REMIND · Reimagining Urban Growth in the Mérida Region through Long-Term Adaptive Indigenous Practices: An applied archaeology for sustainable urban development

Reimagining Urban Growth in the Mérida Region through Long-Term Adaptive Indigenous Practices: An applied archaeology for sustainable urban development

The REMIND project aims to generate leverage for the applied usage of knowledge derived from the Maya indigenous urban tradition benefitting sustainable and equitable alternatives to urban development in the Urban Region of Merida (URM), Yucatan, Mexico. Since the second half of the 20th century URM experiences rapid urbanisation, which has accelerated in the 21st century, predominantly through repetitively patterned large-scale residential urban expansions. Weak urban planning policies and urban construction driven by global land and property markets permit the manifestation of such expansions. The resulting piecemeal urban patterns are problematic because they affect the social and ecological functioning of the urban landscape, blocking and disrupting connectivity, restricting economic opportunities, threatening well-being, disempowering Maya urban heritage and the articulation of identity, and damaging ecological resources and the viability of the urban landscape. The forces that govern urban growth and development marginalise traditional Maya urban patterns and practices. Yet, indigenous patterns and practices have adapted through over 2,000 years of social-ecological pressures and major societal transitions in the pre- to postcolonial eras, incl. political and economic reform and migration, population growth and decline, colonisation, industrialisation, and nationalisation. Especially in peripheral urban areas and smaller towns, remnants of urban indigeneity can still be appreciated in vernacular design and land use practices. Urban growth that is realised through real estate development operating under permissive policies and monitoring according to globalised notions of housing needs and land tenure threatens these remnants and landscape ecology. The long-term history of adaptation suggests that Maya urban landscapes hold significant value for achieving regionally appropriate sustainable urban development. Yet, archaeological and historical Maya urban heritage and vernacular architecture is exclusively used to serve the tourist economy and to make superficial assertions of cultural identity, disallowing substantive developmental influence. Thus, REMIND’s research design is two-pronged: 1. It pursues an empirical research methodology which aims to assemble a regionally specific evidence-base on the changes and consistencies in Maya urban landscapes in the long-term, using ~6th and ~13th century archaeological examples, alongside historical and contemporary urban mapping of Merida and its periphery. This spatial data is produced to varying standards, differing according to the nature and purpose of the maps and records produced. REMIND employs research techniques advancing historical GIS and urban morphological methods respecting the particularities of URM. Furthermore, REMIND contextualises such abstract data with urban anthropological and architectural fieldwork in residential samples of disadvantaged traditional satellite towns around Merida. Here development is, in different ways, profoundly affected by expansive urban growth. Standardised mapping, spatial analyses, and data visualisations enhanced by the rich experiential context provided by the fieldwork will form a guide, inspirational motivator, and resource in the second prong of the research actions. 2. REMIND identifies and mobilises key authoritative and institutional stakeholders in the sustainable urban planning and design of URM, concerning city, municipal, state, and federal government bodies. Through two workshops followed by a short period of collaborative work on actionable joint outputs, it leverages a historically integrative perspective on indigenous urbanism among pivotal officials and representatives. Ultimately, the collaborative work should define, illustrate, and distribute a series of co-created reimaginative ‘indigenous urban development principles’. Focusing on the fieldwork towns ensures that these principles – e.g. design codes, planning advice, and strategic schemes redressing fundamental issues in urban land cover and land use divisions and distributions – can be formulated in co-productive response to site-based urban development challenges with potential to promote sustainable and equitable opportunities in regional urban life.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union