Bosque Urbano Tlaquepaque

The Bosque Urbano Tlaquepaque covers a little over 10.5 hectares at the corner of Calzada Lázaro Cárdenas and the Chapala highway, next to the Fraccionamiento Revolución in the El Álamo area. It is the largest public space in the municipality and sits at the south-eastern entrance to metropolitan Guadalajara. It is run by the Agencia Metropolitana de Bosques Urbanos (AMBU), and the aim is a dense forest with as little built infrastructure as possible, one that soaks up rainwater and gives shelter to birds, reptiles and insects.

The state-owned land had been used for recreation since the 1980s. In the 1990s a 20-hectare park was planned here, but the project was dropped in 1992 when the site was used to dump rubble from the 1992 explosions in Guadalajara's Sector Reforma. State offices such as the Jalisco forensic science institute were later built on part of it, the rest was fenced off, and a planned agricultural complex ended up as one abandoned office block. After a fire on 18 April 2020 and a plan to put a vehicle impound lot here, the neighbours organised: they occupied the land on 31 May 2020, cleaned it up, planted vegetable gardens, set up a recycling drop-off and, on 4 June, some 350 of them blocked the Chapala highway. In August 2020 the government ruled out the impound lot, work began in February 2021 with an investment of about 52 million pesos, and the forest opened on 27 November 2021.

It now holds more than 2,000 young trees of over 30 native species, including ash, primavera, rosa morada, guamúchil, guaje, tepehuaje, parota and mesquite. There are lit paths, pollinator gardens, an arboretum of Jalisco figs, a stormwater basin that keeps the lower part of the neighbourhood from flooding, a seven-a-side football pitch, playgrounds and a Punto Verde recycling point.