Urban Sprawl and Sustainable Urban Policies. A Review of the Cases of Lima, Mexico City and Santiago de Chile

Abstract

In recent decades, urban processes have experienced deep transformations. One of them has been the growing importance of urban sprawl. This article reviews its main features and the policies related to the paradigm of sustainability in three Latin American Megalopolises: Mexico City, Lima, and Santiago de Chile. For this purpose, we have carried out an extensive compilation of the existing academic literature. Urban sprawl in those cities cannot be understood without considering the rising housing needs of popular classes, usually addressed through the sequence settlement-parceling-building-urbanization. Simultaneously high-income groups tend to create separated and gated commodities and there is increasing spatial mobility of the middle classes. Those processes tend to generate highly segregated and increasingly patched metropolitan areas. Sustainability is framed on models of urban governance based on ecological modernization. In this context, three main sustainable policies are analyzed: water supply, green areas provision, and transport. Conclusions stress: (1) Deep changes experienced and the path-dependent element observed in the social construction of sustainability (2) Consolidation of a model of socially segregated and ecologically differentiated urban polycentrism (3) Relevance of the different megalopolises as niches of experimentation and innovation in the construction of specific forms of sustainable transition.

Sustaining What Is Unsustainable: A Review of Urban Sprawl and Urban Socio-Environmental Policies in North America and Western Europe

“…This, in turn, will allow an approach to urban policies that have been recently applied using sustainability as a reference. The emphasis on explaining the European and North American cases does not mean that the relevance of urban sprawl in many other territorial contexts, such as Latin America [10], Asia [11,12] or Africa [13] is not recognized. However, in this article, it is understood that there is a set of common causes and effects that justify a specific revision in the European and North American cases.…”

Socio-Spatial Changes in Danwei Neighbourhoods: A Case Study of the AMS Danwei Compound in Hefei, China

“…Another important finding is related to changes in boundary and density of the Danwei compound. Contrary to recent research [40][41][42] that point to outward physical expansion, especially in Asian and other cities in the emerging world, the AMS Danwei compounds have rather seen physical readjustments in land use and housing densification since 1999. As shown in Figure 2, the differences in socio-spatial changes between city level and urban neighbourhoods may be due to the fact that the impact of reforms on urban space are mediated by other economic forces such as the real-estate market and planning support systems.…”

Peri-Urbanization and Land Use Fragmentation in Mexico City. Informality, Environmental Deterioration, and Ineffective Urban Policy

“…These changes take place in a strip with urban-rural characteristics on the edges of the urban area, the size of which varies by city and may range from 30 to 50 km. Over time, this peri-urban area, also called the rural-urban fringe, peri-urban interface (Simon, 2008: p. 171), or urban sprawl, loses its rural features, gradually incorporating new urban uses such as housing, infrastructure, access to services and urban productive activities, as well as experiencing environmental deterioration (see McGregor et al, 2006;Ewing, 2008;Da Gama Torres, 2011;Ravetz et al, 2013;Geneletti et al, 2017;Coq-Huelva and Asían Chavez, 2019). Recently there has been an extensive literature on informal settlements emphasizing both the spatial spread and demographic characteristics of urban fringe settlements particularly in Africa, China and South East Asia (see Abramson, 2016, for China;Tan et al, 2021, for Beijing;Ukoje, 2016, for Nigeria;Brandful Cobbinah and Nsomah Aboagye, 2017, for Ghana; Phadke, 2014, for Mumbai;and Hudalah and Firman, 2012, for Jakarta).…”