SIWEN MA
Project Facts
Location: Merida, Yucatan, Mexico
Time: Jan 2016 - May 2016
Category: Academic Studio, Collaborative Work
Advisors: Diane Davis (Harvard GSD), Jose Castillo (Harvard GSD)
Collaborator: Stephany Lin (Harvard GSD MUP)
Programs: Arch GIS, Rhinos, AutoCAD, Vray for Rhinos, Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign
Realigning for Renewal: Creating Alignments for Kanasin’s Future
With rapid population growth across the Yucatán, the region has witnessed extreme rates of urbanization, with new housing developments emerging across the landscape. The municipalities bordering Mérida have most acutely born the burden of this sprawl, and nowhere more so than in Kanasín. With rapid, unchecked, and unmanaged development patterns and little governance capacity, Kanasín has developed a regional reputation as a chaotic anarchy. INFONAVIT credits have been fueling this growth; thus Kanasín offers INFONAVIT a critical look into the housing credits’ impacts on local governance strategy, capacity, and implementation. The mayor of Kanasín, for example, prior to the studio’s visit had never met a representative from INFONAVIT, and was eager for any opportunity to engage with the agency on his city’s future development. In the face of persistent development pressures, the city desperately needs new models of urban growth to serve its residents’ needs and sustainably grow its own capacity to govern. Thus using Kanasín as a case study, we ask how Infonavit credits can offer a tool for the city to develop its own capacity, leadership, and agency in directing its own growth.
Analysis
Between 1995 and 2010, Kanasín’s developed land area grew by 55%, a far more rapid rate than adjacent municipalities like Uman, Conkal, or even Mérida. More significantly, Kanasín’s population growth ranks among the highest in Mexico, growing by 147% from 1995-2010 and 64% from 2010-2030. INFONAVIT credits have facilitated this growth while also determining the specific type of development now evident across the city. Kanasín receives a far higher proportion of credits at the lowest income tiers and lower proportion at the middle income tiers, particularly compared to Mérida. This combination of rapid growth and low-quality housing for low-income credit recipients has contributed to volatile housing development and low stability. Additionally, Kanasín is somewhat unique in that small developers dominate the housing market, but often these developers have little expertise in real estate development and infrastructure. Without necessary infrastructure from either the public or private sector, and little planning and oversight from the municipality, developers have constructed housing along disconnected blocks and roads with little connection to the rest of the city. This confluence of income instability, low quality developers, and disconnected growth patterns has led to housing abandonment rates that are significantly higher in Kanasín than in neighboring municipalities, with up to 50% in Kanasín, 23% in Mérida, and less than 8% in Uman and Conkal.
Disconnected growth is also evident on a larger, citywide scale. Based on our analysis of urban growth patterns using business establishment locations, urban development consistently spreads in one direction, outwards on the east-west axis along the major corridors away from Mérida. In contrast, the highest density areas with the most vibrant activity are those with an intersection of east-west and north-south economic activity – the historic center as well as the site of high-density, 30-year-old housing built by CROC. These nodes provide key alignments across the city that control growth within the existing city, densifying economic opportunity, infrastructure, and services for residents and connecting discrete parts of the city.
Finally, compounding the challenge of managing urban growth is Kanasín’s lack of capacity for planning and enforcement within the local municipality. The city is currently undergoing its first-ever process for developing a comprehensive plan, but still does not have any zoning in place. Its strongest tool for intervention is in permitting, but enforcement of permitting regulations has been lax the past. Furthermore, the city struggles from a severe lack of resources; for example, it currently only has one waste pick-up truck to serve waste collection for the entire city. This limited capacity can exacerbate the challenges of working with and coordinating a multitude of regional and national-level agencies working on the local level, including INFONAVIT. Recognizing these challenges, city officials realize that they face residents who do not identify or engage with the city, feeling that it does not serve their basic expectations and needs.
Proposal
Our project confronts these structural challenges through a comprehensive strategy for social housing investment, catalyzing the realignment of Kanasín’s urban patterns as a whole. Through a holistic approach to housing development, we use housing as a vehicle for better public infrastructure, services, and governance, in order to improve residents’ overall quality of life.
To accomplish this, social housing must be positioned within the various interests of key stakeholders. We highlighted the interests of the city, INFONAVIT, developers, and residents, to understand shared and exclusive interests. For example, the city and INFONAVIT share an interest in developing new forms of growth control, but the city may also place greater weight on its own fiscal resources and capacity. Infrastructure and services provision is an overwhelming priority for the city and its residents, while developers are primarily still concerned with their costs of development, such as land and permitting. Notably, one area of INFONAVIT’s interests is in promoting underutilized housing credits and initiatives, such as credits for housing improvements, expansions, and rental. Our proposal thus leverages these underutilized credits to bring in other investments that meet the interests of the other stakeholders.
To begin, the city will select a key pilot project area that will demonstrate the future reorientation of the city’s development. Our proposed site sits along a north-south corridor, near to the periferico highway that serves as the border between Mérida and Kanasín, and is characterized by disjointed, small developments at an overall low density. This new corridor serves to connect across the existing east-west economic corridors, providing new opportunities for concentrated nodes of commercial activity at the key intersections. Within this corridor, the city and INFONAVIT will concentrate investment in both social housing and public infrastructure and services.
To coordinate housing, the city will organize residents to maximize the possible INFONAVIT credits that can be implemented simultaneously, creating a heterogeneous mix of denser housing development. Initially, these can take the form of Line 4 credits, including repairs on existing housing, expansion for the existing residents, expansion for rental units, and expansion for workplace activity. Residents making these investments as a coordinated, simultaneous effort will create a bigger, collective positive impact on the neighborhood’s image, not to mention their homes’ values, than if a single home were to make improvements alone. In addition to promoting the credits, INFONAVIT can offer to include Kanasín in their program Hipoteca Con Servicio, which collects local taxes from residents on behalf of the city. To incentivize resident participation, INFONAVIT could also offer a new kind of service to the city, potentially by offering a low-interest loan to the city for infrastructure investments in the areas of the housing developments, based on the number of credits used in that area.
With this support from INFONAVIT, the city can invite other agencies to sponsor different projects within the corridor, from improving the road networks and sidewalks, providing new public spaces and community facilities, and constructing new transit infrastructure. In the proposed design, the site integrates these investments by encouraging commercial ground-floor uses along the two exterior roads, anchored by a more meandering interior corridor that serves to link the previously disjointed developments. Public plazas and facilities such as schools, health clinics, and senior centers punctuate this community-oriented corridor, and serve to integrate critical services and amenities into housing redevelopment. Most importantly, this renewed focus on the public sphere offers Kanasín an opportunity to build a new identity as a vibrant, beautiful, quality place to live.
Ultimately, demonstrating the feasibility and appeal of developing in the city’s core, rather than at its far edges, is the most critical strategy for preventing developers’ ongoing sprawl. To stimulate ongoing infill housing development in later phases, the city must provide compelling enough incentives for developers to be attracted to the city’s interior. The city could offer to waive the developers’ infrastructure and land prep requirements throughout the site, and provide the infrastructure itself through the public investments already committed.
Future Vision
Through this multifaceted strategy - leveraging credits to re-invest in an existing neighborhood, aligning public investment to concentrate public space and amenities, and maintaining a citywide vision of growth - this proposal offers both the city of Kanasín and INFONAVIT a new way of approaching both housing and urban development. Recognizing housing as a physical, social, and financial tool can allow INFONAVIT to better leverage its resources to support cities struggling to manage urban growth.
Above all, housing provides homes. INFONAVIT exists to ensure workers have access to homes that are safe and nurturing, and that enable opportunities and a high quality of life. Residents of Kanasín deserve these quality homes, which encompass much more than the structure itself. Future housing investment can become the vehicle for the public investments that define a sense of home.