The increase in informal settlements has aroused the concern of many professionals and governments seeking to understand the emergence and expansion of these dwellings, as they currently coexist and form an integral part of our cities, especially in less developed countries, where high rates of urban expansion are often associated with the emergence of informal settlements. As a consequence, the resistance and proliferation of these settlements have become a phenomenon, in which state intervention has failed to curb their growth. This article seeks to identify those recurrent patterns that allow the conformation, evolution and consolidation of informal settlements based on evidence from the Pomachaca human settlement in the Andean city of Tarma. The methodology developed is based on a structured visual survey analyzing 224 lots, 128 informal and 96 formal. As a result, in the first place...