Focus on: Cooperative Guendaliza'a (Social Production of Habitat Award 2015)

Every week, the CoHabitat Network introduces you to a collaborative housing project documented on the cohabitat.io database.

The Guendaliza'a housing cooperative in Mexico City provides affordable housing for its members and seeks to restore the social fabric of the community in order to make the Right to the City a reality.

Guendaliza'a ("brotherhood" in the Zapotec language) had the difficult challenge to open the path towards a new generation of public policies that recognize new forms of social property. The project includes 48 homes, two community spaces, a common parking lot, and sustainable technologies (rainwater harvesting, green roofs, solar water heaters and photovoltaic panels).

Their proposal for a housing cooperative for mutual aid (CVAM), inspired by the Uruguayan model, turned the housing policy of the Mexico City government : it offers a more collective and supportive way of producing and living in a social housing complex, but also in the sense that it integrates the neighborhood perspective and ensures that the housing project generates a positive impact on the surrounding area. The construction of the housing units was completed in 2015. At the same time, the cooperative has been promoting a neighborhood improvement program through public resources and involving the neighborhood to improve coexistence and cultural services for the benefit of all the inhabitants of the area.

The Guendaliza'a Cooperative won the Social Production of Habitat Award - Latin America in 2015.

▶ More information on cohabitat.io

Related: Utopías en construcción, experiencias latinoamericanas de producción social del hábitat