The aim of this paper is to analyze certain forms of negotiation used by inhabitants of some popular neighborhoods in certain litigation in the civil courts held in Mexico City during the first decades of the Twentieth Century. This will show that these lawsuits were, in part, a result of the lack of a true system of urban planning for the capital, as they showed a lack of obligation incurred by the historical actors involved in the process of urban expansion experienced by the city, and generate a dialectic between the regulatory discourse and everyday reality.