UN-Habitat hosts meeting on urban regeneration in Mexico City_3Mexico City, 4 November 2015 – UN-Habitat recently organized an Expert Group Meeting to provide concrete recommendations for the Urban Regeneration process of the City of Mexico. A team of eight international urban planning experts and more than 20 Mexican experts presented the international experiences of New York, Sao Paulo, Bogota, Cordoba, Quito, Bilbao and Barcelona on urban renewal and regeneration. Drawing from these international examples, the multidisciplinary team proposed concrete action points to address the social, legal, financial, spatial and environmental challenges of the City of Mexico. Those who addressed the EGM included Ms. Purnima Kapur – Executive Director of the New York City Planning Department, Mr. Fernando de Mello, Secretary of Urban Development of the City of Sao Paulo, Mr. Jose Antonio Velandia, Director of Heritage and Urban Renewal of the Planning Secretary of Bogota, and Ms. Catalina Molinatti from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. Others were Ms. Dora Arizaga, Director of the Metropolitan Institute of Heritage of Quito, Juan Alayo of the Strategic City Planning and Research, Bilbao and Maria Buhigas of UrbanFacts Barcelona. UN-Habitat hosts meeting on urban regeneration in Mexico City_2Topics such as social participation and integration, strategic planning, legal and normative frameworks, financial mechanisms for regeneration, environmental protection, accessibility and provision of public space were addressed and recurrently debated during the meeting. The concrete proposals deducted by the team were presented to the leading government institutions that will count with the technical support of UN-Habitat to create more compact, better connected, social inclusive and resilient urban regeneration projects. The meeting has been organized by the UN-Habitat Office in Mexico led by Erik Vittrup and the Urban Planning and Design LAB of UN-Habitat, led by Rogier van den Berg. The event is part of a series of actions that the Mexican institutions are undertaking in order to engage citizens and understand better the complex urban dynamics of the City of Mexico to propose concrete transformations that will benefit residents and improve the quality of life in the city.