In this episode of the Smart Community Podcast, I had a great conversation on location in Mexico City with architect and city planner Pablo Lazo. I recorded this while I was away on my Churchill Fellowship visit to Mexico in March and I really enjoyed this conversation.

If you want to hear my reflections on my visit to Mexico City, as well as the other places I visited while I was away, you should subscribe to my exclusive podcast about my Churchill Fellowship. It’s exclusively for supporters on Pozible, so head to Pozible.com today, search for My Smart Community, and hit support. There’s several episodes there already for you to get stuck into and hear about the various people, places and platforms I investigated as part of her Churchill Fellowship.

In this episode, Pablo and I discuss his passion for cities and his interest in Smart Mobility. We really focus in on Mexico City and the opportunities and challenges the city is facing in terms of transport, urban sprawl, population and employment opportunities. We talk about the relationship between place, mobility and public health and how we can use data to better understand this relationship and provide better solutions for our communities.

Pablo and I also discuss Smart Streets, and how we need to be proactive about reducing conflict between different users on our roads, plus the emerging trends of both autonomous vehicles and walkability. As always I hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as I enjoyed making it.

Listen here:

What we cover in this episode:

• Pablo’s background in architecture and planning, and his passion for cities
• What sparked Pablo’s interest in Smart Cities and Communities
• How Mexico City is embracing Smart Concepts
• The opportunities and challenges facing Mexico City in terms of transport, urban sprawl, population and employment opportunities
• The pros and cons of the public transport options available right now in Mexico City
• Pablo’s perspective on making micro-mobility work within a broader mobility context
• The relationship between place, mobility, public health
• Smart Streets, and the importance of reducing conflict between different users on our roads
• How data can help governments understand how people move and make more places organically walkable
• The importance of having some baseline information or baseline effective data
• The emerging trends of autonomous vehicles and walkability in cities

Quotes:

“I have always been passionate about cities and the built environment, from different angles [like] smaller scale issues such as architecture, but also large scale issues related to urbanism in general, and aspects that are now common ground for urbanism such as mobility, transportation, ecology, sustainability and urban resilience.”

“On one hand, [Mexico City] needs to move around people, but on the other hand the problem lies exactly on that aspect of the system.”

“If the place has options for better urban mobility or different alternatives to move around, you also address issues such as public health or economic value of that particular area of the city. So people in the local government have started to realise they are not only ticking the box in terms of public transportation, but they are addressing things that are equally important to the population such as… aspects that are related to public health.”

“Obviously the problem with congestion in Mexico City has a direct implication on sustainability because of the air pollution and noise pollution. The city has been working during the last 10 years on addressing how to reduce emissions that are coming from congestion.”

Connect:

Connect with me via email: hello@mysmart.community

Connect with me via email: hello@mysmart.community

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