On October 7, I2UD Senior Associate James Kostaras gave the keynote speech at the Revive Monterrey Forum 2011 in Monterrey, Mexico, attended by representatives from local and state government, business leaders and academics. The prestigious Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, commonly referred to as the “TEC”, hosted the Forum to engage professionals in the business and government sectors in dialogue about a new vision for the city and metropolitan region.
An acute crisis of confidence pervaded discussions at Revive Monterrey Forum 2011. Monterrey, Mexico’s third largest city with a metropolitan population of more than 4 million, is confronted by brutal violence from drug cartels. Monterrey is the nation’s most affluent city and home to some of Mexico’s major international corporations that compete successfully in the global economy, including CEMEX, the largest cement producer in the Americas. However, as Tim Padgett recently reported in TIME Magazine (“Mourning Monterrey: Drug Mafias Darken Mexico’s ‘Lighthouse’“, August 26, 2011), “In 2005, the global consulting firm Mercer ranked Monterrey as Latin America’s safest city. But in 2006 it began falling to los narcos – the drug-cartel mafiosi responsible for 40,000 murders in Mexico since their violence began spiraling out of control that year.” Urban poverty and a dysfunctional and fragmented metropolitan governance structure resist and complicate an effective response to this crisis.
Monterrey’s business leaders are increasingly concerned that the costs of doing business in a city plagued with escalating criminal violence and intractable poverty will drive away foreign investment and undercut Monterrey’s robust economic competitiveness nationally and in the global economy. As part of the dialogue on what to do in such a situation, the TEC invited me to share insights into the challenges of urbanization and metropolitan governance from I2UD’s global perspective, and recommend new urban strategies for decision-makers in Monterrey, particularly in the context of crisis.