From Threat to Opportunity: Spatial Strategies Integrating Urban and Water Dynamics Towards a Sustainable Redevelopment Model for Informal Settlements in Mexico City's Periphery

Current problems related to urban growth and climate change are increasingly challenging cities all over the world but to a greater extent fast growing developing cities. New approaches, guiding models and planning policies to... [ view full abstract ]

Current problems related to urban growth and climate change are increasingly challenging cities all over the world but to a greater extent fast growing developing cities. New approaches, guiding models and planning policies to make water and green structures the basis for sustainable urban development have derived over the past years; therefore new experiences in other contexts may further contribute to this learning process.

This paper explores the feasibility of implementing sustainable strategies combining water management with urban design into a new and more complex context ‘the informal’. The challenges related to water and informality are also common to most developing cities, hence the importance of spatial alternatives that tackle both issues. Researchers, urban planners and policy makers may find this paper useful to collaborate in projects in developing and fast growing cities dealing with these themes.

This paper presents relevant approaches developed in cities around the world focusing on concepts such as sustainability, liveability, resilience, integration and transdisciplinarity that supports the development of future water systems in the light of the present challenges. Those approaches are discussed in the context of informal settlements; considering the interactions and mutual dependencies between water systems and social systems to minimize vulnerability to water related risks while providing new economic opportunities.

Sustainable water management is presented as the tipping point in the process of transforming vulnerable communities into sustainable societies and as the key in avoiding a flip into an undesired state. Strategies are presented for a particular case study in Mexico City to illustrate that providing space for water within these vulnerable areas would not only diminish risk but also improve the liveability of these communities. Governments, private sector, society and NGO's need to work together to adopt water innovative technologies, new management practices and new governance arrangements for new urban water systems to become a feasible urban regeneration model.