How the house turned into home. Housing and city in the nineteenth-century Mexico

Abstract

Liberal Reform marks in Mexico the culmination of a process of social, economic and juridical transformations that influences strongly in the ways of residing in the city and in the house. One of the most outstanding results of this process is the transformation of house into “ home”; understanding this as the principal space for new family, urged for privacy and intimacy and with a growing need of comfort. For this to happen the city should be able to offer suitable options of urban lifeto mantain the house with a good surveillance and care; urban equipments, are the ones which will redeem this function. The construction of home is too the definitionalso the redefinition of the public and private boundaries, wich will not becontraries anymore, but complements. The citizen, subject of rights and obligations, will be in all senses the main protagonist.