Plaza Unidad Independencia

What you are looking at. The project began in 1958, and the square was never the point: the aim was a housing estate for workers from the factories of southern Mexico City, built by the IMSS. The square is what holds it together —a meeting point designed by the architect Alejandro Prieto, who worked pre-Hispanic building lines into a modernist scheme, so the plaza reads as traditional and modern at once.

Why it is worth a look. It is one of the clearest surviving examples of mid-century social housing in the city: open space, low blocks, murals and planting handled as part of the architecture rather than as decoration. For anyone interested in Mexican modernism, it belongs on the same list as Ciudad Universitaria and the Nonoalco-Tlatelolco estate.

Where it is. On Calle San Bernabé, in the Unidad Independencia IMSS estate, in the south-west of the city near San Jerónimo. There is no metro station nearby: the practical options are a taxi or local buses along Avenida San Jerónimo, and the estate is best combined with a visit to Los Dinamos or San Ángel.