Location

Mexico city

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Clients

UN-Habitat & Creative industries fund NL

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Period

2016

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Team

Marco Broekman, Chloé Charreton, Sander Maurits, Hester Koelman, Zuzanna Bręk

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Assignment

Strategic vision on the urban renewal and densification of the Doctores neighbourhood in Mexico City

 

Collaboration

LINT, Klaarenbeek Stedenbouw, Morgenstad

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Status

Finished

The cases of the Urban Labs of UN-Habitat show major and urgent challenges of the fast developing urban regions in different countries. The Mexico City Urban Lab team works on Doctores, a central neighborhood in Mexico City. The task was to formulate an implementation strategy for the Doctores district to densify the area (50.000-150.000 inhabitants), innovate the infrastructure, keep the existing population and attract people to move back to the central districts. A first excursion in April 2016 was dedicated to a site visit and workshops at the Department of Urban Planning and Housing of Mexico City (SEDUVI) and the local UN-Habitat office. A second visit in august 2016 was used to discuss the urban strategy with different stakeholders.

 

The main question for Doctores is how to release the potential density of Doctores, with spatial quality, a social mix and stakeholder commitment. Spatial quality can only be achieved through urban guidelines, a public space plan, a strong vision on mobility and the coupling of public and private investments. The social ambitions can be secured by incentives embedded within the urban guidelines and by organising the different stakeholders in a participatory process. The strategy needs to be robust and flexible, because the development will depend on many factors that can change over time: politics, economy, lifestyle, climate or even natural hazards. The urban renewal strategy consists to design a sustainable framework with urban design guidelines shaped by a co-creation process with different stakeholders and tested with strategic pilot projects. The two pilot projects “Jardin Artes Gráfica” and “Dr. Claudio Bernard street” show the possibilities of a step-by-step transformation process.

Both SEDUVI and UN Habitat have agreed to point out the Doctores neighborhood as an ‘experimentation zone’ and find funding to start the pilot project on the short term.