Desarrollo Territorial Sostenible

1. Giorgi, E., Cattaneo T., Flores, M., Aceves, V. Design for Vulnerable Communities; Springer Nature: Cham, Switzerland, 2022.; ISBN 978-3-030-96865-6; e-book ISBN 978-3-030-96866-3; https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96866-3

2. Montoya, M.A., Krstikj, A., Rehner, J., Lemus-Delgado, D. COVID-19 and Cities. The Urban Book Series. Springer, Cham, Switzerland; 2021; https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84134-8_13

3. Giorgi, E. The Co-Housing Phenomenon: Environmental Alliance in Time of Changes; Springer Nature: Cham, Switzerland; 2020. ISBN 978-3-030-37096-1; e-book ISBN 978-3-030-37097-8; https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37097-8

4. Krstikj, A, Contreras Ruis Esparza, M.G., Vargas, J.M., Escobar, L.H., López de la Rosa, C., González Calderón, S.T., Giorgi, E., Hinojosa Hinojosa, K. Decision-support tool for coordination of volunteers in large-scale lockdowns. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 2021, 62, 102420. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2021.102420

5. Giorgi, E., Martín López, L., Garnica-Monroy, R., Krstikj, A., Cobreros, C., Montoya, M.A. Co-Housing Response to Social Isolation of COVID-19 Outbreak, with a Focus on Gender Implications. Sustainability 2021, 13, 7203. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13137203

6. Cireddu, A. New Housing Developments in the City Center of Guadalajara (Mexico): An Analysis from the Perspective of Collective and Sustainable Dwelling. Buildings 2021, 11, 168. https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings11040168

7. Garcia Cervantes, N., Hinojosa Hinojosa, K., Opportunities and challenges for service-learning experiences in informal urban settlements. Archnet-IJAR 2022. https://doi.org/10.1108/ARCH-12-2021-0348

8. Cobreros, C., Flores-García, M., Biondi, S., Maya, M., Ontiveros-Ortíz, E.N. (2021). Re-signifying Domestic Space in Times of Confinement Based on Biophilic Design. In: Montoya, M.A., Krstikj, A., Rehner, J., Lemus-Delgado, D. (eds) COVID-19 and Cities. The Urban Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84134-8_8

9. Garnica-Monroy, R., Garibay-Bravo, V., Gonzalez-Gonzalez, A. et al. Spatial Analysis of Exposure to Traffic-Related Air Pollution in Mexico: Implications for Urban Planning to Improve Public Health. Appl. Spatial Analysis (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12061-021-09415-1

10. Giorgi E., Cattaneo T., Ni M., Enríquez Alatriste R., Analysis of the Chinese Outline for National Tourism and Leisure and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: from Policies to Design. Sustainability 2020, 12(3). https://doi.org/10.3390/su12031161

Design for Vulnerables.
Líder: Emanuele Giorgi.
“Design for Vulnerables” is part of a wider research activities implemented along the last years, within an international research network, mainly between Mexico, Italy and China, whose focus is to understand the role of community dimension in developing sustainable territories. To understand the phenomena that characterize our territories is a priority: contemporary social and environmental crisis are challenging humanity, exposing mainly the most vulnerable people to uncertainties. Compromised with sustainable territorial development, Tecnológico de Monterrey in Chihuahua started to work in vulnerable communities since several years, aiming to propose solutions and ideas for their necessities. Since these realities are becoming more and more complex, the issue that Design for Vulnerables aims to understand is “how can design contribute to empower vulnerable communities in the next few years?”.

Vulnerable Socio Ecotones. Research by Design Approach to Vulnerable Socio-Ecotones in USA-Mexico central border.
Líder: Emanuele Giorgi.
Is a research project that aims to investigate the territorial phenomena related to the dimensions of social and environmental vulnerability, and the implications for urban-architectural practice. The research focuses on the geographic area of the central border between Mexico and the US, where socio-environmental problems are particularly complex and are worsening as a result of the current health, political and climate crises. If the close relationship between social and environmental problems is very noticeable, understanding what happens in complex contexts affected by major crises is extremely urgent. A context such as the Ciudad Juárez - El Paso metropolitan area is an excellent study context, which presents worrying social and environmental vulnerabilities. The current crises have significantly worsened an already difficult situation, drastically increasing inequalities between the two states, regions, cities and social groups. For this reason, the Vulnerable Socio-Ecotones project wants to apply knowledge and methodology generated in previous projects in this region, coordinating an interdisciplinary team and organizing activities that work in the physical and digital spheres. Beyond scientific dissemination and products (presented in its section), Vulnerable Socio-Ecotones wants to generate an effective impact in the communities where the research will be carried out. In particular, based on the theoretical results that will be obtained, the objective is to generate an impact in the social and environmental spheres, initiating activities with strategic partners.

Economic regional development, spatial inequalities, and emerging patterns of violence in three Mexican cities.
Líder: Natalia Garcia Cervantes.
Violence in Mexico has become a pervasive issue not only restricting economic development, but also critically affecting the lives of millions of its citizens. Regardless of multiple national, state and local policies and interventions designed in the last two decades to reduce, or prevent violence, the levels of homicide rates, as well as other types of crime, and the perceptions and sense of citizen’s insecurity, continue to rise. Studies of violence in Mexico stem from a variety of disciplines and perspectives, with diverse objectives and methodologies. Traditionally, quantitative studies focusing on the impacts of organized crime and other types of economic violence, tended to dominate. More recently, there has been an increase in research focusing on the territorial impacts of violence to understand the effects that violence and insecurity have on urban space (Pavoni and Tulumello, 2020; Springer and Le Billon, 2016; Valenzuela- Aguilera, 2013). While these studies have recognized that the manner in which violence is differentially experienced across diverse regions in Mexico, and that violence and urban space reinforce each other (Pavoni and Tulumello, 2020), to date the relationship between urban space, urban violence and economic regional inequalities has received less attention. Given that Mexico is a highly urbanized country with more than 80 per cent of population living in cities or urban centers, and stark regional disparities, the need to understand the different links between economic development, urbanization and the built environment, and how these spatial manifestations generate, or reinforce different types of violence, becomes paramount. The aim of this multidisciplinary study is twofold: first, to investigate how urban space and built environment configurations, conditioned by spatial and economic regional inequalities, contribute to manifestations of violence in the Mexican cities of Monterrey, Irapuato and Villahermosa. Second, to explore how the range of violence manifestation beyond homicides, at different spatial levels of a city, may have a significant impact on citizens’ perceptions of insecurity, with both direct and indirect impacts on economic regional development.

Urban Ecotone and Environmental health. Barranca of Río Grande de Santiago. Guadalajara, Mexico.
Lider: María Elena de la Torre Escoto.
This research focuses on regenerative clues for the urban fringe of Río Grande de Santiago canyon in Guadalajara, an important ecosystem of the Metropolitan Area. On this edge, we recognize the double social and environmental marginalization caused by the intensive urbanization processes, the lack of capacity to regulate and manage urban development and the lack of integration of nature in the development of the city. Several studies indicate that regional and town planning has a central role in the prevention of diseases in the 21st century as well as a strong relationship between well-being and healthy ecosystems. Urban and territorial policies have a significant impact on the air we breathe, the quality of the spaces we use, the water we drink, the presence of public spaces, access to natural areas, healthy food, and, in general, a healthy environment. From this perspective, the research relates to healthy cities and the regenerative design of urban spaces, the natural spaces that can articulate the design of cities, as well as the open public spaces and common services. This approach seeks strategies to overcome challenges of peri-urban growth dynamics that put at risk the natural spaces of great biodiversity that provide ecosystem services. This approach makes it possible to recognize the logic of colonization of this specific site and constitutes the starting point for understanding the simultaneous and contradictory processes between the city and its natural environment. Here, we propose the hierarchy of the ecological enclaves and the search for strategies to guarantee the survival of open natural spaces in the face of the dynamic of urban sprawl that cancels or denies environmental systems. The urban ecotone offers a new approach dealing with the relationship between natural areas and urban structure. These fringes are proposed as potential articulators in the face of urban pressure on natural ecosystems with a focus on achieving environmental health. In this sense, they are presented as areas of opportunity for environmental restoration, identity, and access to environmental benefits for the communities that inhabit the irregular settlements of the border.

Nutritious cities. Analysis of the food environments of Mexican cities with a focus on the availability, accessibility and quality of wet markets.
Líder: Aleksandra Krstikj.
This research poses the question: which citizens have access to fresh food sources, such as wet markets? Also, what is the difference in accessibility between corner stores with no healthy food options and wet markets in different cities in Mexico? We hypothesize that current urban planning and zoning laws do not implement strategies for the equitable distribution of healthy food sources, thus they do not prevent the formation of food deserts in our cities. While automotive infrastructure development is a priority in many local development plans, such planning does not promote nurturing cities as it does not provide pedestrian access to wet markets. Our research aims to map the location of wet markets in six Mexican cities and evaluate the food environment with the nutritious city index considering the availability, accessibility and quality of food offered. In addition, the nutritious city index will be compared with the index of accessibility to groceries/conviviality stores developed by the Observatory of Cities to assess the (in)effectiveness of local planning in promoting urban health through accessibility to wet markets. The benefit of the study is to support local decision-making in promoting healthy food environments.

Queer Globalities. An Exploration of Mexico City.
Líder: Ryan Anders Whitney.
This article discusses connections between globalized queer tourism circuits and local queer identities. Specifically, Mexico City is increasingly being celebrated as a trendy and desirable destination, contrasting its reputation in the 1990s as a polluted and crime-ridden megacity. Much has been said about the convergence of the architecture, food, and design scenes in establishing the city as a new “axis of cool” alongside cities such as Berlin, New York, and Montreal. However, less has been said about how Mexico City’s newfound international reputation is perpetuating a long history of inequality, especially as related to its expanding queer scene. Through reporting on an ethnography, this article explores Mexico City’s expanding queer scene in the city’s rise as an international tourist destination, questioning the impact on local queer identities. While Mexico City has always been an important city for queer people across Mexico and Latin America, over the last decade it has been catapulted into queer tourism circuits globally. For example, local queer event promotors are increasingly creating strategic partnerships with other promotors in cities that include Paris, Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, Montreal, and Berlin to sell Mexico City as a “must visit” destination. However, who exactly are these queer spaces designed to benefit and celebrate? How does this fit into a long and problematic history of the exploitative nature of tourism within Mexico?

Everyday life as a project tool for the humanization of cities.
Líder: Alessandra Cireddu.
In Mexico, horizontal expansion (together with the lack of mixed use developments and efficient public transport) has proven unsustainable not only from an environmental point of view, but also from a social perspective where the “human scale” of cities and consequently the daily life of its inhabitants have been affected. The analysis and study of everyday life, in its two dimensions of space and time, represents a great chance to re-understand cities from the inside, identifying proposals and solutions to improve inclusive mobility and urban safety, planning cities with daily facilities and public spaces in proximity of housing, in order for people to satisfy daily needs in cities that are more humane, safe, resilient and with greater social cohesion. The main proposal of the research project is to analyze the daily life of women in three case studies, which are neighborhoods with socio-spatial segregation located in the Metropolitan Area of Guadalajara, in order to establish project guidelines to improve the social relationships that are generated around everyday facilities through the design of a digital App that impacts women’s mobility and urban safety, improving the access and development of activities in the four spheres of daily life -social, productive, reproductive and personal. The objective of the App is to provide a support tool for women’s urban mobility and safety that also allows diagnoses of relationship spaces and urban facilities with a gender perspective. As a tool to control the results, the design of a social cohesion index is proposed, to measure how the App tool can contribute to the generation of support networks among women in the same community.

Design of nature education experiences in the Sierra Gorda de Querétaro biosphere reserve.
Líder: Carlos Cobreros.
The project consists of designing, in an interdisciplinary manner, a pedagogical experience of nature education for preschool and lower elementary school children, within the emerging natural context of the Biosphere Reserve of the Sierra Gorda de Querétaro that serves to create the community basis for new regenerative cultures. The Project has the purposeto establish the lecture of the place, through an ethnographic and diagnostic work, understood as physical environment and community, in order to design the experience from the essence of the place, its spirit and vocation and therefore this will help the development of the community capacity and the development of its potential, for a specific community or municipality within the RBSG. Finally, the Co-Design of a participatory and collaborative nature education experience Will be proposed. In a first stage, we plan to develop a first prototype to implement the experience throughout a school cycle, carry out a co-evaluation of the first experience and generate a guide/report for the design of nature education experiences and establish a strategy for scalability in other communities within the biosphere reserve.