Located along the Mexico-United States border, “Las Colonias” emerged as areas where peri-urban subdivisions of substandard housings cluster. Occupied by poverty-stricken communities that are self-labeled as “the forgotten Americans”, these informal settlements locate in illegally subdivided agriculturally unsuitable lands across unincorporated territories near major border cities with no access to basic infrastructure and services for decades. Colonias face challenges from both environmental and human-made disasters such as flooding, famine, and disease. In addition, global climate change has made the Colonia community even more fragile under extreme weather. Although the number of Colonias remains stable nowadays, the existing ones are growing with increasing densities – justifying the need for proper evaluation and intervention.
Public spaces within Colonias are often missing due to the lack of financial and political support – however, they are the opportunity sites where chances to serve surrounding communities arise. Therefore, our project aims to transfer those lost spaces into places where inclusiveness and sustainability are used as instruments to empower communities through their own construction. The site is selected as typical moment along the U.S.-Mexico border. The proposed site improvement can be considerd a modular which could be repeated along the border.
