- Low-carbon trends for car-based cities: Urban streams as sustainable systems towards a Green Metropolis in Guadalajara, Mexico: Arroyo Atemajac Central Renewal Project    490 kb by    Gómez Alvarez, José Javier | jjgomez@itesm.mx    Short Outline This research explores the use of neglected urban stream environments as pathways through the city and as potential sites for developing housing, commerce and cultural facilities improving city life and creating sustainable urban environments. Abstract For a city with a car-based transport system like Guadalajara, Mexico, to become a low-carbon city implies a rethink of current trends in mobility and transportation, but also a look at new ways of living, developing and experiencing the city. It necessitates structural change based on the sustainable use of the natural resources still available in metropolitan areas. This research explores the use of neglected urban stream spaces as natural pathways through the city by fostering alternative medium-distance means of transportation such as walking and cycling, which can then broaden their extent by connecting to light train and articulated bus systems. The renovation of urban streams and their environs has the potential to improve quality of life in the city, since such spaces can also provide sites for developing new housing, local commerce, leisure and cultural facilities, thus creating a more balanced and sustainable urban environment. Currently, urban stream envoronments in Guadalajara are degraded, abandoned and polluted. Similarly, they do not present a homogeneous or continuous “spatial structure”; on the contrary, these are isolated and secluded pieces of city. The aim of the research is to investigate the possibility of generating a low-carbon natural mobility system at a metropolitan level, by linking currently isolated areas, in order to justify the cleansing and improvement of the streams. As a pilot project, the research explores the connection of two historic traditional barrios in metropolitan Guadalajara - Zapopan and Atemajac - through an urban stream: Arroyo Atemajac Central. The connection would be a “linear park” within the urban stream environment that links together the different urban areas. Keywords Urban Streams, Connectivity Systems, Green Metropolis, Guadalajara Mexico, Renewal Project Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2009: Low Carbon Cities   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper