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At the interface between research on environmental coalitions and on the territorialisation of environmental issues, this article analyses the sources of this alliance between the inhabitants of working-class neighborhoods and activist academics around the development of ecological water management on the urban outskirts of Mexico City, as well as its effects on territorial (re)appropriation. Drawing on qualitative materials (technical content, interviews and observations) arising from a long-term sociological survey, it shows how ecological planning creates an interface between these two social groups, a supportive system of exchanges of symbolic and material resources to counter the public authorities, and the foundation of a cognitive convergence around the definition and interpretation of space.