1. Introduction

The concept of a sustainable city recognizes that cities must respond to certain social, environmental, political, cultural, as well as, physical and economic objectives. It is a dynamic organism as complex as society itself and sensitive enough to react properly to changes. The sustainable city is a city with many facets and can be described as

• a fair city, where justice, food, shelter, education, health, and opportunities are distributed ­properly and where all people feel represented by their government;
• a beautiful city, where art, architecture, and landscape foster imagination and renew the spirit;
• a creative city, where open-mindedness and experimentation mobilize the full potential of its human resources and enable more rapid responsiveness to changes;
• a green city that minimize its environmental impact, where the relationship between built-up space and landscape is balanced and where infrastructure use resources efficiently and securely;
• a city that encourages contact, which brings public space into community life and assists the mobility of its inhabitants and where information is exchanged both personally and electronically;
• a compact and polycentric city, protecting the surrounding countryside, integrating communities, and optimizing their proximity;
• a diverse city, in which the degree of diversity of overlapping activities encourages, inspires, and promotes a vital and dynamic human community. (Rogers 2000, p. 168, translated from Spanish)

Latin American cities share many characteristics in their urban setting, despite the inherent differences in the place or type of influence they have; e.g., the irreversibility of the rural exodus, the presence of large rural and urban properties, changes in economic rhythms, the presence of areas of urban decay such as slums, high rates of poverty, and inequality in the income distribution and, pressures on urban growth and sprawl. (Santos 1982, translated from the original)