In response to the collective demands of 100,000 people, Via Verde has transformed Mexico City’s two-story highway from symbol of bad decision-making to a green space that supports citizens’ wellbeing.
The greater metro area of Mexico City, Mexico, is home to more than 22 million people with 9 million in the city itself. One of them is Fernando Ortiz Monasterio, founder and director of Via Verde, a company that integrates nature into urban spaces.
This is a dense city with its issues, but it’s home. “I love it. But one problem that we do have is the green spaces,” Fernando admits.
In Mexico City, he explains, there’s only the equivalent of 3m2 of greenery per person.
He refers to the World Health Organization‘s claim that we’d ideally have at least nine square meters each (Natural England argues for as much as 20m2 per capita) “otherwise it could represent a health risk”. That’s certainly the case here, where “six out of every ten people living in Mexico City have a chronic respiratory disease” caused by complications related to poor air quality. (It results in far more deaths per year than the cartels, which people are much more fearful of.)
The 6m2 shortfall, multiplied by 22 million people, is a huge deficit, and one which Fernando set out to change. And he’s been successful. The image of the thriving green lungs that have sprung out of the iconic two-storey motorway are world famous. The story of how it was achieved is less so – but possibly even more remarkable.
Dealing with the Shortage of Space
Within the past 10 years, Via Verde has completed more than 100 projects, adding up to “around 100,000 square meters” of new green space, mainly for government and private clients.
But one simple calculation knocked the wind out of Fernando’s sails: in a decade, they had converted the equivalent of only one per cent of the 100 million square meters that were missing. Plus, there were no large spare tracks of land in the city to accommodate any more.
We were going too slow, so we decided to change the strategy.
What there is, though, is a lot of under-used surfaces. For two decades, Via Verde has specialised in finding innovative methods to add vegetation to the city, such as vertical gardens and green roofs. So, they already had the answer: instead of flat spaces, they would “transform the existing infrastructure”.
Fernando realised that a project of this scale would need to utilise public spaces, and he set his sights on the two thousand concrete pillars of the dual highway.
Gaining Political Traction
But it’s not possible to just go around greening major roads without the right permits; the mayor’s office had to sign off on the project.
Like many places, though, green infrastructure isn’t a priority for Mexico City’s administration, Fernando explains. Therein lies a riddle: who really gets to decide whether a project like this goes ahead?
“Some people used to say the government: the municipality, the mayor decides, he represents the interest of all these people, and we’d say, ‘No, it’s the people themselves.’”
To convince the mayor, Fernando needed data to prove that citizens, like him, wanted change.
A Social Call
It’s not possible to canvas 20 million people, so our CItyChanger mocked up a rendering of the 44km-long road system, adding lush greenery to show how it could look, and posted it to social media with two questions.
Twenty-seven thousand people responded to question 1: would you like to see this transformation happen?
As Fernando expected, the results were overwhelmingly positive, with 98.5% declaring it a good idea. But what of the remaining 1.5% – would they really prefer to leave it a drab, lifeless grey?
Their concern, Fernando discovered, was that adding greenery to vehicular infrastructure could “send a wrong message to the mayors of the world” – the message that it’s okay to continue building like this because someone else will always “come and save your ass”.
The second question was just as straightforward, asking who should pay for the implementation and maintenance:
- the government – via taxes.
- citizens – through private donations.
- or the private sector – in exchange for advertising space.
Fernando is quick to point out that it’s not the prospect of tax rises that meant “80 percent of people voted for option C” rather than A, but a lack of trust in city officials who are “very good at spending money without very good tangible results”.
Political Pestering
With the proof at his disposal, Fernando was unable to present his argument to the mayor. Almost.
“The government did not listen to us,” our CityChanger recalls. “We contacted them probably a hundred times. They were very busy doing politics.”
Not beat yet, Fernando asked an old friend to help apply pressure where it would have most leverage: with the people.
“I’m lucky to have him, because he’s a very famous actor. We did this one-minute video in less than one hour. One million people saw the video. Everyone was sharing it. And the video ended with a call to action.”
They asked viewers to sign an online petition calling for the transformation of the highway.
Change.org offers a singularly persuasive mechanism – it emails a nominated recipient each time a signature is added to the platform. Fernando set theirs to Mexico City mayor’s official account.
Within three days, 80,000 emails had saturated the municipality’s IT system. “The phone started ringing.”
The mayor’s office asked Fernando to cease with the emails, which he agreed to do in exchange for a meeting. It took another two days, and another 20,000 emails, before they agreed to these terms.
It’s in moments like these, he says, that “you realise the power of the people and that actually the government is supposed to listen”.
I would say that the most important thing that I have learned is, if people get together, the government will listen.
After that, getting the mayor to issue the permits was easy. “He said, ‘Why didn’t you look for me before? This is amazing!’”
Mexico City’s two-story highway after green facades were added to the concrete pillars. Image credit: Via Verde / Fernando Ortiz Monasterio
Getting Green Off the Ground
In 2018, work started on the first 10 pillars. Upon seeing that Fernando really was able to deliver the quality that he promised, the mayor commissioned another 100 pillars. “And then 1000 pillars after that.” Altogether, they amount to an extra 60,000 m2 of green. “People love them. The government loves them.”
It all looked shaky when a new mayor questioned the scheme, but their own survey further cemented the public’s support for a greener highway.
“Seventy-seven per cent of the answers were, ‘I love Via Verde,’ and 21 per cent were, ‘I like Via Verde.’ So, we had 99 per cent acceptance and the mayor not only allowed us to continue the project but made an extension for all parts of the city.”
As it often turns out to be the case, people relate to the benefits of green infrastructure, and projects like these seem to trump political one-upmanship.
The Real Green Thing
As for financing the project, that was a doddle!
Via Verde offered big brands prime advertising space on digital billboards on one side of every tenth pillar of “the most transited street in Latin America”. Sponsors were keen to be associated with such a positive transformation. Even Coca Cola!
There was of course a moral quandary to this: should Via Verde really be working with a global company that, in Mexico at least, has been accused of unsustainable practices, like taking water from local communities?
“I have been criticised for that, and I’m okay with that,” Fernando tells us. “I completely respect the critics. I know I’m cleaning Coca Cola’s soul and I want to be transparent on that, but we cannot solve everything at the same time. We need their money.”
Looking at it practically, they’re also one of few companies that can commit to the long-term investment Fernando asked of them.
Our CityChanger projected the costs for implementation and maintenance of the green facades up to 100 years ahead. A financial commitment of this magnitude would protect the project from changing political priorities or from falling into disrepair. Fernando sought companies that budget with a similar a long-term outlook and for whom this kind of spend was not unreasonable.
That funded 4% of the overall project.
Image credit: Via Verde / Fernando Ortiz Monasterio
It wasn’t enough. Nervously, Fernando had to confess to his sponsors that he would have to reduce their exposure, but the response was positive.
Advertising partners agreed to continue the same payments but for one in every 15 pillars rather than every tenth.
“I believe we have been able to accomplish a proof of concept that can be a business model to replicate in different locations of the world,” says Fernando cheerfully.
What It Means for Mexico City
Thanks to Fernando’s data-driven mindset, we know there are tangible benefits to this project.
Research suggests that 50,000 m2 of vertical green is able, annually, to:
- capture 89.5 tons of carbon dioxide and produce 65 tons of oxygen.
- trap 6.5 tons of dust and process 12.5 tons of heavy metals.
- filter 32,250 tons of harmful gases.
He also shares details of greenery’s ability to reduce heat, noise, and a sense of isolation, and it’s capacity to improve productivity and reduce ailments for individuals who make visual contact with the project.
However, in Fernando’s experience, most people rarely care about that. “These scientific words are too complex for people.”
What does resonate with them, however, is how the greenery makes them feel – much harder to measure with data, but evident, nonetheless.
“We ask the people what they like about the project, and they most like how their mood changes. They smile. Almost half a million of people pass through every day. Imagine how powerful that is.”
We’re thinking about carbon sequestration, which is very important, but you’re making people happy. I’m way prouder of receiving that answer.
When Plastic Comes Good
There are other satisfying details to this story. Like the use of recycled rainwater to nourish the vegetation, meaning all this can be achieved without encroaching on the limited drinking supply available in the region, and mitigating potential flood risks.
“We take water from the drainage of the city and clean it a little bit, but we leave all the nutrients there. If you remove all the soils and the solids and the soaps and the greases, drainage water is pure gold for green areas.”
Plants on the facades sit in pouches made of a durable hydroponic felt composite derived from recycled aluminium and plastic packaging keeping rubbish like toothpaste tubes and milk cartons out of landfill.
It’s about taking free things that no one wants and transforming it into a beautiful benefit for the people.
These pouches are sewn together in Mexico’s prisons by 250+ volunteers who are allowed to accrue wages to collect upon release, but every one of them chooses to have it sent home regularly to support their families.
With the rest of the production process being simplified into “specific tasks”, Via Verde has made training accessible to anyone using short videos. As Fernando says, “you don’t have to be a botanist or an engineer” to “make money and … help to transform the city”. This way, they have been able to “give jobs to very low-income women that [otherwise would] have a very strong dependency” on their families.
Rolling Out Via Verde Globally
Thanks to a collaboration with the World Economic Forum, the concepts and products developed for Via Verde are now being rolled out elsewhere, globally.
Fernando can’t be in India and Mexico at the same time, he quips; by making implementation as simple as possible, Via Verde almost eliminates geographical and linguistic limitations.
“We have developed eighteen different solutions for green infrastructure, so we can adapt every need of every different city into a potential green infrastructure solution with this business model,” Fernando explains. This includes an Internet of Plants – free operating software that connects smart sensors and reacts to the needs of individual green panels without human interference – removing potential for accidental neglect or overwatering.
That has been essential in caring for the 8 million plants involved in the project so far. There are losses, of course – “10,000 plants have died” – but, Fernando says, that’s just “0. 000001 per cent”.
Highlighting Public-Private-People Partnerships
The case of greening Mexico City’s highway is a reminder that we can rarely achieve our large-scale sustainability goals single-handedly.
“You need money from the private sector, and you need permits and collaboration with government,” Fernando clarifies.
That may involve some uncomfortable bedfellows, but giving stakeholders a bit of what they want – whether that’s the promise of sales for businesses or votes for politicians – can result in extraordinary outcomes for everyone in the city.
“If you have these key elements of any transformation aligned, you can transform not only the green infrastructure scenario, but you can transform your city, your country, you can transform the world.”