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Legislation, Transparency Keys to Urban Development

David Baltazar - Colegio de Urbanistas de México
Former President

STORY INLINE POST

Wed, 11/01/2017 - 15:03

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As cities grow denser, mobility, housing and water problems are becoming the norm. Modifications to the country’s Human Settlements Law and the legislating of Mexico City’s Housing Law illustrate a desire to promote strategic growth and curtail these issues. But the question remains: what more needs to be done for Mexico to slow its development to a more manageable pace?

“The main problem with Mexico’s development strategies is that they do not reinforce the importance of urban planning. According to legislation, housing dictates the development of the area around it but it would make more sense if urban planning dictated where the next housing developments should be,” says David Baltazar, former President of Colegio de Urbanistas de México. As a civil association, Colegio de Urbanistas de México brings together the country’s urban development specialists by providing specialized courses, conferences and training.

Urban Planning, according to Wharton University, is a process that seeks to control the development of cities through local regulations and direct interventions, to meet a number of objectives. Mexico created regulations and strategies to moderate urban sprawl but still, progress is slow. “It is important to raise awareness not only among the citizens but most importantly among the politicians who make these decisions,” says Baltazar. “Politicians in Mexico are not interested in urban planning because urban development is a long-term process that traditionally spans several political terms.”

Baltazar explains that the country does not have a national urban-planning strategy independent of six-year terms that would allow new administrations to build the infrastructure necessary for future generations. The Mexico City Metro system is an example of why it is so important that these plans exist. By now, the city should have more than 20 metro lines but because no government wants to make this expansion a priority in its short term, the system’s development is postponed again and again. This not only applies to Mexico City but also to Queretaro, Guadalajara and Monterrey.

Public transport is important for solving mobility problems but it also has its limits and must be integrated well into the urban design. During the current political administration, no new metro lines were constructed because the Metrobús was given priority. “The Metrobús is not a complete solution for a city’s mobility problems because it is not designed for long distances,” Baltazar explains. “These types of MTS are best for interconnecting different modes of transportation and if not done correctly, it leads to high saturation of the system.”

Mexico has not completely explored the possibilities for more involvement from the private sector into the development of these types of projects. Although the public sector is adopting the PPP scheme for more and more projects, there are still many other ways it could be applied. Investors are still hesitant to become more involved in the country’s infrastructure development due to the many legal gray areas that still exist, especially regarding the ownership of land. “This type of legal uncertainty, along with dealing with ejidos and legal disputes, discourages investors,” Baltazar warns. “The ROW and working with ejidos are some of the costliest processes in the construction of a project and even to this day, there are still plots of land the ownership of which are unclear, even to SEDATU.”

At the moment, the country is experiencing a real-estate development boom. Mixed-use has become the industry’s most popular development but Baltazar does not see these as a comprehensive answer to the problem. “Mixed-use developments are band-aid solutions,” he says. “The idea of mixed-used projects is to allow inhabitants to work, play and live in the same area. The real problem is that not all Mexicans have access to financing. These islands are not made for everybody but rather for certain segments of the population that can afford it.”

Baltazar suggests a remedy for these infrastructure challenges may be better management of public funds. Money collected from fines or concessions go into the federal fund and from there are allocated to other areas that may not be within the same community.

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