**4. Design of Mexico City's sustainable buildings certification program and its results**

The program has a number of inconsistencies in terms of total scores and required scores for certification; therefore, obtaining certification is relatively easy: only 21 points, or 17.5% of the total score, are needed for the compliance level. The category of energy alone could be enough grounds for a certification. As a consequence, the holistic nature of the assessment is lost. As has been indicated, beyond organizational actions or user behavior patterns, we focus on the importance of the criteria associated with the features of the facility.

When these criteria were classified based on the two analysis categories created for the present study, only 16 out of 47 were found to be associated with the users' organization and behavior patterns. These criteria represent 34% of the total number of criteria, and they represent only 24.2% of the total points. This difference varies depending on the category.

The most represented category is "Solid waste": 60% of the score can be obtained due to actions associated with organizational and user behavior issues. Concerning the "Energy" category, only 7.9% of the points are obtained via user actions, whereas the rest, or 92.1%, is obtained by designing and incorporating technology into the facility. In fact, in all categories except for Solid Waste, most of the points can be obtained by including technological solutions in the design of the facility (**Table 3**).

An analysis of the certification program reveals a clear preference for the use of technology in the design of a facility as the main mechanism to attain sustainability, disregarding a fundamental aspect of sustainable development, that is, sustainability as a result of the transformation of behavior patterns.

It is important to highlight the implications of such a program: the population can wrongly perceive a facility as a sustainable architectural environment only because it includes efficient technological components, and the need to modify their patterns of consumption or use of resources ecologically is never internalized. Sustainability can be hardly achieved if the population fails to take on the responsibility of using resources rationally.

A comprehensive environmental system becomes more relevant when the intention is to involve a facility's users in the improvement of the quality of their habitants. Sustainability criteria highlight the importance of aligning environmental management with current regulations to achieve substantial changes in the habitability of buildings.

Regrettably, the scope of the analyzed certification has been very limited. Despite the large number of buildings in Mexico City, only 43 of them were certified in seven years. This outcome shows that the program has ample room for improvement to design mechanisms encouraging the development of sustainable facilities. The certification classifies each facility depending on their performance status: excellence or efficiency. Half of the evaluated buildings achieved a level of excellence, which is closely associated with the total score that can be possibly obtained for the certification. The excess of points, described above, reveals one of the deficiencies in the evaluation design, which

*Design of Cities and Buildings - Sustainability and Resilience in the Built Environment*

temporary storage

Furniture for adequate indoors management

Ascent and descent bays for transports

> Noise level control inside buildings

Use of materials low in volatile organic compounds (VOCs) for construction and finishing

Use of recycled construction materials

Recycling of existing structures

Reconversion of soil use and remediation

Respect for existing trees

*Source: Prepared by the authors based on SEDEMA [5].*

*Sustainable Buildings Certification Program.*

Use of certified wood 2 Permeable road areas 4

*Classification facility features or organizational factors of the evaluation criteria used by Mexico City's* 

Thus, the first part of this analysis focused on the criteria associated with the organization and user behavior patterns, including their assigned scores. The second focused on the actions carried out by building owners to obtain certifications,

Accessibility 3

Bicycle stations 2 Internal bike lanes 2

Solid waste Infrastructure for

Quality of life and social responsibility

Environmental impact and other impacts

**Category Features of the facility Points Organizational factors Points**

Signposting 0.5 Adequate final

Rooftop greening 7 Adequate and timely

Bicycle parking 3 Green areas intended for

Use of local materials 1 Elimination of

3

2

1

*Subtotal 20 9*

Parking accessibility 4 Green purchases 3

3 Separation of recoverable waste

1.5 Dissemination and

*Subtotal 5 7.5*

arrangement

sensitization program on solid waste separation

Special waste handling management plan (optional)

maintenance

comfort and to encourage social interaction

refrigerants based on chlorofluorocarbons

control

materials for the maintenance of green areas and buildings

2 Indoors contamination

5 Use of biodegradable

*Subtotal 24 9* **Total 168 53.5**

1 Provision of transportation facilities to permanent users

2 Existence of a participatory culture concerning sustainability

2

3

0.5

2

2

2

2

3

2

3

1

**56**

**Table 2.**

#### *Design of Cities and Buildings - Sustainability and Resilience in the Built Environment*


#### **Table 3.**

*Synthesis of scores by category, facility features, and organizational factors in Mexico City's Sustainable Buildings Certification Program.*


*Source: prepared by the authors based on SEDEMA [22].*

*\* Certification is granted for a period of three years; therefore, the facilities that obtained it in 2017 and 2018 will have a valid certification until 2019 and 2020, respectively.*

#### **Table 4.**

*Mexico City: evolution of properties registered by Mexico City's Sustainable Buildings Certification Program, 2011–2020.*

makes certification easy to comply with. On the other hand, 26% of the evaluated buildings achieved an efficiency level, and 24% remained undefined in certification resolutions, but it can be inferred that they achieved compliance level.

Organizational capacity depends on actions to control and mitigate environmental contamination inside and outside the building. For that reason, the study of different types of buildings shows how specific actions have been selected to favor user dynamics and environmental comfort [23].

Most of the evaluated facilities (62%) are office buildings; this observation can be associated with the economic advantages offered by the program in terms of tax exemptions and the socially responsible image that a company acquires when it shows an interest in the environment. The remaining 29% of the facilities corresponds to condo towers that seek to reduce operational costs and provide a highvalue offer to a population segment interested in environmental preservation.

**Table 4** shows that the number of buildings included in the certification program increased gradually until a peak in 2016. After that year, the interest in obtaining certification has declined from 20 buildings to only three in 2020. Despite the economic benefits of certified buildings.<sup>2</sup> This could be possibly associated with the lack of cost–benefit advantages identified by the owners, as reflected by the lack of renewed interest in additional certifications after the initial three-year period.

**59**

*Organizational Analysis of Sustainable Building Certifications in Mexico City*

at strengthening sustainable organization and user behavior patterns.

**5. Evolution of sustainable actions in certified buildings**

The next section will analyze the actions carried out by building owners to obtain certification. This analysis was be carried based on the classification presented in the previous section and it intends to highlight the different actions aimed

The underlying design of the certification program is the main antecedent of the decisions made by facility owners to obtain the necessary scores. However, as already noted, the large number of possible points gives owners room to decide on the actions that they can easily enable depending on their specific conditions. The present section analyzes these actions based on the classification previously presented for the certification program criteria. Again, this analysis will be analyzed by category and on a temporary basis in order to identify trends during the study period. Our aim is to determine whether these actions are linked to users' actions toward sustainability or they are limited to the use of green technologies in

As noted in the previous section, the relative weight of the criteria associated with the organizational aspects of building users was 22.3% of the total possible points. This categorically determines the type of action decided by the owners in favor of sustainability in order to obtain the certification and emphasize actions associated with the adequacy of the facility. However, as shown by graphic 2, the total number of actions associated with users' organization is higher than the

The proportion of actions associated with users' organization is consistently lower than the proportion associated with the features of the facility, which is 28.2% higher than the reference in all years except for 2018, when, only 27% of the registered actions concerned organizational strategies involving the users. This downward trend could be explained by the availability of economic resources that building owners can use to acquire green technologies and incorporate them into their design, which is certainly opposed to organizational measures involving the users, which until recently appeared as a feasible alternative to expensive techno-

The effect of this trend can be appreciated in each of the five categories. Despite such downward trend, the Water category includes more actions focused on users' organization. Particularly, more than half of the actions carried out in 2012 were of this type. This shows the potential of water-related sustainability actions that can be transferred to the rest of the spaces in which the user interacts with the space. In the case of the solid waste category, the strongest downward trend was observed in 2011, when 60% of the actions were associated with users' organization, but the percentage had reduced to 20% by 2018 (**Figure 1**). It is necessary to highlight this condition, since waste separation must formally be carried out by the user when generating them. Although infrastructure contributes to such activity, there are no automated systems to carry out such work. Therefore, it is essential to promote a culture of waste separation and reduction so that this category meets the

The rest of the categories are in line with the general trend, i.e., a downward trend, which emphasizes the importance of using technology in buildings over the implementation of actions that encourage changes in user behavior toward more sustainable patterns. This tendency weakens the actions in favor of favor sustainability that people can carry out and reduces accountability because people assume that the introduction of green technology will be enough to achieve sustainable objectives.

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.95120*

the design of these buildings.

logical solutions.

proportion shown by the program design.

objectives adequate solid waste management.

<sup>2</sup> The two main benefits of sustainable actions are property and payroll tax breaks, an option available to private companies [5], however, these breaks must be processed independently from certification, which increases bureaucracy costs for building owners.

Document what bases the analysis [2, 5, 13, 15, 20] the documents governmental with a time-periodic publication.

The next section will analyze the actions carried out by building owners to obtain certification. This analysis was be carried based on the classification presented in the previous section and it intends to highlight the different actions aimed at strengthening sustainable organization and user behavior patterns.
