The recovery process of housing in Mexico City 7+ years after the 2017 Puebla-Morelos earthquake

Abstract

During the M_w = 7.1 September 19, 2017 earthquake with epicenter nearby the boundary of Puebla and Morelos states, an important amount of structural damage occurred in Mexico City, 120 km away from the epicenter. Among the most severely affected sectors was the housing sector. At least 16 houses collapsed or partially collapsed during the earthquake, more than 5100 were demolished with public funds and more than 5800 were sternly damaged and required to be rehabilitated. Close to 1300 apartment buildings were severely damaged, where 33 of them collapsed or partially collapsed. Then, the recovery of the housing sector, which is instrumental for both the social and economy recovery of the city, have posed a monumental task and challenge to the citizens and authorities of Mexico City. In this paper, the author summarizes how these efforts to recover the affected housing sector have been in Mexico City close to eight years after the 9/19/2017 earthquake, based upon detailed statistics and information compiled by the author from different sources. It can be concluded that after 7+ years, the recovery process of single-family houses has been a success, as close to 100 % of the affected homes have been fully recovered with much better projects than the originally damaged. However, the recovery process of apartment buildings, although important, still has a long way to go. As of May 2025, only 59.6 % of the affected buildings have been fully recovered (31.3 % using public funds), other 11.3 % are under construction or rehabilitation process and, in 29.1 % of the affected buildings, no action has been taken to speed their recovery.

Keywords

2017 Puebla-Morelos earthquake / Seismic recovery / Housing / Apartment buildings / Houses / Reconstruction

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Arturo Tena-Colunga: Writing - original draft, Visualization, Validation, Supervision, Software, Resources, Project administration, Methodology, Investigation, Funding acquisition, Formal analysis, Data curation, Conceptualization.

Declaration of competing interest

The author declares that he has no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

The author wants to express his gratitude to all professionals involved in providing trustful information for the city authorities’ platforms Plataforma CDMX and Reconstrucción CDMX and for the private Fundación Slim. Héctor Hernández Ramírez, Eber Alberto Godínez Domínguez, Alejandro Grande Vega, Luis Angel Urbina Californias and Omar Villegas Jiménez are thanked for their previous collaboration on this research effort. Supplementary financial support of Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Azcapotzalco through an internal Basic Science project with no number is gratefully acknowledged.

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