Cities and climate change: urban projects in Latin American cities and their role in climate change mitigation

This research addresses the relationship between cities and climate change, specifically how urban projects can help to mitigate climate change in the context of Latin American cities. It is argued that some urban projects can be transformed into a new generation of projects aimed at mitigating climate change by avoiding GHG emissions into the atmosphere with mobility and urban regeneration projects, and mitigation projects to diminish the risk of natural events, with reforestation, creation of parks, green corridors, and banks and shores of rivers and lakes. In order to be successful, these urban projects must comply with several requirements, such as being incorporated into long-term urban planning, having a governance model that facilitates the necessary changes with a strong leadership of the mayors, an institute of urbanism or similar to build the projects, and top down and bottom up citizen participation at all levels. The cities of Curitiba in Brazil and Medellin in Colombia are taken as case studies. The research concludes that several projects on an urban scale have been implemented in recent years and are enabling to mitigate climate change. These projects were born with other objectives, responding to social, environmental and economic problems, but over time they have been integrated into the new challenges for cities in the face of climate change. Although these projects are unique, they have been developed in particular historical contexts where the figure of the mayors has been fundamental for the achievement of the objectives. Therefore, the cases cannot be replicated exactly in other cities, but lessons can be extracted from the experiences to be able to implement similar actions and projects, considering the particularity of the geographical, cultural and social context of each city.