Brugada Sends 20-Year Development Plan to Mexico City Congress

Mexico City Mayor Clara Brugada sent the draft General Development Plan (PGD) to the city Congress on Wednesday, Nov. 11, according to El Universal and La Razón. The Board of Governors of the Institute of Democratic Planning and Foresight (IPDP), the city’s planning body, had approved the text first. Legislators now have to review it and decide whether to pass it.

The plan, labeled 2025-2045 by La Razón, is a 20-year roadmap. Among its goals are childcare centers within 15 minutes of every child’s home, electric public transport and drainage and water service in every neighborhood. Brugada asked lawmakers not to turn it into a partisan fight.

What Brugada told lawmakers

At a press conference, Brugada said the plan is meant to outlast individual governments and legislatures. She said it gives Mexico City, for the first time, a long-term strategic vision to guide public policy and keep projects going beyond a single term. She called it a historic step toward the Democratic Planning System written into the city constitution.

“This plan has no political owner,” she said, according to El Universal. She invited legislators to criticize it, debate priorities and reach agreements.

How the draft changed after public consultation

Brugada said the text going to Congress differs from the version first put out for consultation. Over six months, hundreds of thousands of residents took part through workshops, forums, meetings and discussion sessions, she said. Their input expanded the plan’s strategic lines by about 30 percent.

A separate consultation, described as free, prior and informed, covered 84 pueblos (native towns), 44 barrios originarios (original neighborhoods), 75 Indigenous communities and 12 Afro-descendant organizations.

Pablo Yanes Rizo, head of the city’s Secretariat of Welfare and Social Equality (Sebien), said the final document makes no reference to the Casas de Gobierno (Government Houses). Residents had objected to them during consultation meetings. Instead, the draft adds a line of work on strengthening local governments and the alcaldías (borough governments), with more attention to political freedoms and representative democracy. Yanes also said it includes proposals from business chambers on legal certainty, simpler administrative procedures and forms of property, plus measures to strengthen the Comités de Participación Comunitaria (Copacos), the community participation committees.

What the plan sets out

Carlos Alberto Flores Vargas, a citizen member of the IPDP’s Technical Directorate, said the plan has five main dimensions:

• a democratic city and the centrality of public goods
• a welfare state and care
• a dynamic economy with shared prosperity
• eco-social urbanism
• a city of full cultural rights

Axes on physical and technological infrastructure and on scientific, technological and innovation development come on top of those.

Other goals Brugada listed include a circular economy in which waste becomes a resource, better air quality, an end to extreme poverty and a guarantee that no neighborhood lacks water, drainage, parks, schools, health centers or sports and cultural spaces.

Why it matters for residents

La Razón reported that Patricia Ramírez Kuri, who heads the planning body, said public budgets over the next two decades will have to follow the plan’s axes. That ties spending on water, transport, care services and neighborhood facilities to the document if Congress approves it.

La Razón also reported that the PGD will serve as the basis for the Programa General de Ordenamiento Territorial (PGOT), the city’s territorial planning program, and for specific development plans for each alcaldía and colonia.

What happens next

The text is with the Congress of Mexico City, where legislators will analyze and debate it. Brugada asked that the discussion focus on ideas and priorities rather than party lines.

Sources: El Universal, Yahoo Noticias en Español, La Razón de México