Map - Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl (Ciudad Nezahualcoyotl)

Nezahualcóyotl, or more commonly Neza, is a city and municipal seat of the municipality of Nezahualcóyotl in Mexico. It is located in the state of Mexico, adjacent to the east side of Mexico City. The municipality comprises its own intrastate region, Region IX (Mexico State).

It was named after Nezahualcoyotl, the Acolhua poet and king of nearby Texcoco, which was built on the drained bed of Lake Texcoco. The name Nezahualcóyotl comes from Nahuatl, meaning "fasting coyote". Nezahualcóyotl's heraldry includes an Aztec glyph as well as a coat of arms. The glyph depicts the head of a coyote, tongue outside the mouth with a collar or necklace as a symbol of royalty (one of the ways of depicting the Aztec king). The current coat of arms, which includes the glyph, was authorized by the municipality in the 1990s.

Until the 20th century, the land on which Ciudad Neza sits was under Lake Texcoco and uninhabited. Successful draining of the lake in the early 20th century created new land, which the government eventually sold into private hands. However, public services such as adequate potable water, electricity and sewerage were lacking until after the area was made an independent municipality in 1963. Today, Ciudad Neza is a sprawling city of over one million, entirely with modern buildings.

As of 2006, Nezahualcóyotl includes part of the world's largest shanty town, along with Chalco and Ixta. Most of its population is poor and have migrated from other parts of Mexico. It also has a very high crime rate, in part due to cholos, gangs that formed in the 1990s based upon gangs in the United States (especially Los Angeles). Since the 2000s, a significant number of natives of this city have immigrated to the United States, mostly settling in New York. This has led to a new Mexican subculture in the area.

Nezahualcoyotl, for whom the city and municipality were named, was the lord of Texcoco, one of the allies of the Aztec Triple Alliance. Texcoco dominated the area in which the modern municipality stands; however the land on which Ciudad Neza stands was under Lake Texcoco until the 20th century. Drainage of the interconnected lakes of the Valley of Mexico began in the early colonial period. The first major drainage project was begun in 1590, with the aim of eliminating the chronic flooding that plagued Mexico City. By the time of the Mexican War of Independence, flooding was still a problem in the Mexico City area, and at that time a project was begun to drain Lake Texcoco directly. The Lake Texcoco area was declared federal property in 1912, after which efforts to completely drain the lake commenced which continued until the 1930s. Starting in 1917 under Venustiano Carranza, efforts to determine legal ownership of lands that began to appear due to the drainage of the lake were undertaken. Most of this land was declared federal property to be sold. In 1933, the Mexico City–Puebla highway was built through this area. The first settlements in what is now the municipality were extensions of the municipalities of Chimalhuacán, La Paz and Ecatepec.

The area was known for a bird species called the chichicuilote-atziztizuilotl, which inhabited the lakes and ponds of the Valley of Mexico. Today it is nearly extinct. The center of the city had an area that specialized in the sale of the bird, both alive and cooked.

These initial settlements were without infrastructure or public services, and efforts to procure these began in the 1940s. In 1945 the Xochiaca dam and the Tequixquiac tunnel were built, the diversion of potable water allowed for the creation of the first formal neighborhoods of Juárez Pantitlán, México and El Sol. By 1949, the area had 2,000 inhabitants. In the 1950s the population of the area grew quickly as people from various parts of Mexico immigrated to the Mexico City area in search of opportunity. This grew to 40,000 by 1954, despite the lack of other services such as electricity. The area gained more formal administrative status from the state of Mexico in the 1950s as it grew, but by 1959, a group representing the now-33 neighborhoods of the area protested the lack of services, which still included sufficient potable water.

In 1960, the idea emerged to separate this area from the municipality of Chimalhuacán in order to create a new municipality. By this time, the area had a population of 80,000. This idea culminated into the creation of the municipality of Nezahualcóyotl on 3 April 1963 by the state legislature, with Jorge Sáenza Gómez Knoth as the first municipal president.

Conversion of the area into a municipality helped greatly in getting water, pavement, sewer and streetlights in the 1960s and 1970s. However, the sale of land here was legally complicated due to problems in land title. This began to be regulated in the mid-1970s and would continue through the 1980s and into part of the 1990s.

By the early 1980s, major public buildings such as hospitals, the municipal palace, schools, libraries and the Museum of Archeology had been built. The Xochiaca area had become a landfill with a sports facility built along its edge.