Política Pública, Indicadores y Sustentabilidad Urbana

Overview of the session

The video records the 10th research colloquium (Rosario Castellanos National University) panel titled “Policy, Indicators and Urban Sustainability” within the Doctorate in Sustainability Sciences.

The session focuses on how to design, select, and evaluate sustainability indicators, and how these indicators link to public policy. Case studies include:

• Food governance in Mexico
• Urban sustainability in Cancún
• Housing and strong sustainability in Mexico City
• Air quality and health indicators for Mexico City

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1) Roberto Mendoza — Food policy (2019–2024) and SDGs

Main argument: Mexico’s 2019–2024 food policy (associated with Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s agenda and programs) should be analyzed in terms of how it relates to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), even if it was not explicitly designed as an SDG-targeted policy.

Key points

• Food policy is treated as cross-cutting for multiple SDGs (not only SDG 2 “Zero Hunger”).
• The study frames a “discursive break” with prior neoliberal food policies, linking it to goals such as:
  • Food sovereignty
  • Reducing dependence on other countries
• Method: mixed-methods
  • Quantitative: statistical comparison using SDG-related indicators (sourced from systems such as INEGI and health/poverty evaluation sources).
  • Qualitative: analysis of the arguments used by the federal executive to justify policy (e.g., press-conference discourse).
• Data are organized into two databases:
  1. Statistical indicators (food imports/production, poverty/marginality variables, etc.)
  2. Policy justification arguments (coded and linked to SDGs/categories)

Feedback received (themes)

• Need to clarify how indicators are mapped to each SDG, and whether the analysis considers state-level differences, not only federal programs.
• Requests for clearer definitions (food security, sovereignty, self-sufficiency, sustainability) and a clearer statement of the research problem (currently presented as a situation description).
• Questions about nutrition vs broader health, stronger emphasis on SDG 2, and how the pandemic affected outcomes separately from policy effects.

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2) Hugo Palomares — Urban sustainability indicators for Cancún

Main argument: Because cities grow rapidly and concentrate populations, there is a need to measure urban sustainability using indicators that are transdisciplinary and fit the specific context of Cancún.

Key points

• The project positions indicator systems as tools to monitor sustainability across:
  • Environment
  • Society
  • Economy
• The work also aims to reshape how “urban sustainability” is understood conceptually.
• Research question: which types of urban sustainability indicators are most appropriate for Cancún (Quintana Roo)?
• Method: systematic selection of indicator systems
  • Review of 22 indicator systems from national and international institutions
  • Narrowing to 9 systems deemed most relevant to Cancún based on city characteristics (tourism economy, demographics, governance as a coastal city, cultural multiethnicity, etc.)
  • Building a data dictionary (indicator type, measurement units, sustainability axis, frequency, etc.)
  • Applying multivariate analysis to explore correlations among indicator variables
• The project considers a period 2000–2025 to identify suitable indicators and assess sustainability monitoring potential.

Feedback received (themes)

• Need for clearer logical linkage from the global problem to Cancún-specific justification.
• Clarify the theoretical delimitation of sustainability (weak vs strong transformative perspectives).
• Repeated request for clarity on the doctoral “product” (deliverables beyond indicator selection).
• Questions about whether the work will go beyond selection to measurement and monitoring, and how “appropriateness” will be determined in practice.
• Requests for clearer prioritization and why the timeline 2000–2025 matters.

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3) Mauricio Daniel Acosta — Adequate housing and strong sustainability (Mexico City)

Main argument: The study evaluates whether adequate housing can be operationalized as a way to read urban order/disorder (entropy) while integrating strong sustainability limits.

Key points

• Starts from the climate/ecological crisis and focuses on urban infrastructure, arguing housing is a key measurable “unit” because it:
  • consumes energy/resources
  • links to urban metabolism and entropy
• Frames a contradiction:
  • central areas losing population while peripheries expand (with uneven services and environmental pressure)
• Integrates concepts:
  • UN-Habitat adequate housing (including its seven elements) as a normative base
  • Strong sustainability (via ecological limits; drawing on Daly-style ideas)
  • Urban entropy to represent disorder and systemic thresholds
• Method: mixed approach, 3 phases
  1. Define variables and conceptual frameworks (adequate housing, strong sustainability)
  2. Integrate data using CINC 2020 (INEGI-based)
  3. Build a compatibility matrix linking housing principles with sustainability elements, then compute an entropy index at neighborhood/block level
• Case example: comparisons in central (San Rafael) vs peripheral neighborhoods to detect tensions (e.g., centrality may increase infrastructure/accessibility but also raise risk of social exclusion).
• Discussion: adequacy does not necessarily equal strong sustainability; missing variables include issues like:
  • embodied carbon
  • water autonomy

Feedback received (themes)

• Need for clearer early scope definition: what exactly “Mexico City” means in terms of boundaries/cases.
• Questions about conceptual coherence: urban vs spatial/social/territorial entropy—how each is defined.
• How “failure of centralities” and ecological limits will be empirically measured, including what could falsify hypotheses.
• How the matrix becomes measurable variables (weighting, scales, validation).

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4) Jacobo Bolaños Ortiz — Intercalary/Transversal air quality & health indicators for Mexico

Main argument: Current air quality/public health indicator systems are not sufficiently cross-cutting, interscalar, and communicatively useful; therefore, Mexico City needs a redesigned “air and health index” that integrates environmental indicators with health protections and vulnerability.

Key points

• Focuses on air quality and health, especially PM2.5 and ozone.
• Motivated by the fact that Mexico City had 12 environmental emergencies in 2024 (not seen since 1993).
• Research question/hypothesis:
  • Strengthen the health component of the air index via integration of cross-cutting indicators aligned with the National System of Environmental Indicators (SINA/related framework).
• Method: 7 phases, mixed
  1. Theoretical/conceptual framework using regulatory and modeling approaches (e.g., pressure-state-response and MESMIS)
  2. Structural diagnosis of the national environmental indicator system
  3. Critical review of academic contributions
  4. Identify transversal indicators
  5. Integrate and ensure compatibility
  6. Participatory conceptual validation (workshops, working groups, Delphi methodology)
  7. Policy proposal, regulatory adoption, and scalability
• Identifies 10 structural gaps in national indicator systems (legal, institutional, programmatic) and proposes a cross-cutting set including:
  • air quality
  • public health
  • green areas
  • climate/social dimensions
  • citizen participation
• Spatial focus:
  • Mexico City split into north/central/south, plus analysis in specific boroughs
  • Reports elevated readings in a municipality (e.g., Iztapalapa)
• Concludes that redesign is not only technical, but also supports SDG 3 and 11, including claims that vulnerability indicators/predictive models can reduce false negatives in risk communication.

Feedback received (themes)

• Questions about the evidence behind quantified claims (e.g., “20% decrease”) and how those calculations are derived.
• Concern that scaling to other cities may be limited by differences in data availability/measurement infrastructure.
• Requests deeper explanation of:
  • what makes indicators “transversal”
  • the applied rationale for treating air quality as an indicator of urban sustainability
  • how stakeholders will understand the comparative advantage

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Concluding common themes across projects

• Indicators as policy instruments: multiple studies aim to connect indicator design to governance decisions, public policy adjustment, and potential regulatory updates.
• Context sensitivity: strong emphasis that indicators must fit city-specific conditions, including:
  • federal vs state implementation
  • Cancún’s tourism-city dynamics
  • neighborhood/block heterogeneity in Mexico City
  • borough-specific air risks
• Need for clearer doctoral outputs: feedback repeatedly requested clearer articulation of expected academic/products (e.g., articles, books, indices, monitoring tools).
• Methodological transparency: repeated calls for clearer definitions, indicator-to-concept mapping, validation strategy, weighting schemes, and separating external factors (especially the pandemic) from policy effects.

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Presenters / contributors

Moderator

• Luis Manuel Cabrera Navarro

Commentators

• Doctor Jessica Paola Hermoso López Araisa
• Dr. Verónica Noemí Cepeda Martínez

Student presenters

• Roberto Mendoza
• Hugo Palomares Hoffman
• Mauricio Daniel Acosta González
• Jacobo Bolaños Ortiz