the ‘graying’ of ‘green’ zones: spatial governance and irregular settlement in xochimilco,...

The ‘Graying’ of ‘Green’ Zones:Spatial Governance and IrregularSettlement in Xochimilco, Mexico City

JILL WIGLE

AbstractThis article details the evolving social and spatial dynamics of a planning approach thatis now being used to regulate irregular or informal settlements in the conservation zoneof Xochimilco in the Federal District of Mexico City. As part of the elaboration of‘normative’ planning policies and practices, this approach counts, maps and thenclassifies irregular settlements into different categories with distinct land-useregularization possibilities. These spatial calculations establish a continuum of ‘gray’spaces, placing many settlements in a kind of planning limbo on so-called ‘green’conservation land. The research suggests that these spatial calculations are now animportant part of enacting land-use planning and presenting a useful ‘technical’ veneerthrough which the state negotiates competing claims to space. Based on a case study ofan irregular settlement, the article examines how the state is implicated in the productionand regulation of irregularity as part of a larger strategy of spatial governance. Theresearch explores how planning ‘knowledges’and ‘techniques’help to create fragmentedbut ‘governable’ spaces that force communities to compete for land-use regularization.The analysis raises questions about the conception of informality as something that,among other things, simply takes place outside of the formal planning system.

IntroductionWith a population of over 20 million, the Metropolitan Mexico City Area (MCMA) iswell-known as one of the world’s largest cities (INEGI, 2010). Beyond its obvious size,Mexico City is also a highly variegated metropolitan area, comprised of the FederalDistrict and 59 municipalities in the adjacent State of Mexico and one municipality in theState of Hidalgo (SEDESOL et al., 2007). The Federal District lies at the center of thisextensive metropolitan zone. Contrary to commonly held images of Mexico’s capital asnot only large but also very urbanized, approximately 59% of the Federal District isactually ‘conservation land’ (PAOT, 2010). There are 88,442 hectares of conservationland dispersed across nine of the 16 sub-districts that comprise the Federal District. Mostof the conservation land, however, is concentrated in seven sub-districts in the southernurbanizing periphery, including Xochimilco (see Figure 1). The conservation zone is an

Funding for this research was provided by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council ofCanada (SSHRC). The author would like to extend thanks and appreciation to: Janett Vallejo Román andAna Luisa Diez García for their assistance with field research and transcribing interviews; HéctorHidalgo Páez for assistance with mapping; local residents and planning officials who participated in theinterviews for the research; and to the two anonymous IJURR reviewers for their helpful comments onan earlier version of this article.

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International Journal of Urban and Regional ResearchDOI:10.1111/1468-2427.12019

© 2013 Urban Research Publications Limited. Published by John Wiley & Sons. 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX42DQ, UK and 350 Main St, Malden, MA 02148, USA

extremely intricate patchwork of 36 rural towns (poblados rurales) and other humansettlements, interwoven with agricultural and forested areas. This area is not only thelargest remaining ‘green’ space in the Federal District, but also significant for itsbiodiversity and as a vital recharge area for the aquifer that provides for 57% of thepotable water consumed by its 8.8 million inhabitants (PAOT, 2010). Despite land-useprohibitions against residential use in protected areas of the conservation zone, theselands are subject to intense urbanization pressures. For example, there are approximately835 irregular or informal settlements in the conservation zone, including between295 and 300 in Xochimilco (GDF, 2005; PAOT, 2010).1 The conservation zone alsoencompasses a range of property types, economic activities, conservation policies andland-use designations — administered under the jurisdiction of an array of federal andlocal government agencies. To summarize, the conservation zone is a complex terrain ofsocio-spatial relations, settlement expansion, conflicting land uses and competing claimsfor appropriating and controlling the area’s land and resources.

These competing claims are now managed in the evolving political and planningcontext of the Federal District. Local elections were reintroduced in the Federal District

1 The terms ‘irregular settlement’ and ‘informal settlement’ are used interchangeably in this article.

State of Mexico

State of Mexico

Azcapotzalco

Miguel Hidalgo Cuauhtémoc Venustiano Carranza

Iztacalco

Benito Juárez

Álvaro Obregón

Cuajimalpa

Magdalena Contreras

Tlalpan

LegendNPA, Xochimilco

Conservation Land

Urban Land

1:233,2571 2

Kilometers

4 6 80

Milpa Alta

Coyoacán

Iztapalapa

Xochimilco

Tláhuac

Gustavo A. Madero

Figure 1 The conservation zone in the Federal District and the natural protected area ofXochimilco (source: map drawn up by Héctor Hidalgo Páez)

2 Jill Wigle

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research© 2013 Urban Research Publications Limited

in 1997, after 71 years of authoritarian rule under the Revolutionary Institutional Party(Partido Revolucionario Institucional, or PRI). Local elections have introduced greaterpolitical competition and voters now participate in city-wide electoral contests to choosethe mayor, as well as area-specific contests to elect local representatives to theLegislative Assembly of the Federal District and the head of their respective sub-districts. The center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (Partido de la RevoluciónDemocrática, or PRD) has dominated these electoral contests, beginning with the victoryof Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas in 1997 as the Federal District’s first elected mayor since 1929.Support for the PRD is generally solid among lower-income households in the FederalDistrict, many of whom reside in informally settled communities. In addition, themayoral position has become a launching pad for several PRD presidential candidates,including Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas (2000) and Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2006 and2012). The platforms for these presidential campaigns have highlighted the progressivesocial policies introduced by the PRD in the Federal District. From a strategicperspective, the Federal District represents both an important political base for the PRDand a policy showcase for its broader political ambitions in Mexico. Finally, thesepolitical changes have been accompanied by ongoing modifications to planning policiesand practices within the Federal District. The latter includes, for example, land-useplanning initiatives at the sub-district level, such as the approach for managing informalsettlements on conservation land in Xochimilco.

Garza (1997) has referred to urban planning in Mexico as a ‘virtual’ exercise becauseof the persistent gap between formal plans and actual urbanization patterns. Theexistence of irregular settlements in the conservation zone is often perceived as evidenceof this longstanding characteristic of planning in Mexico. In the case of the conservationzone, this implementation gap is attributed to a variety of factors. On the one hand,the gap is explained by numerous administrative shortcomings, such as the lack ofcoordination among government agencies, excessive and conflicting land-use regulation,and insufficient monitoring and enforcement of existing planning policies (GDF, 2005;PAOT, 2005; Ruiz-Gómez, 2006; Aguilar, 2008). Explanations also emphasize thehighly politicized nature of planning in which political support is exchanged forpermitting access to housing and urban services in prohibited areas (Schteingart andSalazar, 2005; Aguilar and Santos, 2011b). As if to disavow participation in theseprocesses, government documents describe the proliferation of irregular settlements inthe conservation zone as evidence of ‘anarchic’ urbanization and ‘disorderly’ growth(GDF, 2003: 25), thus implying that irregular settlement is something that takes placeoutside of ‘planned, orderly’ growth, of which local government presumably is theoverseer.

Rather than viewing planning and informality as discrete entities separated by an‘implementation gap’, this article explores how they are closely connected throughplanning processes and practices. Even if not fully implemented, urban plans are not‘virtual’, because they shape state–community negotiations over regularization. Inparticular, the article examines the evolving social and spatial dynamics of land-useregularization processes in the conservation zone, focusing on a case study of aninformal settlement located on private property in Xochimilco.2 The ‘Xochimilcoapproach’ to managing irregular settlements involves the counting, mapping andclassification of settlements on conservation land as zones subject to ‘special regulation’,‘specific studies’ and ‘control’ (GDF, 2005; Wigle, 2010). Only irregular settlementsdesignated as zones subject to ‘special regulation’ are eligible for the sought-afterland-use change that sanctions residential use and urban services in the conservationzone. Other irregular settlements remain in a kind of land-use limbo, albeit with an

2 It should be noted that this article focuses on the ‘everyday’ dynamics of these processes in privateproperty. Additional research is needed to document the particular and evolving dynamics of theseprocesses in social property.

Irregular settlement in Xochimilco, Mexico City 3


official-sounding moniker. This kind of discursive differentiation contributes to whatYiftachel (2009: 89) refers to as the ‘graying’ of urban space occupied by informalsettlements as they are ‘neither integrated, nor eliminated, forming [the]pseudo-permanent margins of today’s urban regions’. The presence of more than 800irregular settlements in the conservation zone is part of the Federal District’s‘pseudo-permanent’ urban periphery and the subject of the ‘graying’ of ‘green’ zonesreferred to in this article’s title.

This article builds on and extends previous research detailing the operation of theXochimilco model and its social and environmental implications (see Wigle, 2010) byarguing that this approach incorporates important elements of ‘spatial governmentality’or forms of regulation designed to manage populations in space (Merry, 2001: 16). Theresearch shows how spatial technologies enable what Crampton and Elden (2006: 681)have termed ‘calculative spatial projects’ that are critical to analyzing the contemporarypolitics of space — and for the purposes of this article — the governance of informality.While the counting and mapping of irregular settlements for political purposes is not newto Mexico (see Azuela, 1997), the ways in which these spatial calculations are nowenacted and disseminated as part of governing informality warrants further study in theevolving planning context of the Federal District.

This article begins with a discussion of informality, planning and spatial governanceand then examines land-use planning in the conservation zone. It proceeds by exploringthe application of what is known as the Xochimilco approach for managing irregularsettlements on conservation land through the case study of El Asentamiento (‘thesettlement’).3 The focus on everyday planning practices in the case study is intended tocontribute to understanding the intricate relationships among informality, planning andgovernance. Research for this article is based on a series of semi-structured interviewswith residents on El Asentamiento and local officials working in urban andenvironmental planning in the Federal District. The interviews for this research weremostly conducted in 2008 and complemented by a few interviews for updating purposesin 2009 and 2011.4

Informality, planning and spatial governanceApproximately 60% of Mexico City residents do not earn a sufficient income to be ableto afford to buy or rent their housing through the formal land and housing market. In theabsence of affordable housing programs, informal or irregular settlement is fundamentalto securing access to housing for the majority of Mexico City residents. An extensivebody of research has analyzed the social, legal and political dimensions of informalsettlement processes in Mexico City (see Schteingart, 1991; Varley, 1996; Azuela andTomas, 1997; Schteingart, 1997; Pezzoli, 1998; Ward, 1998; Connolly, 2003; 2007;2010). Informal settlement is usually identified by its lack of access to urban services(e.g. water and sanitation) and the absence of land-use permissions and/or legal property

3 El Asentamiento is a pseudonym for the community.4 List of interviewees and interview dates: (1) local official, subdistrict of Xochimilco: first interview 25

January 2008; second interview 13 May 2008; third interview 5 July 2011; (2) local official,subdistrict of Xochimilco: first interview 18 February 2008; second interview 8 May 2008; (3)official, Secretaría de Medio Ambiente (SMA), GDF: first interview 21 February 2008; secondinterview 19 May 2008; (4) official, Secretaría de Desarrollo Urbano y Vivienda (SEDUVI), GDF: firstinterview 6 March 2008; second interview 16 May 2008; third interview 21 August 2009 (intervieweeno longer working at SEDUVI at the time); (5) resident and community leader, El Asentamiento: firstinterview 14 March 2008; second interview 12 June 2008; third interview 20 August 2009; follow-uptelephone conversation 12 October 2009; (6) female resident, El Asentamiento: 25 April 2008; (7)female resident, El Asentamiento: 2 June 2008.

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documentation. Accordingly, ‘irregular’ settlements are ‘regularized’ through theextension of urban services, land-use permissions or legal property titles, and/orconsidered ‘consolidated’ when housing and living conditions improve. While irregularsettlements may share these characteristics, irregularity is ultimately defined by thenorms that govern urbanization processes and property relations (Duhau and Schteingart,1997), and as such, definitions of irregularity may vary over time with changing norms(Connolly, 2003). As explored in this article, these norms now also assume salient spatialdimensions used to generate differentiated spaces of irregularity, at least in the case ofXochimilco.

Much of the regularization literature on Mexico has focused on the regularization ofland tenure or property rights. Different state and non-state actors are involved in theland-tenure regularization of different property types in Mexico.5 Since at least the1970s, land-tenure regularization has served as a predominant form of state interventionin urban development (Azuela, 1997). Under the PRI, land-tenure regularizationinvolved extensive networks of state actors, informal power brokers and different socialand community organizations in clientelistic relationships through which the benefits ofregularization were exchanged for political support (Varley, 1996; Selee, 2011). Manyargue that such clientelistic relationships persist in the PRD-governed Federal District(Aguilar and Santos, 2011a). Presently, however, the evolving institutionalization ofland-use planning and regulation as a responsibility of a democratically electedgovernment in the Federal District introduces new dynamics to this already complexsituation, which warrant further investigation.

The complexity of regularization processes in Mexico defies easy description. Asargued by Connolly (2007), it is difficult to define a phenomenon as varied and dynamicas informality, and this is one of the reasons why it is often described in relational termsby what it is not (e.g. formal). Still, binary terms such as ‘regular/irregular’ settlementelide the complexity of existing settlement processes in places such as Mexico City.While the complexity of housing and settlement conditions does not completely discountthe usefulness of settlement typologies for analyzing urbanization patterns in MexicoCity, it does problematize conceptions of irregularity/regularity as defined through theircontrasting relationship to each other.6 Moreover, the use of such binary categories alsoentails an uncritical view of regular settlement areas. A quick read of almost any dailynewspaper in Mexico City highlights that ‘regular’ housing areas also display signs ofirregularity, including differential access to urban services and violations of land-use orother planning norms (see Gutiérrez, 2009). This situation underlines the importance ofanalyzing irregularity/regularity as dynamic, interactive concepts rather than as fixed,contrasting entities. This article proposes that this analysis should include not only thestate’s role in setting the parameters for what constitutes irregularity (Azuela, 1997), but

5 The 1917 Mexican Constitution defines three kinds of property: federal or state property, privateproperty and social property (ejidal, comunal). Social property was redistributed to indigenouscommunities and campesinos as part of the agrarian reform undertaken in the post-revolutionaryperiod. Although previously prohibited, neoliberal reforms introduced in 1992 now permit the sale ofejidal properties. As elaborated by Cruz Rodríguez (2006), the 1992 reforms mean that an evenwider range of state and non-state actors may be involved in land-tenure regularization in socialproperty. In 1993, the Program for the Certification of Ejidal Rights (Programa de Certificación deDerechos Ejidales, or PROCEDE) was established to survey ejidal lands and subdivide individualparcels (parcelas) within them in order to be able to transfer property titles. Among other actors, theEjidal Assembly, the Secretariat of Agrarian Reform, the Secretariat of Social Development and theNational Agrarian Registry all participate in PROCEDE. This program is active in the State of Mexico,but not in the Federal District.

6 The Mexico City Observatory produced at the UAM-Azcapotzalco offers a comprehensive settlementtypology for the city through its geographic information system entitled OCIM-SIG (see Connolly,2010).



also consider the ways in which these categories are produced, enacted and contestedthrough planning processes and practices.

As argued by Yiftachel (2009: 93), planning discourses often frame informalsettlements as being in need of ‘correction.’ Roy (2009: 10) underlines the interactiverelationship between planning and informality through her observation that ‘informality. . . is not a set of unregulated activities that lies beyond the reach of planning; rather it isplanning that inscribes the informal by designating some activities as authorized andothers as unauthorized’. In particular, Roy emphasizes that informality is produced by thestate’s ability to enact or suspend certain rules in particular moments and spaces (Roy,2005: 153). Invariably, however, these spaces are linked to class and power relations withthe ‘valorization of elite informalities and the criminalization of subaltern informalities’(Roy, 2011: 233). This analysis contributes to understanding formal planning and informalurbanization as interactive processes and underlines the state’s role in both producing andregulating informality as part of a broader strategy of spatial or urban governance.

Foucault’s studies of power and governmentality are also helpful for understandingthese intricate connections among social relations, norms, discourses and institutions(Jessop, 2007). For Huxley (2006: 772), governmentality refers to ‘diverse and multipleaims and practices to guide the conduct of others or the self’. In a similar way, Lemke(2001: 191) has referred to these as ‘forms of knowledge’ or the political rationalities thatjustify government action and as ‘power techniques’ or government interventions.In Xochimilco and elsewhere, an increasingly important part of these techniquesincludes the spatial calculation of populations linked to ‘spatial governmentality’ orthe management of populations in space (Merry, 2001). As argued by Rose-Redword(2006), state-sponsored projects such as mapping or calculating territory represent thespatial prerequisites for constituting ‘governable’ spaces in the city. Moreover, thesecalculations are useful for governing irregularity because they help to ‘render technical’(Murray Li, 2007: 7) or at least provide a technical veneer for managing significant issuessuch as access to land and housing. I draw upon these concepts to analyze the governanceof irregularity in the conservation zone of Xochimilco by focusing on how plans (e.g.aims or knowledges) produce discursive understandings of irregularity that influencesubsequent interventions (e.g. practices or techniques). The focus on ‘everyday’ practicesin the analysis (e.g. conducting surveys, signing agreements) is intended to capture theeffects of plans — even when they are not implemented as articulated in documents —in shaping state–community negotiations over regularization and the occupation ofspace. In addition, I argue that these practices are a fundamental part of ‘doing’ land-useplanning, as they make visible and enact the spatial calculations now linked withland-use regularization processes in sub-districts such as Xochimilco.7 These spatialcalculations configure the now differentiated contours of irregularity, which serve as keyreference points in negotiating regularization and inclusion/exclusion from ‘gray space’.The article also underlines that those living in irregular settlements ‘are not passiverecipients of governmental policies and directives’ (Crampton and Elden, 2006: 682) butoften contest how they are mapped or classified. To be sure, power is not equally shared,but rather contested in this politicized process in which key characteristics of irregularityare often exploited for political advantage.

The framing and naming of irregularity in the Federal DistrictLand-use policy falls under the jurisdiction of the Government of the Federal District(Cruz Rodríguez, 2006; Ibarra Hernández, 2008). Along with heightened interest inenvironmental planning issues in recent years (Aguilar and Santos, 2011a), this perhaps

7 The idea of ‘doing’ (land-use planning, in this particular case) comes from Blomley (2004: xvi), whoargues that ‘property is not a static, pregiven entity, but depends on a continual, active doing. Assettle is a verb, so property is an enactment’.

6 Jill Wigle


helps to explain the renewed interest in land-use regulation and regularization at the locallevel. The Federal District is divided into two primary land-use zones: urban land (suelourbano) and conservation land (suelo de conservación). Urban land is regulated by theGeneral Program for Urban Development of the Federal District of 2003 under theauspices of the Secretariat of Urban Development and Housing (SEDUVI), andconservation land is regulated by the General Program for Ecological Planning of theFederal District of 2000 under the auspices of the Secretariat of the Environment (SMA).While residential use is prohibited in much of the conservation zone, it is permitted inlong existing rural towns (poblados rurales). Land use in the conservation zone is alsoregulated by the urban development plans developed at the sub-district level and isaffected by the management of social property by local assemblies of ejiditarios andcomuneros. This situation is further complicated by the overlapping and often conflictingland-use designations for conservation land outlined in the General Program for UrbanDevelopment and the General Program for Ecological Planning (Aguilar and Santos,2011a).

Both the General Program for Urban Development of 2003 and the General Programfor Ecological Planning of 2000 refer to the presence of irregular settlements in theconservation zone, and stipulate that they are prohibited (GDF, 2000; 2003). Accordingto the General Program for Urban Development (GDF, 2003: 25), over the last severaldecades the conservation zone has been subjected to:

. . . strong pressures from anarchic urbanization, one of the principal factors of environmentaldegradation and loss in this area. It is estimated that the annual deforestation rate is 500hectares and that the urban occupation rate has increased to more than 300 hectares per year . . .The disorderly growth towards the city’s periphery generates a negative impact on the naturalcharacteristics of the zone. . . . Urbanization processes are primarily linked to the expansionand consolidation of existing settlements and to the large-scale occupation of land in thecontext of illegal sales of social or private property in which residential use is prohibited(emphasis added).8

In complementary fashion, the General Program for Ecological Planning (GDF, 2000:22) emphasizes the importance of ‘fostering and supporting the development ofproductive and recreational activities compatible with the conservation of the naturalcharacteristics of the zone’ in order to ‘avoid the establishment of human settlements, aswell as the introduction of [urban] services and infrastructure that will affect theecological value of the zone’. Other prominent environmental planning policies, such asthe Environmental Agenda for 2007 to 2012 and the Green Plan (GDF, 2009), also referto the presence of irregular settlements in the conservation zone. For example, theEnvironmental Agenda’s stated objective is to preserve ‘conservation land as a key spacefor the environmental equilibrium of the city’ (GDF, 2007: 23–25). The document alsooutlines a two-pronged strategy to ‘control and order’ irregular settlements that includes:(1) a ‘zero growth project’ and (2) a comprehensive, annual monitoring and inventoryof irregular settlements to define their ‘treatment and control’. The Green Plan (GDF,2009: 12) echoes the importance of preserving conservation land for the ‘ecologicalequilibrium of the city’ and controlling urbanization in the conservation zone through‘zero growth agreements’.

Together, these documents and policies, even if not fully implemented, are significantin that they promote certain planning ‘knowledges’ (e.g. aims) or discursiveconstructions of irregular settlements as ‘disorderly, unnatural and detrimental’, thusproviding a justification for state ‘interventions’ (e.g. practices) related to their ‘proper’planning and use. Notably, these planning documents tend to focus on irregular

8 Quotations presented from documents published by the Government of the Federal District (GDF)and from interviews have been translated by the author. Where italics are added for emphasis, thishas been noted.



settlement as the main culprit of settlement expansion in the conservation zone ratherthan the ongoing expansion of rural towns and housing developments of middle-classhouseholds (Schteingart and Salazar, 2005; Cruz Rodríguez, 2011; Sheinbaum Pardo,2011). How these discursive constructions of irregularity are operationalized throughspecific techniques and practices that are used to regulate space is explored in the nextsection.

Regulating irregular settlement onconservation land in XochimilcoThe most recent urban development plan for Xochimilco articulates a specific approachto managing irregular settlements on conservation land that is designed to bettercoordinate environmental and urban planning objectives (GDF, 2005).9 This is asignificant planning issue in Xochimilco for a number of reasons. About 82% ofXochimilco’s total area is designated as conservation land (GDF, 2005). The sub-districtincludes over 10,000 hectares or approximately 12% of the Federal District’s totalconservation land, and between 295 and 300 irregular settlements or roughly 36% of thetotal number of irregular settlements on conservation land in the Federal District (GDF,2005; PAOT, 2010). Moreover, almost half of Xochimilco’s population resides inirregular or informal settlements (GDF, 2005).

The Xochimilco approach is operationalized through the application of bothlongstanding (e.g. community surveys) and newer (e.g. aerial photographs) spatialcalculation techniques to count, map and categorize irregular settlements. Thesecalculations are used to classify irregular settlements on conservation land as zonessubject to ‘special regulation’, ‘specific studies’ and ‘control’.10 In this way, thesecategories create a continuum for land-use regularization, with only those settlementsdesignated as zones subject to ‘special regulation’ eligible for receiving the desiredland-use change that permits residential use and urban services. First, however, irregularsettlements classified as zones subject to ‘special regulation’ must undergo urban andenvironmental studies to determine in situ mitigation measures and the payment ofenvironmental damages to compensate for their presence in the conservation zone.11

These studies are submitted to the Commission for Special Regulation for Xochimilco,an inter-agency committee whose voting members include the sub-district, SMA andSEDUVI. This commission is responsible for issuing a final decision on the approval ofland-use changes for irregular settlements on conservation land.12 If the land-use changeis approved, mitigation measures and the payment of environmental damages are then

9 For a more detailed account of the Xochimilco approach, see Wigle (2010). For an account of asimilar approach in the adjacent sub-district of Tlalpan, see Aguilar and Santos (2011a; 2011b).

10 The most recent urban development plan for Xochimilco specifies that there are 300 irregularsettlements on conservation land (GDF, 2005). Of these 300 irregular settlements, 67 arecategorized as zones subject to ‘special regulation’ and therefore eligible for land-use change toresidential. The remaining irregular settlements are subject to ‘special studies’ (83) or ‘control’ (150)(GDF, 2005; interview with local official, 25 January 2008).

11 ‘Mitigation measures’ refer to remedies designed to lessen the environmental impact of humansettlement in the conservation zone, such as the use of permeable paving materials (interview withlocal official, 18 February 2008). ‘Environmental damages’ focus on the loss of rainwater infiltrationand are evaluated based on a house’s footprint and construction materials (interviews with localofficials, 25 January 2008 and 18 February 2008). Payment of the environmental damages is madeinto a special fund intended to support mitigation measures and/or the relocation of irregularsettlements from areas of risk and/or ecological sensitivity.

12 After initial delays, the commission became active towards the end of 2008 (interview with localofficial, 5 July 2011).

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formalized in a collaboration agreement (convenio de collaboración) signed by thecommunity. In practical terms, the payment of environmental damages providesresources for mitigating the settlement’s environmental impact. In political terms, thissanction reframes local government as the locus for ‘order’ against the ‘disorder’ ofinformality, thus reasserting the legitimacy of planning norms, however briefly.

By contrast, irregular settlements classified as zones subject to ‘specific studies’ or‘control’ must continue to negotiate. For example, zones subject to ‘specific studies’ aresupposed to undergo more thorough urban and environmental studies than zonessubject to ‘special regulation’ (interview with local official, 18 February 2008).Following the completion and review of these studies, irregular settlements subject to‘specific studies’ may be partially or wholly regularized, or they may be reclassified aszones subject to ‘control’. Irregular settlements in zones subject to ‘control’ are noteligible for land-use regularization and may be subject to containment measures,eviction or relocation (interview with local official, 25 January 2008). This lattercategory remains the subject of some debate among planning officials. As one SEDUVIofficial told me:

I have always been against the zones subject to control. But the sub-district . . . they have verystrong social pressure. It’s a way of telling them [the settlers]: ‘You know what? We are notgoing to give you a residential zoning, but neither are we going to evict you’ (interview withSEDUVI official, 6 March 2008).

In planning terms, this creates what Yiftachel (2009: 90) has referred to as a ‘gray space’,a space within which an irregular settlement is neither evicted nor regularized, butrather positioned in a state of ‘permanent temporariness’ — concurrently tolerated andcondemned, perpetually waiting ‘to be corrected’. While in the Federal District thisusually amounts to a laissez-faire approach, such ‘gray spaces’ create the opportunity forthe state to grant minor ‘corrections’ over time in exchange for political support. Such‘corrections’ may include, for example, a ‘discursive upgrading’ from a zone subject to‘control’ to one subject to ‘specific studies’, with little or no material investment incommunity living conditions.

The categorization of irregular settlements into these categories is based on extensivefieldwork to assess community conditions and existing levels of housing consolidation.Factors considered in these assessments include access to urban services, housingconditions, settlement size and age, proximity to built-up urban areas and zones of riskor ecological sensitivity (interview with local official, 25 January 2008; interview withSEDUVI official, 6 March 2008). The official number of irregular settlements inXochimilco increased from an estimated 179 in 2001 to approximately 300 in 2005(GDF, 2005). According to a local official, this increase is linked not only to theextensive fieldwork conducted to assess conditions in irregular settlements, but also toa more concerted effort to identify them through aerial photographs (interview withlocal official, 25 January 2008). Underlining the importance of spatial calculations tothis process, an official explained that this assessment helps the sub-district ‘to identifythem [irregular settlements] and to give them a denomination, a location in space’(interview with local official, 25 January 2008). While the inflation in the number of‘recognized’ irregular settlements became a politically sensitive issue for Xochimilco,the local official overseeing the assessment process explained its importance in thefollowing way:

I said, excuse me, but I cannot deal with a problem that I do not know. I need to know what ishappening there [in the informal settlements] to be able to deal with the problem. If we saythere is nothing and close our eyes, well for sure, there is nothing, and [if] we do nothing tocontain what is happening, this will become a snowball that keeps rolling and we will neverstop it. On the contrary, the problem will continue to grow. Everyone wants to put a ‘pretty’number that is not politically problematic, but we decided to give a ‘real’ number (interviewwith local official, 25 January 2008).



Such extensive fieldwork also facilitates direct engagement with an important politicalconstituency — those living in irregular settlements. This kind of intensive fieldworkallows Xochimilco’s planning ‘aims’ and ‘practices’ for managing irregular settlementsto be circulated so as to form the basis for subsequent negotiations with settlements. Thisenactment of ‘doing land-use planning’ is complemented by public consultations andinformation made available through the internet.13

In developing a ‘real’ number of irregular settlements in Xochimilco, one of the firstchallenges local government officials were confronted with was the lack of a commondefinition for what constitutes an irregular settlement between the sub-district andSEDUVI. As one official related:

We had one concept and they [SEDUVI] had another; everyone had a different concept of whatan irregular settlement was. An irregular settlement could vary from one house to thousands ofhouses. I was telling them that, for me, an irregular settlement was a subdivided space withintentions of growing and that the number [of houses] did not matter — whether it was 10, 20or 100,000 — but if the space tended towards growth and consolidation. Because for me, agroup of 10 houses that are in the most remote place that does not have a growth tendency butprovides for the needs of a household — without the intention to subdivide and sell all theirlands . . . they are there because it is all they have. Well, for me, this is the difference betweenan irregular settlement and a rural homestead. For me, they are different. So, at that time, therewas not much agreement, but we did manage to make this distinction between irregularsettlements and, as we put it, ‘undefined polygons’ [rural homesteads] (interview with localofficial, 25 January 2008).

The category of ‘undefined polygons’ (polígonos no-definidos) or ‘isolated nuclei’(nucleos aislados) was meant to distinguish between settlement land needed for newhousehold formation among ‘locals’ (nativos) living in or near rural towns in theconservation zone and land used by ‘outsiders’ (ajenos) to establish irregular settlements:

An undefined polygon or isolated nucleus is a space occupied because of the natural increaseof [local] families, with the desire to protect their lands; even if it is illegal occupation, they donot have the objective of occupying all of their land for residential use . . . We consider thisnatural increase, or a little farm or rural house, and we do not give it the name ‘settlement’(interview with local official, 18 February 2008, emphasis added).

Notably, non-defined polygons are defined as containing ‘natural’ or legitimate growth,thus construing irregular settlements as spaces of ‘unnatural’ or illegitimate growthin ways that echo similar descriptions in urban and environmental plans. In 2005,291 undefined polygons were counted in Xochimilco (GDF, 2005). To categorizecommunities as undefined polygons, local officials inquire about the birthplace ofresidents and document the number of houses and people living in a particular area inorder to ‘close the polygon’ (cerrar el polígono). While intended to distinguish betweengrowth in rural towns and the expansion of irregular settlements, these distinctions arecomplicated by the fact that both locals and outsiders may live in undefined polygons andirregular settlements, and both may demonstrate a clear ‘growth tendency’ (interviewwith SEDUVI official, 6 March 2008). More recently, the sub-district has moved togroup together proximal irregular settlements and non-defined polygons into twentyregions to streamline regularization processes (interview with local official, 5 July 2011).This suggests that the Xochimilco approach is evolving; it is a process that willundoubtedly continue after the 2012 local elections.

Overall, the Xochimilco approach creates new forms of socio-spatial differentiationamong irregular settlements that influence state–community negotiations over land-

13 The sub-district presents the land-use regularization process through an illustrated cartoonhosted on its website; see http://www.xochimilco.df.gob.mx/delegacion/programas/pddux2005/lamina1.html.

10 Jill Wigle


use regularization and the occupation of space. These new forms of socio-spatialstratification introduce greater diversity to the existing complexity within and amongirregular settlements in the Federal District through what Yiftachel (2009: 90) calls the‘uneven incorporation of groups and spaces’ and the expansion of ‘gray spaces’ inthe city. In effect, these new classifications represent spatialized norms or ‘powertechniques’ used by local government to intervene (or not) in irregular settlements. Therelationship between these norms and power is captured in this statement from oneofficial:

The thing is, the distribution of norms is the distribution of power. When zoning takes place,this power is being exercised, and each one wants to hold on to this preserve of power. So, inthis disorder, the winners are those who have more power. And as long as the situation issomewhat unclear, those who can impose norms will continue to benefit (interview with SMAofficial, 19 May 2008).

By differentiating among irregular settlements and ordering them according to distinctzones, the approach also spatializes the political competition among irregular settlementsto become ‘regularized’. This represents a calculated ‘graying’ of space and forms animportant part of the politics of contemporary land-use planning and the governance ofirregular settlements in the conservation zone, as described in greater detail in the caseof El Asentamiento.

El Asentamiento — a regularizing irregular settlement?For most of its history, El Asentamiento (‘the settlement’) has been located within whatis perhaps one of the most regulated areas in the Federal District. This area includes thechinampas zone of Xochimilco, an ingenious and highly productive agricultural systemthat has been used in the Valley of Mexico for over a millennium.14 In 1987, the UnitedNations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) designated thisunique cultural landscape a World Heritage Site. By 1992, the Mexican governmentfollowed suit, declaring the zone a Natural Protected Area (NPA) ‘subject to ecologicalpreservation’ (refer back to Figure 1) (see GDF, 2006a). While there are clearprohibitions against settlement in this protected part of the conservation zone, theseformal declarations and plans have been unable to avert the establishment and expansionof irregular settlements such as El Asentamiento. In 2005, the population of ElAsentamiento was approximately 1,200 people living in 150 houses located on 57,000square meters of land (see Table 1).

El Asentamiento is located on former chinampas that are located adjacent to thehistoric urban centre of Xochimilco. Chinampas are considered a kind of privateproperty, and as such, land-tenure and land-use regularization processes for communitiessuch as El Asentamiento fall under the jurisdiction of the local government.15 Today, bothlocals and outsiders reside in El Asentamiento in owned and rented housing of varyingcondition. The community began over 25 years ago as a fledgling settlement thatconsisted of precarious housing and had no access to urban services. One of the earlierresidents of the community describes it in the following way:

It was beautiful! It was pure grass and trees and the little houses were very separate from eachother. You could see from here to the next neighbors’ house. There weren’t many houses, it was

14 Chinampas are built from organic materials in a rectangular shape that is usually about 10 meterswide and 100 meters long and delimited by canals which permit year-round irrigation and cultivation(Genovevo, 2008).

15 Chinampas are considered town lands (propiedades de los pueblos), a kind of property dating backto the colonial era and now subsumed by the category of ‘private property’ (see Cruz Rodríguez,2001).



pure grass and we had many trees around us . . . In this part of El Asentamiento, they weren’tcultivating, but they were in the surrounding areas . . . There were stables in El Asentamiento;there were a lot of cows; there were farms. There was a duck farm, a large one, and the stablessold milk and the cows were put out to graze (interview with female resident, 2 June 2008).

Over time, residents of El Asentamiento worked together to get the communityconnected to the electricity, water and sanitation networks of an adjacent regularizedarea, although coverage and service quality is highly uneven.

Shortly after declaration of the Natural Protected Area in 1992, El Asentamientosigned a ‘zero growth agreement’. The terms of the agreement prohibited housingexpansion and the extension of urban services beyond the community’s limits (interviewwith resident and community leader, 12 June 2008). According to one female residentinvolved in a ‘vigilance’ committee charged with reporting on the status of the zerogrowth agreement in El Asentamiento, these agreements were never closely followed:

They [local government] made an agreement, but never arrived at any agreement because ElAsentamiento continued to grow. We took documents to the local government, but they neverpaid any attention to us. So when they want to complain, you know what? Paper speaks —[they] never paid any attention to us, so it is not our problem. It is only the local governmentthat did nothing, because we communicated: . . . ‘in this part, they are expanding, they sold,etc.’ . . . so, that is how the growth went on here (interview with female resident, 25 April 2008).

When asked why these ineffective agreements are being renewed, a community leaderprovided this response:

Table 1 Chronology of key events and milestones for El Asentamiento, Xochimilco, FederalDistrict (1980s to 2011)

Year Event/Milestone

Mid-1980s Settlement of El Asentamiento begins

Since late 1980s Informal installation of urban services in El Asentamiento by connecting to formalmunicipal networks in neighboring community

1987 Chinampas zone and historic urban centre of Xochimilco is declared a UNESCOWorld Heritage Site

1992 Declaration of Natural Protected Area in chinampas zone of Xochimilco

1994 Zero growth agreement signed in El Asentamiento

1997 Publication of the first urban development plan at the sub-district level after therestoration of local elections in the Federal District

2002 Approximately 8 years after the signing of the zero growth agreement, acommunity survey counts 153 structures and a total population of 663 persons inEl Asentamiento

2004 Approximately 10 years after the signing of the zero growth agreement, acommunity survey counts 161 structures and a total population of 740 persons inEl Asentamiento

2005 Publication of new urban development plan in Xochimilco; El Asentamiento isdesignated a ‘zone subject to control’, but the plan mentions the intention todisincorporate those settlements founded before 1992 from the Natural ProtectedArea

2006 El Asentamiento disincorporated from Natural Protected Area

2007 El Asentamiento designated a zone subject to ‘special regulation’; urban andenvironmental studies are undertaken

2011 El Asentamiento still awaiting their land-use change application to be ratified

Source: Table compiled by author based on GDF (2005), as well as interviews with residents of El Asentamientoand local government officials.

12 Jill Wigle


More than anything else, I believe they [the local government] do it because it is their work. Ifthey had not let El Asentamiento grow, it would not have grown. As the authorities, they shouldhave done something. For 9 years, I was reporting this [growth]; they were coming to takephotos but never did anything. In fact, the fault belongs with the authorities, not the [vigilance]committee (interview with resident and community leader, 12 June 2008, emphasis added).

Still, as implied in the above statement, the zero growth agreements are useful in so faras they enable the performance of acting as a government that is trying to enforce ‘order’through ‘their work’. When these agreements prove ineffective, it serves to reinforcethe framing of irregular settlements as ‘anarchic’ or ‘disorderly’, while givinglocal government the opportunity for ‘corrective action’ to restore ‘order’ as deemednecessary.

A few years after the signing of the zero growth agreement, the community was alsosurveyed and photographed by local authorities (interview with resident and communityleader, 14 March 2008). Although these actions were regarded with somemisapprehension at the time, residents later perceived them as a positive sign that thecommunity was being put on the ‘map’. As one resident told me:

Well, for the needs that we had, it pleased us to see them [the authorities] come into ourcommunity to measure and see this [the community]. They came to measure and everything,and to take pictures. That was around 1996 or 1997. It also caused some doubts — that maybethey came to kick us out . . . but after some time passed, we realized that maybe it wassomething positive (interview with resident and community leader, 14 March 2008).

Such hopes were somewhat premature, but not entirely misplaced. Although not muchchanged for the community in the 1997 Urban Development Plan for Xochimilco (GDF,1997), more significant changes were introduced with the publication of the new sub-district plan in 2005. The 2005 plan states the intention to ‘promote the revision of theNatural Protected Area to exclude those communities that existed in the area beforethe declaration was made’ (GDF, 2005: 76). In 2006, El Asentamiento was officiallydisincorporated from the Natural Protected Area (see GDF, 2006b) and its status wassubsequently changed from a zone subject to ‘control’ to a zone subject to ‘specialregulation’ and therefore eligible for the residential land-use permission required tosecure legal property titles (interview with local official, 18 February 2008).

Just as the local state calculates and classifies space for governance purposes, localcommunities also actively intervene in these processes. Over time, for example, residentsin El Asentamiento have undertaken a variety of actions directed at local authorities,including letter-writing campaigns, numerous meetings with political officials andcommunity mobilizations. In the framing of their own space, residents of ElAsentamiento are quick to point out the canals as clear boundaries that separate theircommunity from nearby informal settlements, some of which have been subjectedto recent evictions.16 While eager to disassociate themselves from these spaces of‘irregularity’, residents are keen to link themselves to spaces of ‘regularity.’ For example,residents enthusiastically report that their voter registration cards indicate that ElAsentamiento is a separate ‘section’ or ‘neighborhood’ of an adjacent regularizedcommunity. These examples attest to how communities attempt to construct legitimate ordistinct identities for themselves as populations residing in particular spaces, often usingthe tools and discourse of spatial calculation introduced by the state. They also illustratehow land-use regularization — as part of the politics of spatial calculation — can serveto fragment populations in irregular settlements as they participate in competitiveclaim-making processes related to regularization.

16 The eviction took place on seven hectares of a much larger area of irregular settlement; about 30houses were destroyed and approximately 78 families evicted (see Santiago, 2001; La Reforma,2002; 2003; Aguayo Quezada, 2007).



Although officially disincorporated from the Natural Protected Area in 2006, ElAsentamiento remains an ‘irregular’ settlement within conservation land because it lacksresidential land-use permission. As an irregular settlement subject to ‘special regulation’,El Asentamiento has undergone urban and environmental studies. According to a localofficial, it is expected that El Asentamiento will eventually be granted zoning permissionas a low-density rural residential area (habitacional rural de baja densidad) andapproved for closed-loop urban services limited to ‘legitimate’ residents. As of 2011,however, the community was still waiting for the outcome of their regularizationprocess, thus continuing to struggle with their ‘gray space’ status in the ‘green’ zone ofXochimilco and the Federal District of Mexico City.

ConclusionDifferent forms of accessing land and housing reflect social and economic inequalitiesin Mexico, as they do in other places. In Mexico City, these inequalities are oftenmanifested in irregular or informal settlement patterns and conditions. While urbanplanning does not usually address structural inequities such as access to land, it does playa role in how social and economic inequalities are managed in and through space. Thisarticle analyzes the approach for managing irregular settlements on conservation landin Xochimilco, a sub-district on the southern urbanizing periphery of Mexico City. Inrecent years, the conservation zone has been subject to intense urbanization pressures,including the expansion of irregular settlement in areas now deemed important forecological reasons. The Xochimilco approach incorporates important elements of spatialgovernmentality in so far as it seeks to manage specific populations in particular spacesof the city, a situation justified by so-called ‘anarchic urbanization’ or ‘illegitimategrowth’ of irregular settlements as articulated in planning documents. A key feature ofthe approach includes the use of spatial technologies to count, map and classify irregularsettlements into three different categories with distinct regularization trajectories andpossibilities. As such, the approach creates a differentiated land-use regularizationprocess, including zones subject to ‘control’ — a kind of ‘gray space’ or planning limboin which settlements are neither regularized nor evicted from so-called ‘green’conservation land. These spatial calculations are now part of ‘doing’ land-use planning inXochimilco, as well as part of a broader strategy of governing irregular settlements in theconservation zone. Together with the dissemination of formal urban plans, thesecalculative exercises become important for negotiating land-use regularization, whilealso providing a useful technical veneer to what most certainly remains a highlypoliticized process. Although more research is needed to document a wider range ofexperiences with the implementation of this approach in Xochimilco and othersub-districts where similar approaches are now being introduced, this research suggestshow planning ‘knowledges’ and ‘techniques’ interact to create ‘governable’ spaces thatforce the populations in such spaces to compete for land-use regularization. Whileplanning policies and land-use regulations tend to be unevenly applied, they remainsalient as they serve to frame negotiation processes. This suggests the importance ofviewing selective planning as a significant part of spatial or urban governance, thusavoiding the framing of informal urbanization as something that simply happens in thebreach between stated planning policy and actual urbanization patterns.

Jill Wigle ([email protected]), Department of Geography and Environmental Studies,Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada.

14 Jill Wigle


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