The housing boom cost the Guadalajara Metropolitan Area (AMG) 1,568 hectares of green areas during the 2016-2022 period, despite the delimitation of both urban and forest protected areas and territorial planning instruments.
This figure is equivalent to having lost 17 times the territory of the Los Colomos Forest, which consists of 92 hectares.
According to the technical map called Loss of the Peri-urban Green System due to Urbanizations or Irregular Settlements, of the Imeplan, the formal houses are those that have devastated 66 percent of the area lost in these six years, while the unregulated ones took the remaining 34.
The Municipality Leading the loss of the peri-urban green system is Zapopan with 793 hectares, that is, 51 percent of all the disappeared territory. Of this amount, 63 percent are houses with licenses and the rest are irregular.
It is followed by Tlajomulco, which adds 428 more hectares of new houses in inappropriate areas, despite the fact that there is even a ban on new houses due to water problems. This Municipality accumulates 27 percent of the lost green land.
Furthermore, 82 percent of the
hectares that corresponds to this Municipality have formal permits involved.
The rest of the Municipalities, although far from the two mentioned above, are tlaquepaque with 4 percent of the total green areas eliminated; Juanacatlán with 3, El Salto, 2; Zapotlanejo and Ixtlahuacán share one percent each and Guadalajara, with just 0.2 percent.
In addition, the document explains that the most affected areas were those that are already zoned as environmental protection and conservationsince they bring together 77 percent of the lost extension, followed by forest-urban transition areas (15 percent) and finally 5 percent of protected natural areas.
An additional 4 percent constitutes zones that are proposed as protected natural area.
The most affected were the Cerro del Tajo Environmental Recovery area on its border with La Primavera Forest, followed by El Bajío, El Nixticuil Forest and even Los Colomos Forest itself.
The head of Imeplan, Patricia Martínez Barba, shared these documents and diagnosis yesterday at the session of the Metropolitan Coordination Board As part of the work to update the Land Management Plan, (POTMet).
However, it justified that the houses built in these prohibited areas obtained their respective permits in Administrations prior to those of Citizen movement, since this party has governed the majority of the metropolitan Municipalities in the period in which these green areas were lost.
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