World Urban Forum

Hi Mariana - this is a common problem across many developing country cities, where the focus is solely on economic growth and competitiveness, rather than sustainability, equity or quality of life. I'm sure many would respond with a resounding "Yes" to your poll question.

Communities should be able to decide if (de) growth is a desirable and sustainable choice. However, planning in develping countries is really a muddy environment as political leaders are never proactive on this subject, they fear the topic as unpopular and thus never fully plan for this, conversely they only react to growth as this happens (already to late!!) , mostly withount concurrency in infrastructure resulting in urban frankenstein kind of city.

We need to develop smart growth policies and preserve living standards in some of our citiesthat are being threatened by speculative pressures that bring unanticipated growth scenarios.

I believe, that many smaller and mid sized cities in Mexico could switch to smart growth policies anytime, but will need to bring several reforms to transform the currently outdated and inefficient way local urban plans are formulated and implemented.

Unfortunately, Mexico City (once a beautiful ciy) has possibly lost it´s chance to adopt a smart growth policy, possibly because of the gigantic and complex systemic problems that have been neglected by authorities for many decades.

It has been my concern all this years (and especially the last 6) and my major question is "who is benefiting with this growth?" It´s not possible for me that a "sustainable city" invest billions on building more and more in roads for cars instead of persons and bikes.

Yes, it is very absurd how they want to promote further population growth in s city with the second world worst traffic condition, serious pollution in the air that bring added cost in public health, streets and road above functional carring capacity limits.

Growth should only happen only when concurrent infrastructure exists, when living standards can only improve, when property values improve to sound investments. But here there is a substantial deficit on adequate infrastructure. The investment in 2nd story freeways happen without an comprehensive public available report and consensus regarding the benefit for the population as a whole. The bidding process of public works itend to be also obscure and lack transparent procedures available in other countries. And the worst thing is that previous programs for public participation commonly intended building urban consensus have been steadily but quietly ommited, closed, reduced, left-out and replaced by a preformulated pseudo-public opinions in news adds giving local citizens the misconception that their concerns where addressed. This is deplorable, however in a city this big, social cohesion in our communities has been lost and it has been hard in some areas to shape a social response to this critical urba issues.

Totally agree, I think a key word in this process of urban planning is transparency + consensus, and maybe sometime our local and federal government will understand the meaning of health and environment as a human right and they will care about it.