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.

Not a single CDMX metro line has recovered its pre-pandemic ridership. Shouldn’t be a surprise for a city that punishes the poor with insufferable transit.

Are this elevator requirements for Tulum and Mérida oversized? @stephenjacobsmith.com

It is really baffling that the Mexico City government actually went with their 40 million USD elevated walkway.

Lately, I have been working in Jalisco municipalities. Most copied the state’s optional zoning code verbatim (even Guadalajara did for a while). The state code explains the lack of new apartments since 2000. The maximum dwelling density caps at 42 units/acre.

Guadalajara apartments appreciation post. Guadalajara has way better architecture than CDMX because they don’t limit the city to 4 stories nor allow a ridiculous 80% lot coverage.

This data proves the left-NIMBY claim that apartments are built for investment rather than habitation can be a super convenient excuse to block new housing :/

A municipality in Mexico has sensible exemptions for parking mandates: small lots, narrow streets and narrow frontages 🥳

Mexican policymakers will tell you people prefer to have gardens and patios before living in apartments; when the average Mexican block looks like this.

I have counted so far two municipalities in Mexico that require a heliport depending on the building height 😢 Aguascalientes, Aguascalientes El Salto, Jalisco

State norm that forces municipalities without parking mandates to use the ones mandated by the capital city 😢

Had lunch with the planning director of a 100k city. The city has invested in its riverfront. The guy agreed to densify there, just nothing above 5 stories. Curious why Mexican planners (those who timidly agree on density) are fixated on six story limits. Too many Jan Gehl fanboys ¿?

Need someone to explain me why apartments are more prone to be rented out than houses.

In Latin American cities, well-serviced land is scarce, so high-income households tend to densify in the few areas that are well located and served.

2008 Urban Design guidelines adopted by most Mexican planners recommended 50-120 units/hectare. Densities too low to make apartment buildings feasible. Imo, Mexico has such a low apartment dwelling rate because Mexican planners have never understood dwelling densities.

Mexico said in the 2000s, let's make our cities completely unmanageable by building super-dense publicly-financed suburbs for the poor.

Nuevo Leon's 2017 Urban Development Law is a great example of how a regulatory relief that exempted redensification projects from the 22sqm/unit land donation requirement, triggered housing development in Monterrey's City Center.

Mexican suburban social apartment estates consist of hellish designs. They stem from paternalistic debates about whether the poor can afford elevator maintenance and assumptions that they need 1.1 parking spaces per unit.

1.26 million municipality, where less than 1% lives in apartments, is willing to radically densify, reduce parking mandates, and revise its building code 😄🎉

Riding the Maya Train today. The station is absurdly oversized for a stop serving only three daily trains total.

Just met a couple of municipal authorities who oppose anything above 3 stories in Mexico’s fastest growing city. They claim that tall buildings have destroyed their historic plaza’s character. (Pictures: the allegedly offensive building and plaza)

Today, I lobbied a municipality to legalize 4-story buildings. The Planning Department was reluctant with the typical Mexican arguments: culture, available land for sprawl, lack of condo culture… They also claimed 2 stories was sufficient for one of the country’s fastest-growing cities.

Got my hands on a Mexico housing typology database 😀 Like most Latin American cities, well-serviced land is so scarce that the wealthy cluster in centrally located flats.

Big fan of quasi gore municipal murals picturing a priest stopping the Mayan human sacrifice.

In Mexico we say verticales – as in “condominios verticales/horizontales”

Mexico has a higher opposition to Maduro’s capture than most Latin American countries. Probably due to minimal exposure to Venezuelan diaspora.

Found some Caracas density maps.

Autocracies make the best hits. m.youtube.com/watch?v=IOxj...

Santiago, Chile has been experiencing a real estate boom… rental prices are dropping.

In the Latin American context, Colombian cities are the densest. Despite their low apartment rates, Mexican cities rank just below average density. Their exceptionally dense suburbs compensate for low-rise sprawl.

Convinced a state government to write their building and subdivision code. So that’s my big 2026 project.

Chile's latest census has housing tenure data. Informal rental arrangements (no contracts) concentrate in low-income neighborhoods with the cheapest housing stock. Wealthy neighborhoods with expensive home sign rental agreements.

Santiago densified successfully in recent years. In 7 years it achieved more density growth than Mexico City managed in 10.

Monterrey has allowed unlimited FAR, building coverage, and density in its center since 2002. However, state law requiring 22 sqm land donation per unit makes this completely unusable.