Difference between revisions of "Colonias (USA)"

|style="font-size:1.1em;"|''Colonias'' (singular: ''colonia'') are informal, self-built housing units typically clustered together in unregulated and unincorporated subdivisions in the Southwestern United States – California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas (Donelson and Esparza 2010, Esparza and Donelson, 2016). This low-income housing is often located outside the formal city limits and is characterized by deficient infrastructure (e.g. water, roads, electricity, health, police, street lighting, wastewater and trash removal), lack of regulations or enforcement (e.g. zoning, building codes), poverty and health challenges, and land title ambiguity (Donelson and Esparza, 2010). The primary residents of ''colonias'' are people with contemporary or historical familial ties to Mexico.  The majority of ''colonias'' were built in the post-World War II era. The name translates to community, neighbourhood or suburb from Spanish (Ward 1999) and originates from low-income urban ''colonia'' neighbourhoods in Mexico. The legacy of ''colonias'' in Mexico facilitated the development of ''colonias'' in the US.