single-family lots identified with obsolete housing or those that have not reached their development potential as outlined in the current zoning regulations. ZIPRI is proposed as a tailored incentive to those owners to develop their obsolete property into affordable housing in central municipalities based on a city and owner-agreed declaration of the need for the intensification of construction designated for low-income housing on their property.

The Mexico City Territorial Plan is still under review. This proposed inclusive zoning tool has not yet undergone public debate, despite its potential impact.