Projects Sustainable Urban Systems

Systems Innovation for Healthy and Net-Zero Urban Futures

This project is developed in the frame of the Pathfinder Initiative (hosted in the London School of Hygene and Tropical Medicine-LSHTM).

About the Project

As a partner to the Pathfinder Initiative, we worked alongside the OECD Development Centre to bring a practical way for cities in developing countries to:

work beyond sectorial silos
understand the root causes of carbon lock-in and poor health outcomes, and
build strategies that can lead them to more sustainable, resilient and healthy futures.

Using collaborative systems thinking we conducted focused work supporting Monterrey in Mexico. We focus on the links between transport, land-use and housing. Working with policy officials and key stakeholders, our aim is to help in co-creating a vision of a healthy and sustainable future for the city and identifying high-leverage policies, actions, and alliances between government and other stakeholders to achieve it.

The project embedded discussions on transport, land-use and housing policy and investment into wider questions, supporting policymakers and other key stakeholders in revisiting urban development models, narratives for progress and the role of aspirations in advancing bold climate and health action.

Explore this work in the final report here.

In a nutshell:

The report highlights that urban growth has been coupled with a growing dependence on cars. The share of car trips rose from 36.7% in 2005 to 46.8% in 2020, while public transport’s share decreased from 42% to just 20% in the same years. Road expansion has not addressed congestion in the long term and has instead led to higher car use over time.

Monterrey’s residents lost around 89 hours to traffic congestion in 2025, while public transport users spend almost three hours a day commuting. Air pollution is a major health burden, with one study showing that meeting PM2.5 standards alone in the city could prevent around 1,700 premature deaths every year. Rising temperatures and heat stress are adding further pressure to city residents and the wider urban system.

To help turn this vision into reality, the report identifies five high-leverage points:

1. Design a people-centered city – “from a city of roads to a city of places”;
2. Move to long-term investments for sustainable transport;
3. Redeveloping the city using vacant or underutilised space, instead of building more houses;
4. Build sustainable aspirations for public support;
5. Institutionalise this transformation into governance systems.