Designing housing in the third world : a prototype for housing the Maquiladora workers in the northern cities of Mexico

Abstract

The difficulty in designing low-income housing is !hat. it will not sit quietly, other problems keep Jostling about it. To design low-income housing one must consider the extreme conditions of poverty and urban problems, deal with sociology, history, politics and the economy. The second difficulty is the breadth of the subject. But this thesis project is not meant to answer all of the problems that low-income housing might have to deal with. It is meant to be a positive contribution to the development of this subject in Third World Nations, particularly Mexico. This thesis develops a housing prototype for the northern border cities of Mexico, in this case, is the city of Reynosa. The reason for choosing this Designing Housing in the Third World area is because northern border towns are expected to be the faster growing cities in Mexico in this decade, due to the large industrial development resulting from the Free Trade Agreement with Canada, Mexico and the U.S.A. The number of people that come to these cities looking for employment are encountering housIng problems. Different housing programs and solutions have been established by governmental institutions, private interests and individuals. All of these solutions, have tried to answer the problems in their own way. This thesis will compare these housing solutions for both their positive and negative characteristics in or~er to identify particular architectural design solutions that these communities need. On the basis of this research a new housing prototype for border towns will be designed. The housing prototype hypothetically is intended to be used by the INFONAVIT, a private developer or a self-help community group. This prototype is developed from an existing project taking this research ~nto consideration, with the notion that by drawIng from these experiences and looking at these constraints, budgets, and overall proposals one can design a prototype for a real case and problem.