Ecology & Environment

The Influence of the local Ecology & Environment
on Social Housing in CDMX

Rayven Cannon, Avinash Mangukiya, Ariel Medina

Mexico City has a number of environmental issues that simply cannot be ignored, ranging from natural to man-made. These issues are greatly impacting only not the social housing communities throughout Mexico City but the overall well-being of the people of Mexico. Planners, designers, and architects are developing strategies to address these issues across the country but these dilemmas have been around since Mexico City was established. Mexico City is faced with land subsidence, pollution, earthquakes, volcanic activity, floods and much more due to the city being developed in a dried lakebed. On this page you can take a look at the types of environmental challenges which face Mexico City and see some of the ways designers and city authorities have tried to confront those very issues they are faced with.

Natural Issues

Geographic

Mexico City has an elevated height of more than 6000ft. The climate of Mexico City is subtropical, mild, or pleasantly warm during the day, while nights are cool in summer and cold in winter, daytime temperatures are pleasant in winter. There are two systems that influence the weather patterns of CDMX, leading to dry season or a flooding season. There has been a developing trend in the last several years, that the drier seasons will become common place. This alone presents a problem as the city’s-built environment is not geared towards such expected drought conditions. Leaving a challenge for designers to design for heat mitigation in a city that is perceived to be tropically pleasant.

Volcanic

Located on the trans-volcanic belt CDMX exists in a susceptible place. A volcanic eruption could render the city inhabitable, let alone the devastation of the city. Evacuations for 20 million people almost seems astronomical. The biggest current threat is Popocatépetl volcano which has shown activity since 2012, leaving Puebla, and CDMX at the mercy of chance. Undoubtably homes would be destroyed, and social housing would be needed at an unprecedented scale. The volcano has not had a massive eruption since hundreds of years, so let’s hope it won’t for a long time as well.

Earthquake

The earthquake of 1985 proved disastrous for Mexico City and exposed many faults in the building codes and low construction quality (one of the worst earthquakes in Mexican history). Mexico City is situated on the North American plate which constantly pushing against the Coco plate, and earthquakes are abundant. Many are left homeless when such earthquakes strike. Undoubtably residents will need social housing as thousands needed after the 2017 earthquake. The probability of an 8.0 magnitude or higher is always on the minds of CDMX residents.

Flooding

The city is situated on an ancient lakebed. The mountains make it easy for the heavy rains to pour down to the city as a flood. Poor road construction and sub-standard diversion systems (rain drainage) do not provide remedy. Leaving roads unpassable and homes filled with water inside. Flooding has also made landslides a prominence leaving informal settlements vulnerable to destruction.

Soil Disruption

Flooding moves the soils of Mexico City everywhere across the basin. The volcanic soil that once laid under the city has diminished. Fertile land in Mexico City is close to being gone. It doesn’t help that uncontrolled expansion is disturbing the last areas of fertile lands. These soils are vital to Mexico City’s ecology, if such soil is gone, so will the existing forests, grasslands that surround and exists within the city.

Man Made Issues

Air Pollution: Mexico is ranked #2 in the world to be one of the most polluted countries behind Brazil and is known to have brown skies. With more than 18 million people and 6 million cars in Mexico City alone, most of the air pollution is from industrial and automobile emissions.
Lack of drinking water: With the substantial growth in Mexico's population over the past years has placed a tremendous strain on Mexico’s water supply. Mexico depends on getting clean water from aquifers, but because of the high demand, Mexico extracts water almost three times the natural recharge capacity. Due to this high-water demand, the aquifers have cracked, and the water has become tainted with harmful things like bacteria, lead, nickel, and many more.
Land Subsidence: The city is using up the groundwater three times what the groundwater table supplies, hence forcing deeper pumping which aids in the city’s land subsidence. The city has been sinking at a rate of 9 centimeters a year. Buildings will eventually be unusable and more will need to be designed.
Deforestation: Deforestation has become a huge problem in Mexico because deforestation contributes to global warming and enhances the greenhouse effect because of carbon dioxide emission. Also with such deforestation native species some exceptionally only found in CDMX region will cease to exist. Also the last of the fertile lands will disappear and CDMX will have to invent new ways to grow from soil. This is a problem as the land becomes non-fertile, more will push further into the wetlands, setting a chain of destruction to the beautiful Xochimilco.

Remedy

CDMX's Response

Some of the solutions that Mexico has developed is a new way to store, delay, retain and reuse rainwater. They have developed this strategy in efforts to provide more clean water to Mexico citizens and as well as reforesting. They will utilize different parts of Mexico to capitalize on where they would store, delay, retain and reuse depending on the climate of that area. Different typologies have been developed in efforts to make the store stage successful, they have presented different ways to plan trees and different kinds of landscapes to help with the store stage as well as help with the prevention of landslides. Along with developing this plan to help with the lack of clean water, Mexico has also entered into the Paris Agreement Act in efforts to help minimize air pollution and acknowledge global warming and climate change. Lastly, Mexico has started to include green architecture throughout the city to help reduce CO2 as well as add an electronic bike system to help reduce air pollution.

Designers Response

Designers are beginning to address some of the environmental issues that are affecting the CDMX area. Research suggests that Mexico’s capital is gearing towards utilizing natural responses to address some of the environmental issues. The Parque Ecologico de Texcoco is the project that is in the works and has the support of the federal government. The project hopes to reclaim the dried lakes of Mexico City to reduce the water crisis and fight pollution. El Ecoducto is also the proposed water pollution solution that was designed by the Urban Planning college from the UNAM. The project uses natural landscapes such as rocks and water and grown flora to purify water and sends the excess water to the city’s supply. We see that Mexico City’s buildings are now designed to critically evaluate and prevent major casualties from earthquake events. The people who are in low-income buildings or housing (shacks, self-built codeless regulated) are most at risk because their substandard housing is vulnerable to not only earthquake events but other phenomena as well. This is where the most impactful work could be done, helping the low income communities.

Culmination

The major lesson we learned from this is that there are a few designers designing solutions for such environmental issues. The opportunity in this class to perhaps design typologies that could emerge to address environmental problems is to be considered. Maybe if one of us gets to design in Mexico City in the not too distant future, our designs can serve as a blueprint to inspire and motivate.

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