State of Mexico law requires 260 sqft land donation per unit for 30+ unit projects; i.e. a 40 apartment building on a 10,000 sqft lot would require donating the entire lot. As a result, there is basically no infill development in Mexico City Metropolitan municipalities like Naucalpan.

Naucalpan, a municipality within the Mexico City Metropolitan Area, with 830,000 inhab., approved 200 housing units during 2025. NIMBYest city in the world?

Monterrey has one of the weirdest urban forms for a city of 5.4M people. Even in 1990, before suburban housing subsidies, the city had this weird low density core, high density suburbs. Interestingly, nowadays, despite the single-family suburbanization, the city as a whole is more dense than in 1990

Riding the Metrobús from Condesa to Reforma during off-peak hour is super nice.

Fun fact: Guatemala, despite being poorer, has twice the amount of households owning cars than Peru. Apparently Guatemalans buy cheap used Mexican cars; just as Mexicans buy cheap used American cars.

Writing an article about Monterrey. One interesting thing is how 91% of Monterrey's population growth between 2000-2020 happened in Infonavit financed developments (blue). 61% in Guadalajara and 39% in Mexico City.

Guadalajara set parking maximums within their TOD zones. Develops continued to build parking, as most TOD towers were meant for upper class Mexicans. They sell the parking spaces informally (i.e. no property title for the parking space, solely de facto occupancy rights).

Surprised by the amount of towers coming up in Guadalajara.

I heard people in this social media might like a single-stair, 15-story, Guadalajara floorplan.

Planning Director of a 250,000 inhab municipality would calculate the gross floor area = lot size * BCR * FAR 😭😭😭 The guy is still one of the most knowledgeable that I have met, tho.

Compared to Chile, a country with 40% the population of Spain.

Haven’t really been aware, until recently, of the amount of PDA in Mexico City. I’d say it is more common than other Latin American countries. Also, Mexicans do it in the most cheesy overdramatic way possible.

The performative government of CDMX is trying to appease NIMBY housing advocates again, with some cheesy reform! The constitutional right to neighborhood attachment.

Chile’s reforming its national zoning ordinances to: 1) assume 2 inhabitants/unit instead of 4, increasing allowable dwelling density 2) halve parking requirements near transit 3) lower FAR bonus threshold from 5000sqm to 2500sqm, also eliminating municipal veto. NIMBYs are seething

El Salvador banned parking mandates. Most Shoupista country. www.asamblea.gob.sv/node/13621

The Peruvian election is quite unique. The vote between the urban poor and rural poor is super different. Peru being one of the few LatAm countries (with Bolivia) where the main city still draws many migrants from the rural areas.

Really funny social class cleavage in the Peruvian election. Wealthy Lima votes for the catholic right wing populist. Poor Lima votes for the fujimorist right wing populist.

Just found out Aguascalientes reformed its state law to allow municipalities to eliminate parking mandates in exchange of bicycle parking (the state is relatively cyclist).

Mexico City is the only federal entity that requires local congress approval to update municipal zoning. So politically complex, that the city is basically stucked with zoning plans from the 90s.

One thing that many Mexican municipalities do is raffle cars to incentivize people to pay their property taxes.

Aguascalientes is the only state in Mexico with a proper garbage collection system. Would really like to know how cheaper it is to operate than the impractical door-to-door system.

Really crazy that Madrid and Barcelona require 1 parking space per housing unit; even in their super dense urban cores.

Skopje’s 2010’s neoclassical architecture is based.

Send Athens recs, oomfies 🇬🇷

Need one of my Kosovar Albanian followers to explain the construction boom that is visible in EVERY Kosovo city. Is is diaspora speculative investment? Nationbuilding? Something else?

The municipalist inside me likes the sign with four different etymologies for local government.

Eastern Europe most cyclist city appreciation post.

Went to Srebrenica today. Made me wonder which genocides has the international community actually averted. Perhaps Kosovo? 🤔

Everyone should read about late-Yugoslav informal housing construction 🤓 www.researchgate.net/publication/...

It is interesting to read how Spain’s housing discourse in X is slowly shifting to a more YIMBY attitude. After years of tenant laws and antiAirbnb sentiment, some journalists are realizing that they are not working.

Sarajevo apartments as a reminder that the modern movement superblock was based.

Belgrade Brutalist apartments appreciation post.

Mexico's dispersed sprawl makes transit in periurban social housing estates so inefficient that employers are the ones who provide transportation. Basically, those communities are isolated on weekends when workers aren't commuting.

Oaxaca Coast Municipal buildings and a mayor’s office.

This was part of a work trip. Saddest municipality I have ever been. Mexican communal land tenure system makes it impossible for them to levy property taxes, so hotels worth 11M USD operate tax free.

A building damaged in the 2017 Mexico City Earthquake collapsed. One more case of the massive failure that was the Reconstruction Process. In 2018, the city opted to do it on their own; upzoning and partnering with developers was too neoliberal for them.

Spanish NIMBYs just blocked 450 centrally located co-op homes. www.eldiario.es/madrid/somos...

A pic of informal speculative subdivisions to start by beach weekend.

The most NIMBY housing take that you will hear in your life will always come from someone from Barcelona.

Doing a Balkan trip for three weeks (🇷🇸🇧🇦🇲🇪🇦🇱🇽🇰🇲🇰🇬🇷) Send Balkan recommendations. I am going during March.

Monterrey's Center has higher median home values than Mexico City's. Monterrey builds new housing at the center, while CDMX construction clusters around km 4-7 in the Benito Juárez borough.

Since the democratization of Mexico City, few things have been done right (mainly gay marriage and abortion). The city also has democratized concerts.

This week I went to a municipality that understands that parking requirements and low dwelling densities are bad, but levies a significant revenue from penalties charged to developments that fall short of parking mandates or that include more housing units. So they are reluctant to upzone :<

Had a meeting with developers from Tulum. They really expect to build without any competition at all. They complained about the “oversupply” of units, that makes them drop prices. It is the first time I hear opposition to higher dwellings densities because that exacerbates the oversupply ¿?

Land Value Capture is the panacea in Latin American planning discourse, lobbied heavily by the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy. Despite few successful cases, mainly Colombia and Brazil, Mexican planners won’t upzone without complex LVC mechanisms. As a result, Mexico has low-density urban cores.

Needed to go from Merida to Valladolid in Yucatan. Decided to take the bus. The exourban Maya Train stations just make it so inconvenient vs. the centrally located bus stations.

Mexican building codes are sometimes drafted for free by the local Architects or Engineers Associations. Which then write in requirements that construction managers or electricians must be a member of their association.

Guayacán blooming season in Oaxaca.

It is interesting how Mexico’s 1.2M housing policy mirrors Soviet shoe production incentives: -Standardized 645 sqft homes 2BR/1BA -Massive estates built wherever to meet quotas -No construction in high-demand cities -USD35k price cap, so long queues for desirable locations or better-quality homes

Mexico City is literally getting shittier every year.