Papers by Melissa Schumacher
Land
Nature-based solutions (NbSs) have long recognized the value of coastal and marine ecosystem mana... more Nature-based solutions (NbSs) have long recognized the value of coastal and marine ecosystem management and associated ecosystem services as useful tools for climate change mitigation (e.g., blue carbon) and adaptation (e.g., coastal protection against flooding and storm surges). However, NbSs remain poorly acknowledged and mostly absent from coastal planning for disaster risk reduction policies in the Caribbean, as well as from ex-post disaster reconstruction funds. With the increasing frequency and intensity of hurricanes in the region, NbSs are now more needed than ever. Taking Mexico as a representative case study for the wider Caribbean, we here seek to identify and analyze the barriers and opportunities perceived by relevant stakeholders for mainstreaming coastal-marine NbSs into coastal management and disaster risk reduction policies (e.g., mangroves as green infrastructure) to protect coastal societies and national economies against hurricanes. We conduct semi-structured, in...
Land
Since the 1980s, the municipality of San Andrés Cholula, Puebla, has been a territory with consta... more Since the 1980s, the municipality of San Andrés Cholula, Puebla, has been a territory with constant clashes between its rural population and the official land use policy. In this context, the rural community and its millenary bio-cultural traditions have collided with neoliberal political and economic interests, new urbanism, and land speculation, commodification of local culture and privatization of the public space. The above-mentioned facts represent a challenge for sustainable land management of the territory and for socio-spatial justice, as a large portion of the land is becoming a private asset, meanwhile the large extension of rural land has been for communal use. The present work aims to discuss the processes triggered by neoliberal urban development logic in the area, and how these dynamics have affected the identity of the place, endangered its bio-cultural heritage and jeopardized the local communal right to the land. It will also examine the possibilities for a creation...
Urban Resilience in the Context of Climate Change Conference 2020, 2020
Land, 2021
Expansive learning is a teaching–learning method adopted by the Department of Architecture of Uni... more Expansive learning is a teaching–learning method adopted by the Department of Architecture of Universidad de las Americas Puebla, Mexico, to introduce architectural students to the field of landscape sensitizing. This approach has been especially valuable considering the particular cultural and natural values of the Mexican landscapes. In it, architectural students are introduced to co-configuration strategies along with co-working methods with the participation of specialists and local stakeholders and community on the “barefoot” bottom-up basis. The community of Tochimilco, Puebla, was selected as a case study through which students can learn how vulnerable rural landscapes and their natural environments can be protected, constructed, and developed. Therefore, studying natural landscape and environmental conditions of Tochimilco through data collection, fieldwork and student workshops was carried out to reinforce the understanding of landscape features, values, semiotics, and mean...
Land
In 2019, residents of the rural district of San Rafael Comac in the municipality of San Andrés Ch... more In 2019, residents of the rural district of San Rafael Comac in the municipality of San Andrés Cholula, Mexico, challenged the implementation of the 2018 Municipal Program for Sustainable Urban Development of San Andrés Cholula (MPSUD), a rapacious urban-planning policy that was negatively affecting ancestral communities—pueblos originarios—and their lands and traditions. In 2020, a legal instrument called the writ of amparo was proven effective in ordering the repeal of the MPSUD and demanding an Indigenous consultation, based on the argument of self-recognition of local and Indigenous identity. Such identity would grant them the specific land rights contained in the Mexican Constitution and in international treaties. To explain their Indigenous identity in the writ of amparo, they referred to an established ancient socio-spatial system of organization that functioned beyond administrative boundaries: the Mesoamerican altepetl system. The altepetl, consisting of the union between l...
Critical Global Semiotics, 2019
The recent urban and architectural development in Mexico has evidenced extreme contrast between p... more The recent urban and architectural development in Mexico has evidenced extreme contrast between public planning policy, aiming at creating imaginaries and images of global cities as icons of vigorous economic and technological development, and vast peri-urban territories with great socio-urban problems but also with strong cultural traditions. Through dynamics of Experiential Learning, the Department of Architecture at the Universidad de las Américas Puebla (UDLAP), Mexico, is introducing architectural practices widening the stance of architectural education beyond the construction technologies and canonical aesthetics, to understand forms of meaningful socio-spatial organizations. Facing these challenges, place-sourced workshops informed by Semiotics of Habitable Space and Critical Realism have been carried out to trigger the re-thinking of architectural teaching and learning. Following Halliday's ideas , design workshops introduced students to experiential perception of the context as a narrative of its socio-human environment; informed by semiotic approaches and critical and creative thinking .
Tekoporá Revista Latinoamericana de humanidades ambientales y estudios territoriales, 2021
En 1894, Alexander von Humboldt realizó una serie de mediciones desde lo alto de la Gran Pirámide... more En 1894, Alexander von Humboldt realizó una serie de mediciones desde lo alto de la Gran Pirámide Tlachihualtépetl en Cholula. La visión que tuvo Humboldt sobre el paisaje le inspiró tal "respeto" que quedó plasmado en sus crónicas de viaje por América. Humboldt fue pionero en integrar la geobotánica como una herramienta de análisis visual y paisajístico, entendiendo la unidad de la naturaleza como un "todo" con diferentes escalas y planos de análisis. Por ello, esta investigación utiliza elementos del Naturgemälde de Humboldt y los Sistemas Socio-ecológicos del Paisaje (SES) para describir la transformación física que ha tenido el paisaje ru-urbano de Cholula. Para figurarlo, se presenta un análisis gráfico de diferentes tejidos que yuxtaponen el territorio de Cholula. Este trabajo observa cómo el espíritu humboldtiano está ejemplificado en Cholula, donde se debe reconocer el territorio desde lo biocultural, comprendiendo así la totalidad de la unidad en el microcosmos de Humboldt.
Practice of Teaching | Teaching of Practice: The Teacher’s Hunch, 2019
Latin American architecture and with it, architectural education frequently celebrates the insert... more Latin American architecture and with it, architectural education frequently celebrates the insertion of local projects in the international design stardom as vanguard symbols of development, quality of life and local capacity for innovation. The material environment follows the logics in which the urban image and architectural objects are non-textual elements in a political, economic and social discourse.Thus, the 21th century architectural and urban re-invention is easily focused on the transformation of the material world to images of glamorous architectural objects and urban landscapes, de-territorialized from their local contexts, their people and the local narratives of place. How could Mexican architectural education respond to local, spatial, socio-cultural, territorial, environmental, economic and political demands to favorable impact the construction of material environment struggling under the clash between globalization, its neo-liberal architectural language, and the loc...
Land, 2020
Women are an underappreciated economic force who, when empowered by association with a female org... more Women are an underappreciated economic force who, when empowered by association with a female organization, can be a catalyst for development. To assess the status of Indigenous rural women, as well as the mechanisms and impacts of their empowerment, this paper presents a case study of a community development approach based on the Masehual Siuamej Mosenyolchicacauani organization in Cuetzalan del Progreso, Puebla. The methodology used is a mixed-methods approach involving a literature review of two regional instruments: The Federal Program “Pueblos Mágicos” and the Land and Environmental Management Program “POET” for Cuetzalan. It also includes geo-data collection from public sources, empirical data collection from open-ended interviews, and focus group discussions with key informants from the Indigenous organization. The research found that, despite an inclusive legal and institutional framework, weak policy implementation and certain federal programs tend to segregate Indigenous c...
The ejido system in Mexico based on communal land was transformed for private ownership due to ne... more The ejido system in Mexico based on communal land was transformed for private ownership due to neoliberal trends during 1990. This research describes the evolution of Mexican land policies that changed the ejido system into private development to answer why land tenure change is shaping urban growth. To demonstrate this, municipalities of San Andrés Cholula and Ocoyucan were selected as a case study. Within this context, we evaluated how much ejido land is being urbanized due to real estate market forces and what type of urbanization model is created. These two areas represent different development scales: S.A. Cholula where its ejidos were expropriated as part of a regional urban development plan; and Ocoyucan where its ejidos and rural land were reached by private developers without local planning. To analyze both municipalities, historical satellite images from Google Earth were used with GRASS GIS 7.4 and corrected with QGIS 2.18. We found that privatization of ejidos fragmented...
Chipilo, un enclave agropecuario y manufacturero que se localiza en la periferia de la zona metro... more Chipilo, un enclave agropecuario y manufacturero que se localiza en la periferia de la zona metropolitana de Puebla-Tlaxcala, se caracteriza por una identidad propia y un bienestar social basado en la fusion de la cultura veneta italiana y mexicana. El objetivo del presente trabajo es tomar a Chipilo como caso de estudio ejemplar, donde estudiantes de Arquitectura de la Universidad de las Americas Puebla, analizan como la poblacion construye y transforma su entorno. El principal interes es que los estudiantes participen en el proceso de diseno y comprendan la importancia de su rol en la elaboracion de proyectos de mejoramiento de espacio publico y equipamiento en conjunto con la comunidad. Se selecciona el enfoque del diseno participativo como metodo de planificacion local a traves de la organizacion de diversas actividades en campo y un taller comunitario. Durante la realizacion del taller, se conto con la presencia de diversos miembros de la sociedad de Chipilo, donde se discutio,...
Land governance and gender: the tenure-gender nexus in land management and land policy
This chapter presents the role urban literacy has played in the stakeholder engagement and gender... more This chapter presents the role urban literacy has played in the stakeholder engagement and gender equity efforts introduced to strengthen land governance in San Andrés Cholula's periurban communities. The chapter uses focus group discussion (FGD) from eight urban literacy workshops in five peri-urban communities of San Andrés Cholula. These FGDs were conducted during a period of 3 months (i.e. July to September 2019). The chapter is structured as follows. It starts with historical review of Cholula's sociopolitical office system and a critical evaluation of MPSUD based on the principles of good governance. Then follows a discussion of the process of the urban literacy workshops. This is then followed by a discussion of the role of women in strengthening land governance through urban literacy based on the outcomes of the workshops. Finally, the chapter concludes with emphasis on how urban literacy is a veritable strategy for strengthening land governance and for enabling incl...
The City of Cholula has an important rural and religious identity which is struggling between tra... more The City of Cholula has an important rural and religious identity which is struggling between tradition and modernity. It represents an iconic case of peri-urban growth due to its three forms of spatial development: the modular-grid, the rural- and the private-development. These models are the result of stakeholders’ interests and the modification on planning regulations. In this aspect, stakeholders and regulations play an important role as agents of change. In order to guide the local planning with a participatory approach, a socio-spatial management is proposed.
Proceedings of the International Conference. The Future of Education (9th Edition), 2019
The recent urban and architectural development in Mexico has evidenced extreme contrast between p... more The recent urban and architectural development in Mexico has evidenced extreme contrast between public planning policy, aiming at creating imaginaries and images of global cities as icons of vigorous economic and technological development, and vast peri-urban territories with great socio-urban problems but also with strong cultural traditions. Through dynamics of Experiential Learning, the Department of Architecture at the Universidad de las Américas Puebla (UDLAP), Mexico, is introducing architectural practices widening the stance of architectural education beyond the construction technologies and canonical aesthetics, to understand of forms of meaningful socio-spatial organizations. Facing these challenges, place-sourced workshops informed by Semiotics of Habitable Space [1] and Critical Realism [2] have been carried out to trigger the re-thinking of architectural teaching and learning. Following Halliday’s ideas [3], design workshops introduced students to experiential perception...
La Ciudad de Cholula representa un ejemplo iconico del desarrollo periurbano en Mexico de ciudade... more La Ciudad de Cholula representa un ejemplo iconico del desarrollo periurbano en Mexico de ciudades medias inmersas en un entorno metropolitano. La particular heterogeneidad de Cholula como region sagrada, estudiantil y de servicios, se ha ido conformando a traves de tres tipos de modelo socio-territorial: el compacto, el rural y el metropolitano; estos modelos se integran a traves de diferentes patrones de uso de suelo. La transformacion urbana de Cholula se origino en territorio ejidal, donde su expropiacion en la decada de 1990 y la implementacion del Programa de Desarrollo Regional Angelopolis generaron diversos detonadores peri-urbanos, como cambios en las dinamicas poblacionales, especulacion inmobiliaria, dispersion de localidades, abandono de las actividades agricolas y consumo desmedido del territorio. Estos detonadores generaron cambios en los patrones de uso de suelo que van desde los nucleos urbanos compactos hasta las localidades rurales dispersas a las nuevas centralida...
Legado de Arquitectura y Diseño
Con la llegada de la contemporaneidad, donde el desarrollo urbano fue planteado en el contexto ne... more Con la llegada de la contemporaneidad, donde el desarrollo urbano fue planteado en el contexto neoliberalista; se visualiza un insaciable sistema capitalista, mismo que ha adquirido un papel crucial en Latinoamérica.Éste ha buscado la mayor ganancia y mercantilización de servicios, experiencias y productos, tornando necesario intervenir arquitectónicamente en áreas que han perdido sus fines de uso. Además, de que su intrusión en la traza urbana ha ocasionado la destrucción del tejido social de sus habitantes, obligando la migración de estos mismos y dejando al resto de la población ser influenciada por problemas externos y/o internos de la zona afectada. Un ejemplo, es el caso del barrio "El Alto" en Puebla, México. En el presente artículo, se plantea el proceso de gentrificación como una causa de dichas intervenciones, que tienen lafachada de buscar la recuperación de su riqueza cultural, social y patrimonial, distinguiendo los alcances de dicho proceso. Por consiguiente,...
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Papers by Melissa Schumacher
Por ello, desde otoño 2017, los grupos de proyectos “Espacio público” y “Equipamiento urbano”, dirigidos por la Dra. Melissa Schumacher han establecido una serie de actividades permanentes para la elaboración de proyectos barriales con base al sentir de su población y basados en ejercicios de diseño participativo realizados en micro-talleres comunitarios.