The Land policy of the Angelópolis urban megaproject and its effects on the western periphery of Puebla

Abstract

At the beginning of 1992, the Federal Executive Power expropriated for reasons of public utility an area of ​​1,081.51 hectares of ejido lands destined to the constitution of a territorial reserve for the ordering of the metropolitan area of ​​the city of Puebla. In the assumptions, the inclusion of the affected towns and inhabitants in the territorial ordering project, attention to the problem of lack of social housing, and the need for environmental preservation were offered, as a whole, points of attention of the urban containment project. Immediately after the expropriations, the state government assumed a policy of intra-territorial control under the argument of regional planning. Thus, on May 6, 1993, the then-governor of Puebla, Manuel Bartlett Díaz, presented the Angelópolis Megaproject. This planning tool would be a turning point in the urban development of the city of Puebla, which would materialize with the creation of the Atlixcáyotl-Quetzalcóatl Territorial Reserve and the urban corridor of the service district known as Angelópolis. In this context, we will see how through what was the urban megaproject, in Puebla the differentiation between the urban marginalized and the privileged of selective public and private investment would be emphasized. This, based on a regional planning policy in which corruption regarding the use and destination of the land was revealed as a result of the relationship between government officials and real estate developers.