Ariadna Reyes
University of Texas at Austin
Ph.D. Candidate for the Doctoral Program in Community and Regional Planning. Civil engineer and Fulbright and CONACYT fellow. She holds an MSc in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) in Mexico City where she graduated with honors. The Mexican Environmental Ministry recognized her master’s degree thesis because she developed the first inventory of greenhouse gasses in university facilities in Mexico which had been used as a reference for other colleges.Ariadna gave speeches and presentations on strategies to tackle climate change in the built environment for the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CCE) of North America. From 2009 to 2013, she worked at the Mario Molina Center as a specialist in sustainable housing and vulnerability to climate change. The Mario Molina Center is a Mexican think tank on climate change and energy which is directly managed by the Mexican Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1995), Dr. Mario Molina. At the Mario Molina Center, she led the environmental assessment of the "Evaluation of the Sustainability of Mexican Social Housing," which federal institutions and private sector have used to design housing policies and strategies. Ariadna presented her doctoral research at the Urban Affairs Association Conference in 2013 and 2016; at the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) Conference in 2014, 2015, and 2016; at the International Symposium on Sustainable Systems and Technology (ISSST) in 2015; and at the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development in 2016.
In Mexico City, the housing stock of low-to-moderate income communities is developed primarily through gradual self-help efforts carried out by families to address their housing requirements (Ward, 2012). The construction... [ view full abstract ]
In Mexico City, the housing stock of low-to-moderate income communities is developed primarily through gradual self-help efforts carried out by families to address their housing requirements (Ward, 2012). The construction patterns in these settlements include the gradual enlargement of housing structures by adding residential extensions as well as subdividing existing spaces to provide separate living areas to some members of the family (Eibenschutz Hartman & Benlliure B., 2009). Self-help building produces relatively few Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHG) due to its labor-intensive nature: residents invest their sweat equity and informally hire local construction workers to build residential structures. Furthermore, by utilizing rudimentary equipment, such as pulleys or ramps, self-help builders minimize the use of heavy machinery, thereby reducing GHG emissions. Also, construction materials are typically acquired in local, small businesses, thus reducing transportation and supporting the local retail economy (Kosta, 1992; Peter Ward, 1996, 2012).
In this article, the author presents preliminary results of a Life Cycle Assessment of self-help buildings in Isidro Fabela, a low-income settlement in Mexico City. The author assessed the extent to which self-help housing required energy in the construction phase. The analysis included the embodied energy of building materials, the transportation of materials to the construction site, the building of the housing unit, aggregating all the incremental construction stages. To understand the structural characteristics and uses of self-built housing, the author assembled a team with three research partners to simultaneously conduct interviews, measure the housing units, and take notes. One researcher conducted thorough measurements of dwelling units, covering all structures in a given lot. A second partner elaborated rough sketches of the units. A third researcher conducted surveys with the heads of households to understand the type of materials employed and the particular deficiencies of the residential structures (Ward et al., 2014). To estimate construction energy use, the survey included questions regarding the location where the building materials were acquired and how those materials were transported to the construction site. The survey also addresses the tools and techniques of the construction process, as well as the sweat-equity content of the process, measured by the amount of labor employed to move and prepare materials. The author developed an inventory of materials, such as concrete or steel, an inventory of energy, such as fossil fuels for the transportation, and an inventory of resources, such as water, employed in the construction process. The author compared the LCA findings with her 2013 LCA study of government-financed housing developments located on the urban fringe of Mexico City. The LCA comparison indicates that self-help housing requires comparatively less energy in the construction phase than government-financed housing development.
• Environmentally and socially-extended input-output analysis , • Life cycle sustainability assessment , • Sustainable urban systems
