Hydric Negotiations: Interactions between Mexico City’s Housing and Water Systems

The Metropolitan Area of Mexico City, with 23 million inhabitants, is under the constant pressure of providing affordable housing and efficient water and sanitation services to its population. The hydric paradox of scarcity and floods that the city constantly from has been mistakenly linked to the construction of new buildings in central areas of the city. During the last years, few efforts were made to provide affordable housing schemes in these better served areas, driven by the idea that more density means less access to water. However, evidence shows that this premise is wrong and that the water paradox is the effect of archaic water management methods. It is urgent to demonstrate that density in central areas of the city can detonate better water management systems and positive interactions between humans and their environmental/urban contexts.  This studio will use design to explore alternatives that integrate new housing schemes and soft water management infrastructures to respond to two of the metropolis’ most pressing issues.

Mexico City was built upon a lake that is continuously being drained through a complex system of artificial basins, pipes, and pumps. The studio will work with and around Vaso El Cristo, the largest of a system of three regulatory basins located in the northwest of the metropolitan area, specifically in the border between the municipalities of Tlalnepantla de Baz, Naucalpan, and Mexico City. Since their construction, the city has reached the vaso’s limits with a diversity of urban uses that add to the existing adjacent historical village, such as industry, residential, education and services. Today this area is a consolidated part of the metropolis, with services and nearby transportation hubs. However, the nature of Vaso El Cristo, a hard drainage infrastructure estranged from urban dynamics, has caused insecurity, environmental hazards such as floods and fires, and the isolation of the different surrounding neighborhoods. This studio will argue for the transformation of Vaso El Cristo and its surrounding urban area into a symbiotic system, tackling the issues of housing and water.  This aligns with the idea that human activity can transition from an extractivist culture to becoming a catalyst for positive ecological processes .

There is an urgent need to rethink the city’s water and housing systems and adapt them to a continuously growing urban fabric that must set a harmonious dialogue and implement symbiotic relationships with its natural context.  This studio is an opportunity to try a variety of possibilities to connect the diverse urban fabrics surrounding Vaso El Cristo, while linking them to the transformed basin.

The following questions will guide the process:

• How can we re-envision the 21st-century city through its water and housing systems using the Vaso El Cristo area as a case study? 
• Is it possible to design water systems that generate a sustainable water cycle while solving for scarcity and excess within the city limits? 
• Can we create urban-environmental positive feedback cycles through the redesign of an underutilized urban fabric? 
• How can design become the strongest tool to sustainably fix the broken city?

We will depart from understanding several housing and water projects that can provide successful examples. In the realm of housing, we will explore social rentals, collective properties and the transformation of industry into mixed use compounds. In the water realm, the recovery of the Sapé water course in Sao Paulo, the design of the borough of Augustenborg in Sweden, and the wetland Tianjin in Qiaoyuan, China.  

The studio is open to students from all disciplines as we are convinced about the importance of a multidisciplinary approach to address a condition such as this one.