Systematic Poverty + Social Housing

Brittany Hester

Issue: Systematic Poverty

The growing population has created a demand for housing in lower income brackets. This has increased the building rate of “cookie cutter” housing throughout Mexico. These cheaper and fast built homes are not sustainable urban development and has become one of the main issues in social housing.

Poor housing development and lack of resources can create or contribute to poverty traps or cycles of poverty. These poverty traps can be passed throughout generations, these cycles occur when people don’t have access to necessary resources, such as education, child care, transportation, healthcare, food, etc.

Contributing Factors

Factors Sustaining Personal Poverty:·

- - Lack of education and training·
  - Transportation to/from work·
  - Health conditions·
  - Rent (Obtaining rent/security deposits/etc)·
  - Debt·
  - Lack of government benefits

Factors Sustaining Generational Poverty:·

- - Not enough resources to send children to school·
  - Lack of social networks·
  - Need for older children to work vs school·
  - Poorly educated parents·
  - Parents lack education so they do not see the importance of education
  - Bad role models

Position

Break the systematic poverty cycle through the built environment by integrating society, culture, values, and community.

Ways of creating a sustainable community according to a study done by Berkeley Group and Social Life:

Social sustainability- community spirit and ensures open diversity among residents
Interaction throughout community
Happiness through quality of life
Integrated infrastructure
Residents have a voice and stake
Sense of security
Value systems

Idea

Combine the traditional ejido model and trading system to create a community that has integrated value and personal stakes. Ejidos-Communal lands traditionally combines communal ownership with individual uses. Community trading system- exchange or trade of goods, services, and domestic duties without the use of money.

Do this by creating cores that will act as community service centers such as medical centers, educational centers, daycare and any other service that is hard for people to access or afford. Each unit will have a their own core that will provide one or more of these services that can be limited to communities prone to poverty cycles.

Site: Nezahualcóyotl, Mexico

Municipal Seat

Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl

Area

Total: 63.74 km2 (24.61 sq mi)

Population (2010 Census)

Total: 1,110,565
Density: 17,423.4/km2 (45,126.6/sq mi)

Site History

Self built city that formed on the drained lake bed of Lake Texcoco in the late 1940’s.
There was a extreme growth rate between 1950’s and 1970’s, in 1950 the population was approx 6,000 but by 1970 it had grown to 600,000 and 1.4 million by 1980’s
The city was illegally planned and built
Many fled to Neza for the work in factories and cheap land on the samp land
Water services, electricity, and garbage services weren’t introduced to Neza until the late 60’s early 70’s

Site Analysis

This diagram shows how there are community nodes on the west side of the canal. Each of these nodes holds different services such as schools, stores, medical centers etc. On the east side of the canal this has not taken place. In my design I would like to incorporate this idea into the site.

For this image I wanted to show how many resources are avaible in a square mile. Do to the density of

Site Plan

The site plan shows the groupings of units and how the units communicates with each other. In order to draw people into the the site there is a soccer field, and a walkway that vendors can have access to in order to trade good and services. Drawing people into the site will allow people to see the services offered to the site and surrounding areas, these services are limited and hard to access, especially to those who may be stuck in a poverty cycle, which is why these services can help break the cycle of poverty.

Unit Grouping

The semi private areas are able to communicate and move through all units within each grouping. This Allows the community to grow and share domestic duties throughout the community.

Public to Private

The ground floor is where the public services are located. These services can be daycares, medical centers, educations centers, community centers, etc. The services can be decided on by the public and can happen organically.

The second floor will be open courtyard that will be shared by all the units in the grouping. Each unit will be able to open there home to the courtyard in a effort to share domestic duties and create a bond throughout the community.

The third floor will be the private areas of the units including the private patios that will look over the community and the shared courtyards.

Arial View

Public View

Semi-Private View

Section

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