An Analysis of Current Sustainability of Mexican Cities and Their Exposure to Climate Change
The increasing demand for goods and services in cities around the world due to a rapidly growing urban population is pushing the socioecological systems that support them to their limits. The complexity of urban socioeconomic and environmental systems and their interactions generate a challenging mu...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2020-03-01
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| Series: | Frontiers in Environmental Science |
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| Online Access: | https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fenvs.2020.00025/full |
| _version_ | 1818684430633402368 |
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| author | Francisco Estrada Francisco Estrada Julián A. Velasco Amparo Martinez-Arroyo Oscar Calderón-Bustamante |
| author_facet | Francisco Estrada Francisco Estrada Julián A. Velasco Amparo Martinez-Arroyo Oscar Calderón-Bustamante |
| author_sort | Francisco Estrada |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | The increasing demand for goods and services in cities around the world due to a rapidly growing urban population is pushing the socioecological systems that support them to their limits. The complexity of urban socioeconomic and environmental systems and their interactions generate a challenging multidimensional decision problem. In response, governments around the world are currently generating a variety of measurements that aim to portrait the main factors that are related to the level of sustainability that a city shows. While the objective of these efforts is to help in the process of urban policy making, these measures are often hard to interpret and do not lend to discover underlying characteristics that may be common among a group of cities. Moreover, these measures are typically focused on describing the current state and omit future challenges such as climate change, which may significantly affect any evaluation of urban sustainability. Recently, the Institute of Ecology and Climate Change (INECC) of Mexico produced a dataset of 36 sustainability related variables for over 100 cities that has the objective of helping federal and state level governments defining sustainable urban strategies. Here we use multivariate statistical techniques to (1) decrease the dimensionality of the dataset and find indices that could be more useful to decision makers; (2) find commonalities among cities include in the dataset in order to help in designing urban strategies for cities with similar characteristics; (3) cities are ranked in terms of their sustainability and characteristics and; (4) the sustainability ranking is compared to estimates of how much the current climate in each of these cities is expected to change during this century, which would add further challenges to maintain or improve urban sustainability. |
| first_indexed | 2024-12-17T10:50:31Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-a048fb6f25cb419d8a8149a142fec2d7 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2296-665X |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-17T10:50:31Z |
| publishDate | 2020-03-01 |
| publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Frontiers in Environmental Science |
| spelling | doaj.art-a048fb6f25cb419d8a8149a142fec2d72022-12-21T21:52:00ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Environmental Science2296-665X2020-03-01810.3389/fenvs.2020.00025480589An Analysis of Current Sustainability of Mexican Cities and Their Exposure to Climate ChangeFrancisco Estrada0Francisco Estrada1Julián A. Velasco2Amparo Martinez-Arroyo3Oscar Calderón-Bustamante4Centro de Ciencias de la Atmósfera, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad Universitaria, Mexico City, MexicoInstitute for Environmental Studies (IVM), VU Amsterdam, Amsterdam, NetherlandsCentro de Ciencias de la Atmósfera, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad Universitaria, Mexico City, MexicoCentro de Ciencias de la Atmósfera, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad Universitaria, Mexico City, MexicoCentro de Ciencias de la Atmósfera, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad Universitaria, Mexico City, MexicoThe increasing demand for goods and services in cities around the world due to a rapidly growing urban population is pushing the socioecological systems that support them to their limits. The complexity of urban socioeconomic and environmental systems and their interactions generate a challenging multidimensional decision problem. In response, governments around the world are currently generating a variety of measurements that aim to portrait the main factors that are related to the level of sustainability that a city shows. While the objective of these efforts is to help in the process of urban policy making, these measures are often hard to interpret and do not lend to discover underlying characteristics that may be common among a group of cities. Moreover, these measures are typically focused on describing the current state and omit future challenges such as climate change, which may significantly affect any evaluation of urban sustainability. Recently, the Institute of Ecology and Climate Change (INECC) of Mexico produced a dataset of 36 sustainability related variables for over 100 cities that has the objective of helping federal and state level governments defining sustainable urban strategies. Here we use multivariate statistical techniques to (1) decrease the dimensionality of the dataset and find indices that could be more useful to decision makers; (2) find commonalities among cities include in the dataset in order to help in designing urban strategies for cities with similar characteristics; (3) cities are ranked in terms of their sustainability and characteristics and; (4) the sustainability ranking is compared to estimates of how much the current climate in each of these cities is expected to change during this century, which would add further challenges to maintain or improve urban sustainability.https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fenvs.2020.00025/fullclimate changemultivariate analysiscluster analysisvulnerabilityurban sustainability assessment |
| spellingShingle | Francisco Estrada Francisco Estrada Julián A. Velasco Amparo Martinez-Arroyo Oscar Calderón-Bustamante An Analysis of Current Sustainability of Mexican Cities and Their Exposure to Climate Change Frontiers in Environmental Science climate change multivariate analysis cluster analysis vulnerability urban sustainability assessment |
| title | An Analysis of Current Sustainability of Mexican Cities and Their Exposure to Climate Change |
| title_full | An Analysis of Current Sustainability of Mexican Cities and Their Exposure to Climate Change |
| title_fullStr | An Analysis of Current Sustainability of Mexican Cities and Their Exposure to Climate Change |
| title_full_unstemmed | An Analysis of Current Sustainability of Mexican Cities and Their Exposure to Climate Change |
| title_short | An Analysis of Current Sustainability of Mexican Cities and Their Exposure to Climate Change |
| title_sort | analysis of current sustainability of mexican cities and their exposure to climate change |
| topic | climate change multivariate analysis cluster analysis vulnerability urban sustainability assessment |
| url | https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fenvs.2020.00025/full |
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