Sustaining Cities: Urban Policies, Practices, and Perceptions

Sustainable City: Crisis and Opportunity in Mexico

13 A Theoretical Note During the last two or three decades, urban theories mainly have been directed toward analyzing the impact globalization has had in the territory being studied, and highlighting issues of squatter settlements, urban poverty, and environmental deterioration. As has been stressed by UN-HABITAT, new forces driving worldwide human settlements call for reconsideration by both society and government of how urban policy and planning are conducted.1 Regions and cities are facing such complex phenomena as: hyperurbanization , poverty concentration, land-use disorder, climate change, cultural clashes, and migration. Typically these phenomena are analyzed from a mainstream perspective strongly oriented toward the relationship between globalization and economic restructuring and space. In these approaches, urban space is regarded as a “thing in itself,” as something given with an existence independent of matter. Further, most spatial analysis consists of the sum of constraints, whether they be the geographical-environmental features, the inherited built environment, the lack of public or private investment, the crisis and opportunity in mexico Alfonso Iracheta Sustainable City i inappropriate legislation and territorial administration (in regions or cities), or the institutional responses through public policy and planning. Víctor Ramiro Fernández (like others) criticizes this spatial current of thought, which he calls the “new regionalist orthodoxy,” as an academic effort concentrated in industrialized societies, supported by national governments and multilateral organizations, that has been strong enough to influence the creation of new institutions and public policies and practices.2 This approach has been imported by underdeveloped countries, giving rise to local versions that, in turn, have resulted in new spatial and environmental public policies and institutions. Thus, as has been recognized by the most important Latin American analysts working in the field of urban and regional spatial research, after three decades of national and international efforts, compared to intellectual production in the so-called central countries, indigenous solutions have been rather scarce. What is lacking is a more comprehensive concept and a more critical theoretical position regarding what has been called the “capitalist city.” It is not a question of scholars wanting to return to old theories, which might imply a return to 1970s neo-Marxism, but rather of critically revisiting contemporary urban development and sustainability. The Sustainable City Problem in Mexico I begin with two hypotheses: Mexican cities as now constituted are unsustainable; and, the problem of urban sustainability has not been adequately formulated by the Mexican government or society. Within the dominant development model in Mexico, there are in place public policies to address not only environmental sustainability , but also many other problems related to the development process. However, proposed solutions do not reflect the sustainable alfonso iracheta 14 city problem per se but rather the dominant interests of capital accumulation. This is why urban and environmental planning and public policy in Mexico have not even achieved the positive results possible within this economic-political model in the developed world. The essence of Mexico’s sustainable city crisis is, first of all, a social crisis. In this crisis, social actors struggle to appropriate space, and they view the environment as an object and commodity . The commodification of the natural world reinforces the tendency to divorce urban sustainable development from social struggles: sustainability is seen as something else. Mexico’s sustainable city problem also has to be understood as a confrontation between two different perspectives: that of economic development and that of environmental sustainability. Analysts agree that in most Latin American countries, since the early 1980s, economic growth has increased, whereas social and environmental sustainability has decreased or stagnated.3 In developed countries, there is a growing tendency to view economic growth and environmental policies as mutually compatible and noncontradictory4 to such an extent that the latter becomes an important incentive for the former .5 But in less developed countries environmental problems are mainly a consequence of poverty and underdevelopment. Poverty reduces people’s capability to use natural resources in a sustainable fashion, thereby intensifying pressure on the environment.6 Poor people are forced to forgo future needs to meet those of the present.7 Therefore, what concerns the countries of the South—poverty, inequality, potable water, land desertification, and the like—are problems profoundly different from those besetting the countries of the North.8 Even though economic and political interests are at stake, a country like Mexico is debating environmental and urban public sustainable city 15 policies with...