ABSTRACT
Megacities are critical cases because urban-industrial development in rapidly developing countries, like Mexico, in megacities such as the Mexico City Metropolitan Area (MCMA) moves quickly away from sustainability, driven by powerful political forces that favor business-as-usual practice and tend to resist innovation. The MCMA provides an excellent case study for risk conundrums and gaps in SHD/PR/CCMAR work because it is a megacity grappling with chronic, systemic issues the authors find in both developed and developing country cities. This chapter identifies three major risk conundrums for SHD/PR/CCMAR work are follows: the socio-ecological complexity conundrum, the varying temporal/spatial scales conundrum and the stakeholder diversity conundrum. It introduces a framework of six domains to help address the conundrums and systematic gaps in development practice: project framing, concept, and design; development topics and sectors; stakeholder interests, relationships, and capacities; knowledge types, disciplines, models, and methods; temporal and spatial scales; and socio-technical capacities, including education, research, technology, and policy.
