Week 5: Professor Pezzoli's Human Settlements and Planning for Ecological Sustainability

Students:

While this is a dense book and there is so much to take away from it, here are some initial aspects I would like you to keep in mind while you read:

• How is Mexico City unique and in what ways is it similar to other metropoles in South America, Asia, and elsewhere? Think in particular of it's economic/industrial development, environmental management, human migration and settlement, its many relationships with the rest of the country, or other aspects.
  
• What does Pezzolis mean by the term "co-evolution" of Mexico City's human/urban and ecological aspects? How does this relate to our discussions of the 5 Kingdoms and the overall topic of interconnectivity?
  
• Staying with this idea, what lessons about urban sustainability can we learn from this book's emphasis on issues relating to the interconnectedness of:
• land access, tenure [land security], work & employment, urban infrastructure, etc?
• Although this book seems to include a dizzying number of actors, try to systematize the role played by various key groups:
• citizens and occupiers of ejido land in Los Belvederes/Ajucso
  
• the Mexican government [at multiple levels]
• foreign advocates and intellectuals
• The book provides a startling and perhaps unintuitive idea for sustainability put forth by residents in the CEP. What do you make of this argument, and its attack on the goverment's "politics of containment"?
  
• Scale: this book certainly is the work of an author who is intimately aware of the issues surrounding the idea of scale. For example, think through the ideas Pezzoli presents about urban sustainability in Ajusco, Sierra del Ajusco, Mexico City, Mexico, and at the global scale. How does the case he presents show an example of local sustainability, and in what ways does it provide and not provide clues to achieving sustainability at larger scales?