Shelter, Location, and Livelihoods: Exploring the Linkages in Mexico City

Abstract

For many low-income households in cities of the developing world, ‘self-help’ or informal housing provides not only their shelter, but also functions as a vital productive asset. The land accessible to the urban poor for informal housing, however, is often remotely located in the urban periphery. While providing access to shelter, such peripheral locations may undermine the potential of shelter to serve as a productive asset, especially for women whose mobility is constrained by their dual roles as care-givers and wage-earners. This research explores how location influences the potential of housing to serve as a productive asset in two informally settled communities in different parts of Mexico City. The paper argues that the ‘right to shelter’ associated with informal housing needs to be ‘scaled-up’ to include the ‘right to the city’ through closer consideration of the linkages among shelter, location, and livelihoods. Such a policy focus necessarily situates housing in a broader socio-spatial context and would serve to complement the prevailing emphasis on community or place-specific upgrading activities in informal or low-income settlements. Finally, the paper raises questions about the role of planning in improving the livelihood opportunities of lower-income households.

Acknowledgements

This work was carried out with the aid of a grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Ottawa, Canada. Information on the centre is available on the web at www.idrc.ca. The author gratefully acknowledges the cooperation of the residents of Ampliación San Marcos and Copilco el Bajo in Mexico City and extends special thanks to Erika Hernández Martínez, Mayra Hidalgo Flores, and Edu LeCona for their assistance with the collection of the survey and interview data presented here. The author would also like to thank two anonymous reviewers of this paper for their helpful comments.

Notes

As defined by Rakodi (2002:11), these assets include social, human, financial, natural, and physical capital. Housing is generally included as part of the latter category, which is defined as ‘the physical or produced capital that is the basic infrastructure (transport, shelter, water, energy, communications) and the production equipment and means which enable people to pursue their livelihoods.’

With some minor variations, the survey was the same in both case study communities. Of my random sample of 203 structured household surveys, 123 (61%) surveys were conducted in Ampliación San Marcos and 80 (39%) in Copilco el Bajo. The refusal rates for the household survey in each of the case study communities were very similar. In terms of the 90 semi-structured interviews, 49 (54%) were related to Ampliación San Marcos, 35 (39%) to Copilco el Bajo, and the remaining 6 (7%) were related to general or contextual issues of relevance to both communities.

A purposive interview is a process ‘in which you intentionally sample research participants for the specific perspectives they may have’ (Esterberg, 2002:93). The post-survey, semi-structured interviews asked respondents about how they define a good housing location, the importance of their homes, and a number of other issues dependent on the identity of the respondent.

In practice, however, I found that survey respondents often ‘interrupted’ the household survey with their own comments, showing how easily the so-called ‘boundary’ between qualitative and quantitative research is breached. As summarized by Gerring (2004:346), ‘methods that seem quite dissimilar in design bleed into one another when put into practice. There are few ‘pure’ methods.'

For comparative purposes, I sought out communities with similar levels of consolidation or regularization. ‘Consolidation’ or ‘regularization’ usually refers to all or some combination of the following changes: the revision of zoning regulations to permit residential use; the extension of land tenure security through the granting of legal titles; and the upgrading of housing conditions and/or the installation of urban services.

For example, UNESCO defines the ‘right to the city’ concept in the following manner: ‘The primary objective of the city is viewed as one of fulfilling a social function and, in pursuit of sustainability and social justice, guaranteeing equitable access to all the opportunities it has to offer’ (UNESCO, 2006, no page number). For more information on the HIC campaign, see http://www.hic‐net.org.

Such community-based upgrading projects usually include ‘consolidation’ or ‘regularization’ activities referred to earlier, such as improvements to housing, urban services, and/or land tenure security.

These secondary cities include Toluca, Cuernavaca, Pachuca, Puebla, and Querétaro.

Unless otherwise specified, ‘Mexico City’ or the ‘city’ refers to the metropolitan zone. The ‘Federal District’ refers specifically to the part of the city contained within the Federal District boundaries. Up until the 1950s, Mexico City was contained within the Federal District boundaries.

As highlighted by Connolly (2003:12), these terms are residual categories insofar as ‘the colonias are defined not by what they are, but what they are not. Essentially, “popular” denotes not “well to do,” though not necessarily “poor” or “extremely poor” and “irregular” means that they were not legally developed.’

Chinampas are made of organic materials and are commonly 5–10 m wide by 100 m long. Up until the 1950s, chinampas could be found in several parts of the Federal District; Xochimilco now contains the largest remaining chinampas zone, which is a designated conservation area and UNESCO World Heritage Site. The area contained within Ampliación San Marcos was once part of a much larger chinampas zone contiguous with the existing conservation zone.

Following the schema first developed by Luis Unikel in the 1970s, the urban structure of Mexico City is generally described in concentric rings following the city's historic growth pattern. The schema comprised the central city of the Federal District (Benito Juárez, Cuauhtémoc, Miguel Hidalgo, and Venustiano Carranza) and three surrounding rings covering both the Federal District and the State of Mexico (Villaviencio & Durán, 1993). These rings correspond to different periods of urban growth. Coyoacán is included in the first ring, and is associated with urban growth in the period 1930–50. Although previously Xochimilco was considered part of the second ring of development, Xochimilco is now considered part of the third ring (GDF, 2005a).

The Government of the Federal District has a composite ‘marginality index’ for electoral sub-districts within each municipality in the Federal District that are used to allocate resources for the Programa Integrado Territorial para el Desarrollo Social (Integrated Territorial Social Development Programme, also known by the acronym, PITDS). Using figures from the Censo General de Poblacion y Vivienda, this composite index considers a number of socio-economic variables to produce the estimate of marginality, such as population, health, education, fertility, employment, housing tenure type and conditions, urban services, and household composition.

‘Territorial units’ (unidades territoriales) refer to the rather arbitrary grouping of communities into defined spatial zones used by the present government in the Federal District to structure the delivery of local programmes.

It is possible to isolate marginality levels for Ampliación San Marcos because the community is contained within two clearly demarcated census tracts. This is not possible for Copilco el Bajo.

The aim of the Housing Improvement Programme (Programa de Mejoramiento de la Vivienda or PMV) is to support the processes of self-building, to improve housing conditions, and to contribute to the consolidation of colonias populares in the Federal District. It is supported by the Government of the Federal District. The PMV forms part of a larger initiative, the Programa Integrado Territorial para el Desarrollo Social described above in note 13.

Both communities have access to essential urban services such as electricity and municipal drinking water and sanitation networks, although the quality of access to these services varies both between and within communities.

Unlike Ampliación San Marcos, the boundaries for Copilco el Bajo do not correspond directly to official census tracts and, as a result, there are no official population figures available for the community. One long-time resident involved in local politics provided the estimate given here, an estimate that seems reasonable based on my own informal community survey conducted in June 2004.

One of the limitations of a household survey conducted only once in a particular community is that it presents a ‘snapshot in time’ of the data collected. Longitudinal research involving the administration of a similar survey over time would obviously be helpful in capturing the dynamics of social or economic change in a community, or the lack thereof. Such research would be particularly useful in the case of employment or work patterns, which are often fluid and related to broader household strategies for coping with poverty or hardship by diversifying sources of work and income in consonance with changing circumstances. At the time of the survey, 63.4% (78) of the respondents in Ampliación San Marcos and 67.5% (55) of the respondents in Copilco el Bajo reported that they had been working in the past 30 days. The employment and work patterns discussed in this section of the paper, therefore, pertain to those respondents who self-identified as having worked in the past 30 days.

For the purposes of this paper, it is assumed that those who are ‘self-employed’ work in the informal sector.

These findings are similar to those for the Federal District as a whole, where approximately 55.5% of the residents work locally.

In general, these survey results indicate that both communities on average benefit from a relatively reasonable commute to work, at least in the context of MCMA. In 1994, the average one-way commute for those travelling by public transport was 50 min (Connolly, 2003).

This should not be equated with overall household income levels, as more than one person in the household may contribute to household income, and, in some cases, individuals derive income from secondary activities as well.

Although the accuracy of self-reported income levels may be questioned, the analysis here emphasizes the comparison between reported income levels. Of the 78 respondents in Ampliación San Marcos who said they were working in the past 30 days, nine (11.5%) refused to answer the survey question about their mean daily income. In the case of Copilco el Bajo, 6 (10.9%) of the 55 respondents refused to answer the same question.

Rates for converting Mexican pesos to US dollars are taken from http://www.oanda.com/convert/classic, using conversion rates listed for 1 January 2004.

This test examines the effects between different variables such as the relationship of mean daily wage levels versus (1) community, (2) gender, and (3) community and gender. Approaching significance (p = 0.068), the latter relationship suggests that differences between income in each of the communities might vary by gender. To examine the latter for females only, I then conducted a Contrast test, finding a significant difference. Contrast tests are used to test a priori research hypotheses.

Most commutes to work (82%) in Copilco el Bajo are under 30 min for both female and male respondents.

For example, 67% (8 of 12) of the survey respondents living in vecindades or low-income rental housing in Ampliación San Marcos report that the owner was either a nativo of Xochimilco or at least lived in Xochimilco. In addition, 19% (23) of the respondents in Ampliación San Marcos indicate that they or their family still own chinampas land.

In this study, ‘work’ and ‘productive’ activities refer to those that are paid or remunerated. This definition is not intended to denigrate the importance of social reproduction activities, such as childcare.

A pesero or microbus is a collective form of taxi integral to the public transit system in Mexico City.

In 2004, the minimal salary in the Federal District was 45.24 pesos per day (CNSM, 2005).

The survey did not distinguish between formal and informal rental agreements, but rather recorded the declared amount of rent paid by the tenant.

By ‘flexible housing form’ I am referring to the multiple, variable ways in which lower-income households use their homes as a social and economic asset and a key part of their livelihood strategies, such as sharing with family members to offset housing costs (i.e. urban services) or as a base for productive activities and as a source of rental income, as discussed in this paper.