Accepted by................

This study describes and evaluates dwelling environments in Colima, Mexico, focusing on four selected situations for the lower income groups. This includes: an "introduction" of Colima's urbanization process; a description of the city's "urban context"; four lower income housing "case studies"; and summaries of the "dwelling/land " on the time/process perspective, physical aspects, utilities and services, land utilization, and utility net-works. Each case study was analyzed in its socio-economic and physical context, describ-ing the user income groups, the availability of services, the locality layout, the land subdivision, the dwellings, and the basic networks. A case study was evaluated through a comparison of the existing project with a revised layout. This is to illustrate typical characteristics of recent gridiron layout with clearly deficient land utilization which resulted in costly utility networks. The study attempts a) to identify and describe a representative cross-section of housing systems in the urban area of Colima, illustrating the physical and socio-economic environ-ment; b) to organize case studies into a comparative framework to facilitate analysis