It makes depressing reading for environmentalists: in Guadalajara there is a car for every 2.5 people and there are more automobiles than trees per square meter.
A study by the Jalisco Ecological Collective (CEJ) counted 600,000 trees and 712,886 cars over 3,794 square kilometers in the metropolitan zone.
“According to data from the National Population Council, in the eighties there were 7.5 people per vehicle, in the nineties this was reduced to 6.7, in 2000 it reached 4.4 and last year we reached 2.5 people per car,” said Rosa Leticia Sherman Leaño, a researcher in the public health department at the University of Guadalajara (UdeG).
Meanwhile, a 2009 survey by the Center for Investigation and Higher Studies in Social Anthropology (CIES) showed that private car journeys account for just 26 percent of journeys in the city each day, but take up 90 percent of space on urban roads. Public transport accounts for 34 percent of journeys, while 38 percent are made on foot.
To discuss these problems and put forward solutions, the UdeG’s Center for Health Sciences (CUCS) is organizing a second forum on epidemiology and environmental health, titled “Urban Mobility, Towards environmental collapse?” at its Javier Garcia de Alba auditorium on Friday.