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

REMIND strives to enhance the appreciation of indigenous urban form and practices that can benefit sustainable urban development. The Urban Region of Merida (URM), Mexico, experiences unsustainable rapid urbanisation.

Weak urban planning policies and globalised urban design generate problematic urban patterns that marginalise the relevance of precolonial Maya rural-urban integration, indigeneity persistent in current urban life, and vernacular urban design.

In contrast, URM accommodated urban centres for >2,000-years through social-ecological pressures and societal transitions.

To envision regionally appropriate sustainable urban planning and design requires understanding how urban form adapted over the long-term.

Thus REMIND asks:How can indigenous Maya practices be applied in urban development processes to substantiate a reimagination of urban space that promotes the future sustainability of Mérida?To address this question, REMIND will first adapt urban resilience concepts for the analysis of material evidence on urban form over the long-term, enabling an actionable ‘applied archaeology of indigenous urban practice' serving regional development.

Next, through micro-morphological mapping of urban centres through time in a historical Geographical Information System (HGIS), spatial patterns of urban form will be identified, characterised, and compared.

This fundamental research will structure and be guided by two cross-sectoral co-productive capacity building workshops, which match multidisciplinary academic expertise to institutional stakeholders in URM’s sustainable development and heritage to generate leverage for alternative approaches to urban planning and design.

Together, participants will ultimately co-create reimaginative ‘indigenous urban development principles’ in response to site-based urban development challenges that promote sustainability and equitability in urban growth.