Hill - people -San Nicolas de los Garza
Introduction
In 2019, within the context of the update of the Municipal Urban Development Program, the Municipality of San Nicolás de los Garza sought the opportunity of incorporating the Sustainable Development Goals in its metropolitan development instruments and urban planning processes. The municipality, through the Technical Secretariat and the Directorate of Strategic Projects, sought collaboration with UN-Habitat to develop a city vision with a long-term perspective, aligned to the principles of the New Urban Agenda and the 2030 Agenda.
The project, called SNG2030 City Vision, sets out a long-term roadmap towards a desired sustainable future for the city, generated through consensus-making activities between government representatives, private sector, academia and civil society, articulated by UN-Habitat through an innovative hybrid participatory strategy.
It includes objectives, goals and lines of action linked to the territory, for the physical, environmental, economic and social development of the municipality. This is also complemented with two additional products that will guide San Nicolas de los Garza future development and help achieve the future vision: a Portfolio of Strategic Projects, and a Tactical Urbanism Master Plan.
Context and background
The municipality of San Nicolas de los Garza has 430,143 inhabitants and is located in the centre of the Metropolitan Area of Monterrey, Mexico's second-largest city (4.6 million inhabitants), in the state of Nuevo Leon. Some of the urban challenges that the municipality faces are the decline in the total number of inhabitants, internal migration to other parts of the city for more affordable housing, an ageing population, and the economic base, mainly industrial, which has shifted towards the tertiary sector of commerce and services.
The project timeline overlapped with the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. This situation posed both a challenge and an opportunity to trigger a sustainable development process for the city's future. Capitalizing on SNG urban specificities and thanks to its resilient, participative, and united community, the city vision was developed through an intensive participatory process carried out through online platforms and in-person activities. The participatory processes were adapted to this new reality, amid restrictions and mandates resulting from the state of emergency. The participatory strategies were modified into a hybrid scheme, integrating remote workshops, online questionnaires, video submissions, drawing exercises for children, and on-site activities with the community. This process aimed to ensure representation of all sectors of the population and included more than 9,000 local stakeholders.
Plan and process
The urban planning process was developed in three main phases: 1) Analysis and diagnostic 2) City vision, and 3) Operationalisation and implementation of the vision and guidelines. The first phase focused on understanding the context and the city, and included spatial analysis and municipal diagnosis, participatory workshops with local citizens, identification of priorities, and socialization and presentation of the diagnostic results. The second phase focused on developing the image and city's vision, with several workshops and participatory activities that helped define the vision, goals, targets, and strategic actions, which were consolidated in the SNG2030 City Vision document. Finally, the third phase focused, first, on identifying strategic projects and prioritizing them through participatory activities, and second, on defining and designing specific tactical urbanism interventions and creating a plan to implement them involving local residents.
Use of Our City Plans
The participatory strategy of San Nicolas de los Garza project was inspired mainly by Our City Plans. The methodology was adapted to the specific context and objectives and included specific activities such as the analysis and diagnostic, city vision workshop, and strategic project identification.
The innovations made from the implementation of SNG2030 City Vision project and its participatory strategy, have contributed to refining the methodology of Our City Plans. This includes recommendations and tools used for remote participation activities and workshops. One relevant contribution from SNG experience is the methodology for the strategic visioning workshop, which has informed the new version of the Strategic Visioning Workshop Guide, a tool to support the activity under Block E. Strategic Development Plan.
Results
SNG2030 City Vision resulted in three planning documents: the long-term city vision, the portfolio of strategic projects, and the master plan for tactical urbanism interventions. This will allow the municipality of San Nicolas de los Garza to guide and implement sustainable development. In 2021, the project was chosen as one of the 400 worldwide good practices to localize SDGs, thus becoming a reference and guide for the elaboration of other urban development plans and planning processes at the national level. Likewise, having a shared vision and promoting the appropriation of the projects and proposals by the population and the different actors of the city guarantees the continuity of actions, and the orientation of the different strategies towards a common objective of having an inclusive and sustainable development.
