Green Growth Strategies for Mexican Cities

Project Summary:

Mexico’s 383 cities, home to 78% of Mexico’s population, are engines of economic growth and prosperity, but rapid urbanization through a large spatial expansion, decades-old low-density urban growth, and decaying infrastructure have led Mexican officials to pursue green growth strategies. The urban growth pattern for the last thirty years was a large spatial expansion that led to a low-density development that resulted in inefficient resource use for economic development. Hence it is required to redefine urban landscape to amplify the gain from urbanization and to promote green and inclusive growth.

List of Activities:

• Facilitating the incorporation of a set of activities to inform the policy reforms
• Designing and implementing instruments for sustainable and inclusive cities
• Fostering learning and knowledge-sharing

Outcomes:

Outcome 1:

• Develop a methodology to assess the environmental, social and economic implications of various urbanization patterns and design suitable instruments to mitigate externalities and reap potential benefits accordingly

Outcome 2:

• Develop a spatial planning tool for cities. Preliminarily, the team would seek to support initial efforts by the Centro Mario Molina think-tank to apply the Calthorpe model to Mexican Cities

Outcomes:

The expected outcome of this project is support for the government of Mexico in their sustainable urban and housing policy priority in order to increase the sustainability and inclusiveness of the urban sector and to improve the affordability and diversification of the housing market.

Collaboration with K-Partners and Others:

• Ministry of Land, Transport and Infrastructure (MOLIT)
• Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements (KRIHS)
• Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI)
• Seoul National University
• Yonsei or Korea University