Landscape Assessment as a Tool for Improving Green Infrastructure Planning in Central Mexico

Green infrastructure has become a recent point of interest because of growing concerns about the global environmental crisis and human challenges in urban contexts. Green infrastructure systems contribute to reach sustainability goals for reducing the environmental impact of human settlements by generating ecosystem services, create more resilient cities, reduce poverty, create better work options, and improve the food supply. Research was carried out in Guanajuato’s industrial corridor, where transnational auto companies have been operating for 30 years and have changed the rural landscape. In this sense, landscape cartography was developed, considering urban and physical elements. On one hand, we consider land use/land coverage and geomorphology as elements of landscape unity, and on the other hand, the marginalization index was linked to a social development perspective. Furthermore, based on cartography, a visual assessment was conducted throughout the corridor, in order to support the understanding of fine processes otherwise not allowed in general analyses of cartography. As a result, north–south corridors are crucial to sustain cohesion between different ecosystems caused by the presence of an agricultural barrier and the growth of north-eastern metropolitan areas as an artificial barrier; most small localities are near less affected areas and could be used as nodes for green corridors, as well as a source of employment.