"Dwellings are built and improved step-by-step, depending on household savings and informal loans, and often in response to changes in family size or the incorporation of another, related household unit (usually formed by a male child). In this latter case it is common to build a small new dwelling on a still-free portion of the original plot. Many times, housing incorporates commercial or workshop uses, or the original household builds one or more rooms or small rental apartments at ground level or on a second story. In fact, the combination of housing with commercial, service, or workshop uses, or with the production of rental units, is one of the main factors responsible for the improvement of average socioeconomic conditions in the informal city over time. Other explanatory factors include access to high school and college for many of the initial inhabitants' children and the gradual arrival of better-off households as the colonia upgrades.
Besides housing, new land uses are gradually incorporated in response to growing demand for retail commerce, consumer services, and public facilities (grocery stores, churches, schools, medical clinics, and so on). The spatial distribution of these activities is usually oriented by the emergence of some local commercial districts, mostly corresponding to one or more main streets and to the paths followed by public transport.
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In spite of the rather low quality and reduced variety of most public spaces, they are usually intensively used and traversed, most of all by housewives buying staples and bringing their children to and from school, or by kids and teenagers playing and socializing. This markedly contrasts with what we can observe in the formal city, where, with the exception of some areas of the old central city, most people avoid public walking as much as possible, and kids are usually not allowed to stay and play in public streets. Additionally, in many colonias populares, local streets are from time to time the scenes of family parties, where neighbours usually are welcome if not expressly invited. And one or more wider streets are converted into a weekly market place, where a tianguis (street market) is set out, and people from the colonia or nearby ones not only buy a wide range of goods but also, especially during the weekends, go for a stroll, eat popular dishes at antojitos (snack) stalls, and socialize. The other side of the coin is that the uses of public spaces are regulated by customs of urbanity that suppose, in order to avoid neighbourhood conflicts, the acceptance of different kinds of mishandlings concerning the uses of the streets and sidewalks."
Duhau, Emilio (2014) "The Informal City". In: Cities from Scratch. Poverty and Informality in Urban Latin America. Durham: Duke University Press. pp 155-156.
