Air quality and its integration within urban planning: Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico

Abstract

As a result of world wide urbanization and industrialization, urban air pollution shows a growing trend directly proportional to increasing demands on energy for domestic and industrial activities. From this point of view, cities along with their urban, functional and morphological structure are not being planned with pollution prevention or minimum environmental impacts in mind. This work has two purposes: first, it sets an assessment of air quality in Mexicali by analyzing O3, CO, SO2, NO2 and PM10 emissions in relation to urban structure. And second, the assessment of already implemented urban strategies aimed to minimize environmental impacts. This work also presents a scheme that incorporates air quality issues into town planning and urban management.

Keywords

• Calidad del aire urbano
• gestión de la calidad del aire, contaminación atmosférica, planeación urbana sustentable
• planeación ambiental urbana.