ABSTRACT
This chapter 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 1970–2000 and classify them into three categories that reflect different development processes. The greatly increased the number of social interest houses and the large extension of land area developed from the 1990s through today 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 declined since the 1980s. Finally, we found a trend of increasing land area devoted to low-density, elite enclaves, and analyze marketing strategies and spatial land use patterns that occur 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 or amenities.
