Alejandro Mendo from Mexico, 7 May 2012
Institutional urban planning vs land market pressures
In developing countries like Mexico urban planning institutions have proved to be decorative offices no longer effective due to mighty pressures from private sector interested on develop land market at a real-state highly speculative basis. Local governments here had given up letting urban plans as only documentary references while big housing companies decide where to grow in accordance to their profit prospects.
Shipra Narang Suri (Moderator) from India, 7 May 2012Thanks Alejandro for raising this important issue. I would like to raise it as a separate post to encourage discussion on the critical issue of urban land. I hope that's okay with you.
Alejandro Mendo from Mexico, 8 May 2012Go on Shipra and thanks.
Alvaro Arellano from Mexico, 8 May 2012I completely agree with Alejandro, urban planning in places such as Mexico is reactive and not proactive at all. Corruption and clientelism in such institutions have created multiple loopholes where many speculative developers usually find the way to build beyond the so called land regulations intended to preserve once viable communities. Furthermore, public participation in the formulation of urban plans is basically never fully present in most cases as social cohesion has slowly being eroded.
Alejandro Mendo from Mexico, 8 May 2012You're right Alvaro. Let's talk about the 53 thousand empty new houses in one Mexican municipality that cannot be sell or rent just because this recently developed projects are simply too far from anything. Where is urban planning here?
laura weber, 9 May 2012I agree with Alejandro and Alvaro. I'm from Buenos Aires and we have the same problem
Our land regulations have 40 years now and were made by architects and urban planners who imagined a city that had nothing to do with the real city. People couldn't participate then and that's still dificult now but we have made some improvements in that matter.
The problem is that land regulations are still in the hands of architects and lawyers (I'm an architect) and there's almost no interaction with disciplines like sociology, antropology or ecology.
Interdisciplinary work is the key for a better comprehension of the city and it's citizens and that understanding is the way to develope better land regulations, more inclusive and fair for everyone.
Shipra Narang Suri (Moderator) from India, 9 May 2012Thank you all. Please take this discussion further under the topic "Managing urban land..." so you can engage with other like-minded people working on these areas.
Alvaro Arellano from Mexico, 9 May 2012Yes, Laura !! You are right City Planning requires really a multi-dimensional approach and perspective to adequatedly address physical, economical and socio-political dimensions. Trying to explain an urban problem from a single disciplinary paradigm will result as mypic perspective to the real issues at stake in our communities. Therefore, we need to build on the need of multi-disciplinary expertise with a multidimensional perspective.