Houses, housing and urban space in México. From colonialism to nineteenth-century liberalism

Abstract

Since the foundation of the colonial cities in the Spanish America, and in particular in Mexico, the residential types of land use became well defined in the urban structure and contributed to form a very successful model of city at the scale of the long duration. A general analysis of this model along with the study of the forms of housing during the old regime, reveal a number ruptures and discontinuities in the 19th century, specifically in the distribution of houses in the urban space, in the architectonic typologies, in the urban profile as a whole, and in the life style inside the wealthy and the modest houses.