Hiernaux, Daniel <br/><br/>
Residential Practices and Strategies in the Chalco Valley, a Mexico City Periphery 

 -  2003.<br/>							 
<br/><br/> 88 
<br/><br/> This article studies the expansion of urban peripheral areas from the “inhabitant’s” point of view, as we consider the inhabitant to be an active agent in the process of city expansion and in the creation of the city’s social fabric. Specifically we review the haphazard way in which Mexico City has expanded into the Chalco Valley. This peripheral urban area has become a shifting and dynamic border area and represents a paradigm for the new informal and poor peripheral areas the poor margins, which have developed recently to the South-East of Mexico City. The residential practices that we studied indicate three types of strategies: basic strategy, complex strategy, and a dual income strategy. These are not represented as simple, isolated acts. Rather, they are constructed on the basis of multidimensional arguments: family projects and ideals, circulation of essential information relating to property transactions, journeys, and opportunities to create new economic activities, which generate family income.