Abraham Cruzvillegas was brought up in the self-built district of Mexico City, Colonia Ajusco. His parents built their own house (here), as did the rest of their community. Infrastructure and resources were all produced or sourced informally. Here's the DIY scene Cruzvillegas sets in his book,

Every weekend there was a festive air around the dusty activities of moving chalk, cement and sand; the women would cook and help to carry water, haul stones, bricks, bags of cement, buckets of sand or fizzy drinks, under a burning sun, in a challenging atmosphere moved by a spirit of busy and efficient collectivity. On what years later would become known as streets, the men and women of the community would stir the huge bowl of cement to the rhythm of cumbias, songs by José José, ranchera ballads, and there would be no shortage of beer, pulque or fruit juices to keep it all going.

Cruzvillegas has documented the evolution of his self-built barrio, producing photographs and a range of testimonies from the residents, recounting the relationship between the population & building materials — they often built from the natural volcanic rock on the site — as well as discussing the social, political & cultural formations that arose, imparting a great sense of what it must have been like to participate in the construction of what Mexicans call the ciudades perdidas (lost cities). His personal story is a kind of entry point for grappling with the roots, mechanics & repercussions of spontaneous organization in informal urban areas.

Between Friday and Sunday, while we were growing up, fragments of homes were built with a dynamic that some more than others joined in with. Water was brought in tins, buckets or tin cans originally used for vegetable fat, hung from a strong pole that bent in the middle - it was balanced across someone’s back so that it wouldn’t spill and he wouldn’t fall on the uneven ground. It was also brought on request in bins from Primera Parada (First Stop), so-called because at that time it was the only place where you could pick up public transport.

There were sometimes real conflicts over the monopolising of some specific service. Accidentally, the drinking water tap was in front of someone’s shabby little home; absurdly, they then became the ‘owners’ of the water. There was an owner of light, an owner of a telegraph pole, an owner of the street and even someone who owned the rubbish-always a source of excellent building materials.

Cruzvillegas has gone on to explore the aesthetics of this kind of construction, basing his art practice on notions of auto-construcción,

Windowless constructions, wooden shutters, tile and linoleum floors, walls with a plasterboard finish, plastic mouldings and aluminium windows, can be chosen on the spot, at a moment when the visual intention, the urgent need for comfort, functional ingenuity and lack of resources combine. That is why the lack of planning or the apparent stylistic incongruity of many self-built structures are also ideological, with a social and economic basis, even when apparently at their most frivolous. The formal configuration of the houses is first rooted in intuition, in the instinct for survival and the distant reference to what a decent life means, that is satisfying all vital needs, including the visual character of the day to day environment, its objects, its ornaments, and the physical relationship with things – ergonomics straight from the heart.

Here's the complete Auto-Construcción booklet (pdf, 4.2MB). Thanks to Marcela for pointing me in this direction.