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THE CHALLENGES OF COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT AMID THE VESTIGES OF A POST-REVOLUTIONARY URBAN IDEAL IN MEXICO

In August 2021, residents of the Cordemex neighborhood of Mérida, a large city in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, were shaken to learn that government officials had invited a private real estate developer to build a 32,000-seat stadium on the former site of the state normal school, which recently had been relocated to a new campus. For the community’s more than 1200 households, the announcement was jarring for several reasons. Built in the 1960s as a “post-revolutionary ideal” to house the families of workers at the nearby state-owned Cordemex cordage production facility, the neighborhood had experienced significant demographic and economic change since the plant’s closure in the early 1990s. In addition, the community was becoming increasingly boxed in by the construction of numerous shopping malls and government buildings, as well as persistent land speculation. Within the neighborhood itself, private interests had begun to encroach on public spaces and the city government was failing to provide adequate maintenance for schools, parks, recreation facilities, and the public market. Furthermore, government officials were heralding the proposed stadium as a model of “sustainable development” without considering the likely social and environmental impacts of the project at the local scale. And, most importantly, neither government officials nor the company building the stadium had bothered to consult community members prior to announcing the project as a fait accompli. Motivated by the prospects of further enclosure, the potential loss of additional green space, and the lack of transparency and community participation in the decision-making process, Cordemex residents organized to oppose construction of the stadium. Ultimately, after more than a year of alliance building, lawsuits, social media campaigns, and protests, the community triumphed in its battle to halt the stadium project. However, the future of Cordemex remains precarious. This project explores the challenges that confront Cordemex residents in defining a shared vision of their community’s future as they attempt to reconcile its original post-revolutionary ideals with the contemporary realities of encroachment, disinvestment, and broader social, demographic and economic change.

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A MULTI-SCALE ANALYSIS OF URBAN WARMING IN RESIDENTIAL AREAS OF A LATIN AMERICAN CITY

This project analyzes the extent to which factors associated with urbanization at three distinct spatial scales influence variation in urban warming in residential areas of a Latin American city. Using a statistical approach, we reveal that type of residential zone (meso), vegetation coverage (micro), and housing and lot characteristics (in-situ) affect average residential temperature levels. We conclude that the variables contributing to urban warming are a legacy of the study area’s unique historical geography; consequently, policy recommendations must be place-specific. Strategies to mitigate urban warming at a single scale are unlikely to have a significant impact. Instead, an approach integrating meso, micro and in-situ factors is needed.