HOUSING AS AN URBAN STRATEGY
During the course of their studio work, students took these questions to heart, and their projects thus built on a closer understanding of the specific historical and contemporary conditions of the sites under study. Their ideas reflected not only a national commitment to social housing, but also an appreciation for the local context in which certain forms of housing were most apt. Projects ranged widely because of the differences between the two cities and also reflected the peculiarities of the micro-sites selected for the location of proposed social housing projects. Some projects oriented development along transport lines in order to connect the site and city to potential industrial economic growth in the larger region, while others proposed housing that could generate micro-economies and small-scale manufacturing in a local area suffering from industrial decline. In their entirety, the proposals presented here represent the need to generate novel and dynamic housing models capable of operating within and adding value to urban locations. The proposals also demonstrate that actionable ideas must be grounded in a deep understanding of the local economy, material landscapes, and existent political arrangements, particularly given the need for local support for densification from citizens, merchants, and local authorities.
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This diverse set of student work proposes that as INFONAVIT and other governing authorities continue to search for new programs and policies to incentivize denser social housing production for the achievement of sustainable urban development goals, they must be well-prepared to think locally as well as nationally and regionally. With this objective as a mandate, future studio work will tackle other cities, regions, and realities so as to identify a range of prototypical urban conditions. These urban conditions represent development opportunities that can be positively leveraged through national policies in order to produce denser and more economically sustainable cities through new forms of social housing production.