An Integrative Collaborative Project Approach to Climate-Change Resilience and Urban/Regional Sustainability for the Mexico-Lerma-Cutzamala Hydrological Region

In a rapidly urbanizing world, the social, economic, and ecological complexi-ties of cities require conceptual and operational innovations to enhance climate resilience and sustainability. We describe our Integrative Collaborative Project (ICP) approach to co-create climate resilience in the Mexico-Lerma-Cutzamala Hydrological Region (MLCHR). In recent years, it has suffered from frequent natural disasters, and under climate change scenarios, the intensity and frequency of extreme events, including severe floods, droughts, heat waves and landslides are expected to increase. ICPs are framed as so-cio-technical capacity building enterprises, with networks operating at multiple scales. The approach differs from other integrative efforts, which tend to be top-down with scant civil society co-ownership, and focus on limited aspects like indicators/assessment, or institutional capacity building. We reimagine all operational stages, from creative thinking, through ethos and concept, assessment, planning, project design, implementation and management, and monitoring and evaluation. The design of ICPs The theoretical basis considers a pragmatic knowledge frame, socio-technical transitions literature, and education for social transformation. We describe forward-looking operational details of the Pilot ICP for the Mexico-Lerma-Cutzamala Hydrological Region, with our three-university partnership as catalyst, and a new breed of socio-technical enterprise organization as a key partner, engaging stakeholders at municipal and regional scales. concept and pilot project operational view; Ruelle—resilience context and literature review; Brissett—education and role of universities; Hanuman-tha—maps, literature review; Krueger—empirical and theoretical bases; Maza-ri-Hiriart—MLCHR climate change context and pilot project view; Carr—critical development context, ICP bases.


Global Context
The year 2007 marked a threshold in human history: for the first time more people lived in urban than rural areas [1]. Analysts project that by 2050, two thirds of the world's population will be urban dwellers [2]. Rapidly developing cities-where political power is stratified and sustainability challenges are chronic and pressing even before considering climate change-exemplify the contemporary challenges that face development efforts to improve human well-being in the context of a changing climate. At the same time, cities can play an important role as sites for learning how to improve climate resilience through socio-technical innovation [3], and, as shown by the C40 initiative [4], they provide a practical political scale for diverse stakeholders to collaborate. The working definition of climate-change resilience we use for this paper considers the question: resilience of what, to what, and for whom? We define it as the capacity of a given socio-ecological system to do two things: a) anticipate, mitigate and recover from adverse climate-related impacts in ways that promote social justice/equity, economic vitality, and ecological integrity; and b) to undergo positive socio-ecological transformations that increase the adaptive capacity of the system over time. Notwithstanding, in any given setting-such as the Mexico-Lerma-Cutzamala Hydrological Region (MLCHR) pilot project we are envisioning-the stakeholder collaborative will define resilience and sustainability in ways meaningful to it, in its own socio-ecological contexts, informed by accepted resilience and sustainability principles. There is much to learn through comparative studies of the strategies adopted by cities across a variety of contexts and their ability to anticipate and respond to a wide range of climate-related challenges [5].
Translation and transfer of experience within and across regions require an integrative framework to serve as grounds for comparison. However, urban development often subscribes to conventional paradigms that reinforce business-as-usual approaches. Investments in technology consistently outcompete those in social innovation, holding that technology is the key to more sustainable, climate-resilient

Problems and Conundrums
We employ the ICP approach to respond to persistent problems facing development practice across many contexts, including the following: • "Development" governance is fundamentally flawed: project design is driven by interests that extend beyond the places and people they are intended to benefit, and those interests often fail to engage those intended beneficiaries [14]- [19]. Top-down processes tend to yield outcomes that compound structural inequality and social inequity (e.g. [19] [20] [21]). Participatory development is not a new approach, is not a panacea, and has its own challenges in terms of whether or not it addresses power equities among stakeholders (especially civil society and central government) and whether or not it improves social and technical capacity to respond [14]- [21].
• The prevailing ethos of "development" elites is extractive in philosophy and approach. Even well-meaning efforts at integrated assessment and data-gathering can manifest as taking information out of a place [14]- [19].
• Despite decades of critique (most notably the work of [22] [23] [24] [25]), development practice remains biased toward powerful technologies and technological "solutions"; the vital social dimensions of development-notably participatory governance that puts affected communities at the center of efforts-is missing.
• There is insufficient attention paid to the need for capacity-building on a societal scale, both in order to understand complex socio-ecological issues, and the consideration of responses to them that embody the sustainability principles of social justice, intra-and inter-generational equity, economic circularity and ecological integrity [10] [11].
The ICP approach responds to three conundrums we have previously articulated elsewhere [12] [26]: • Socio-ecological complexity conundrum: Dynamic socio-ecological systems are intrinsically complex, comprised of multiple components linked together with strong feedback loops. Making models too complex may lead to confusion for managers, communities, and policy makers, and data gathering may be too burdensome. Einstein's principle [27] provides guidance: "A scientific theory [model] should be as simple as possible, but no simpler". We ask: How can essential elements of an urban/regional system be modeled and presented simply enough to be realizable, accessible and useful to stakeholders, without over-simplifying and losing validity? • Varying spatial/temporal scales conundrum: Spatial scale presents challenges-but also opportunities-for urban/regional projects. How can urban development operate at an appropriately large scale to capture relevant dynamics (e.g. hydrology, stocks/flows of people), while remaining responsive  121008 105 Open Journal of Civil Engineering at smaller scales? Considering regional as well as local scales is transformative because it radically changes the scope of design, e.g. several inter-connected cities vs. just one city on its own, capacity building serving towns, cities and the region. On the temporal side, projects tend to use one timeframe-e.g.
30-year design life for a power station, 5 -10 years for neighborhood revitalization-while social and ecological cycles may be happening over much shorter timeframes. Sustainable development has challenged traditional planning horizons by calling for the consideration of generational timeframes: forcing us to plan 25 to 50 or even 100 years ahead. How can we attend in parallel to urgent short-term, medium-term and related long-term goals, while adapting to changing needs and conditions? • Stakeholder diversity conundrum: Socio-ecological systems at varying scales comprise diverse stakeholders, and urban/regional development projects impact them unevenly. How can resilience projects accentuate positive impacts, mitigate negative impacts, reduce inequities, be responsive to stakeholder diversity, and leverage this diversity in the form of human, social, manufactured and financial capitals [28] to build stronger socio-technical capacity at a societal scale?

Empirical Base
The ICP approach has origins in the participatory development efforts of numerous scholar-practitioners [14]- [21], and considerable efforts at integrated assessment, such as the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment [29], UNEP's Global Environment Outlooks (GEO) [30]. The empirical basis for the ICP approach presented here grew out of sustainable development assessment and planning work we conducted on water and sanitation (WATSAN) systems in Mexico from 1998Mexico from -2000 [11]. Downs facilitated a "top-down-meets-bottom-up" process with multiple stakeholders-civil society groups, universities, government agencies, businesses, and donors-in three cities: Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua (1.3 M people in 2010); Atizapán de Zaragoza, MCMA (0.49 M in 2010); and Mérida, Yucatán (0.78 M in 2010). Our goal was to co-create the social and technical capacities necessary to enable a sustainable WATSAN system. We were able to successfully navigate mistrust and unfavorable power dynamics-especially between the federal government agency and civil society groups-by creating an open, horizontal process; the United Nations University was the facilitator of the effort and was seen as a reliable, independent entity who could be trusted. Notably, in Juárez, the social capital the stakeholder collaborative assembled was sufficient to mitigate corrupt attempts by special interests to take control of the effort. The guiding ethos of this early ICP project was that sustainability depends on a transparent assessment and planning process to which all stakeholders contribute, lending their own capacity, and receiving the tangible benefits of collective capacity building by the group [10] [11]. On reflection, the key ingredients of Open Journal of Civil Engineering success were: a) water was a galvanizing "gateway" sector that impacted all stakeholders in powerful ways; b) the capacity-building enterprise recognized each stakeholder group, worked to incorporate groups into the project, and valued their contributions; c) the transaction costs of collaboration were significantly out-weighed by the tangible benefits of active collaboration; d) our activities built trust and mutual respect over time.
Our ICP approach also arises from a critical synthesis published in 2017 [12].

Theoretical Base
Theoretically, ICP rests on four bases: 1) a pragmatic knowledge frame; 2) participatory development approaches dating back to the 1980s; 3) socio-technical transitions; and d) education for social transformation.
Epistemologically, we use a pragmatic knowledge framework that argues knowledge arising from actions and their consequences, focusing on solutions to problems, is a welcome alternative to the positivist approach [35] [36] [37]. Approaches to understanding complex problems and their contexts based on so called "expert-driven" positivist scientific methods have been unable to contribute much to an action agenda for marginalized people. The field of common-pool resources provides a mainstay for our approach: it investigates institutional predisposing conditions for successful local governance of common property natural resources [38]. The ICP approach centers on collective capacity building among stakehold- Through the concept of governmentality they elucidate how "social movements, in different places, create narratives and discursive frames to mobilize actors for the realization of a desired outcome".
Our university partnership to promote the ICP approach in MLCHR and beyond is grounded in social justice and the philosophical underpinnings of Education for Social Transformation (EST) [13] [58]. EST explicitly challenges the unjust mechanisms that have historically marginalized peoples and societies, even within seemingly noble attempts to address ecological challenges. At the root of EST is the notion that environmental discourses that employ education, such as "education for sustainable development", must do so for more than just economic utility and expedience, as frequently occurred [59]; rather, such concepts must emphasize socio-economic and environmental equity in the effort to address both human material needs and the limits of ecological exploitation [13] [58]. First, EST is rooted in critical social intellectual traditions that advance "fairness in a 'good' society" through education [60]. In this context, education's social justice agenda examines, and seeks to rectify, how social inequalities are generated through socially constructed traits such as race, gender, class, sexual orientation, and "difference" in general. Second, its more recent environmental concern emerges from a critical view of the longstanding utilitarian links between education and the environment in which education was seen as largely complicit in the commodification of the ecosystem for unchecked capitalist consumption [13] [59] [61]. Its current environmental component aims to "generate active support for environmental protection and the attainment of a more sustainable balance between human activity and the natural ecology" [58]. It is within EST's critical framework that we invoke the importance of universities within an ICP approach. We posit that universities have the necessary organiza-

ICP Model
Based on the aforementioned empirical and theoretical underpinnings, the ICP approach is a scalable socio-technical capacity building enterprise that contemplates six integrative domains: 1) project ethos, concept, and framing; 2) sectors, topics, and issues; 3) spatial and temporal scales; 4) stakeholder interests, relationships and capacities; 5) knowledge types, models and methods; 6) socio-technical capacities and networks. We apply this integrative thinking to all operational stages of a project (3.1 below). We are using the MLCHR to operationalize the ICP approach, and to provide practical details (5.0).

Domain #1: Project Ethos, Concept, and Framing
The guiding philosophy and spirit of an ICP effort-its ethos-centers on ignit- Conceiving, framing and designing resilience work in integrative ways goes well beyond conventional project design. It requires thoughtful consideration of the entire multi-stakeholder process, and how work stages interrelate ( Figure 1 It is also necessary to think beyond the terms "urban", "peri-urban" and "rural" to recognize the continuum of the socio-ecological setting in which towns and cities are situated, and inter-dependencies therein (see also Domain 5: Temporal and Spatial Scales).

Domain #2: Sectors, Topics, and Issues
Integration across multiple sectors, topics and issues-e.g. water supply and sanitation (WATSAN), energy systems, food and agriculture, transportation, health-is worthy of emphasis in resilience practice. Sectors are strongly interrelated in terms of stocks and flows materials, energy, information, people, money, and other types of capital. Models depicting these stocks and flows are important for sector integration and can be built collaboratively. Gateway sectors are those that resonate with stakeholders (health, water, food) and can serve as entry points for discussion of complex interrelated systems, including climate-change deliberations for resilience work. Similarly, keystone sectors (e.g. water, energy) enjoy influence over multiple sectors, and progress on the resilience and sustainability of these 4 Impact Monitoring and evaluation ventures well beyond the accounting model that primarily serves donor interests-here it is an integral part of the ICP approach, feeding-back to inform assessment and planning. Open Journal of Civil Engineering have major positive impacts on socio-ecological systems. In prior work, [10] identified water supply/water resources as a keystone sector, with the highest influence on other 17 topics of the 1992 Agenda 21: Blueprint for Sustainable Development. Resilience theory forces us to pay attention to the interconnectedness of socio-ecological sectors, and consider how systems buffer and recover from shocks and stressors at local and regional scales [34] [67]. Resilience indicators are among the most important to consider during assessment and planning stages ( Figure 1).

Domain #3: Spatial and Temporal Scales
The spatial scales used in resilience shape that work profoundly: local, watershed, multi-watershed, regional, and national scales pertain. Populations and landscapes are part of a biophysical continuum, with interdependencies and multiple con-

Domain #4: Stakeholder Interests, Relationships and Capacities
The question of how human capital and social capital can be strengthened and formative initiatives to tackle local and regional priorities. An ICP approach is adaptive (feedbacks of Figure 1) to socio-ecological disruptions and changes-in line with calls for adaptive modes [72] [73] [74] but its application to resilience remains nascent.
Functioning stakeholder relationships hinge on trust and legitimacy, but these are fragile and difficult to nurture [75] [76] [77]. They hinge on socially-innovative ICP-type processes: 1) efforts made to listen authentically to stakeholder concerns, and respond to them tangibly; 2) framing projects that are meaningful to diverse stakeholders and responsive to their needs; 3) dialogue that enables constructive, respectful exchange; and 4) a vibrant sense of shared project ownership, shared responsibility, and shared benefits that outweigh costs [10] [11].
The pooling and cross-fertilization of stakeholder capacities become the driving force for positive change.

Domain #6: Socio-Technical Capacities and Networks
Rather than be limited by existing capacity, there is a need to innovate strongly on resilience practice by enhancing or building new capacities to support outcomes.
Fundamentally, this socio-technical enterprise-expressed as an ICP-becomes the engine of urban/regional innovation. Each stakeholder partner contributes knowledge/capacity to the whole, and receives tangible benefits from its creation. Our WATSAN pilot work synthesized four sources of data to identify the requisite levels of socio-technical capacity building: a) a critical review of a sampling of WATSAN development projects undertaken globally, comparing a minority which had yielded sustainable development impacts, with those which had not; b) a comprehensive literature review of WATSAN capacity building efforts; c) three workshops, one in each pilot city with multiple stakeholder partners; and d) expert opinions and experiential knowledge garnered from others in our professional networks [10] [11] [12]. Six levels of capacity emerged: 1) political and financial seed capital to initiate and catalyze projects; 2) human resources, education and training, awareness-raising; 3) shared information and knowledge resources; 4) policy and decision making and governance (incl. laws, regulations, incentives); 5) appropriate technologies and infrastructure; and 6) enterprise development, especially the stimulation of local/regional sources of entrepreneurship, products and services, replacing seed financial capital. These levels are interrelated, and comprise a capacity building system ( Figure 2). Each is broken down into discrete operational pieces during project development ( Table 1). The same six levels are applicable to multiple sectors, e.g. food systems, energy systems.
Framing ICPs as socio-technical capacity building enterprises is scalable, yielding a distributed knowledge and capacity network ( Figure 3).

ICP Compared to Other Integrative Efforts
Previous efforts to theorize urban climate resilience have produced important   • Mobilization of sufficient seed capital politically by gaining support of leaders at different levels (local, national, global), among diverse stakeholder groups. • Mobilization of sufficient seed capital financially by gaining $ support from a diversity of sources (funding diversity mitigates the influence of one powerful entity).
2) Human resources, education and training, public awareness-raising • Education programs and curricula from Kindergarten through 12 th grade. Engagement with teachers and youth through place-based learning. ICPs as learning platforms. • Education programs/curricula in higher education. Place-based learning for students, engaged scholarship and practice for faculty. ICPs as learning platforms. • Media, messaging and journalism about resilience issues to inform the public and policy makers.
Countering of climate-change denial. Translation of science for public discourse.

3) Shared information and knowledge resources
• Co-production of knowledge, shared information resources.
• Use of web-based, open-source GIS platforms that are populated by data from stakeholders, with QC/QA by academic researchers. Images and narratives included. • Climate-change projections for each region are kept up-to-date, and impact implications.

4) Policy making, decision making and governance
• Policy making at local, regional and national levels are coordinated and share information and capacity (via #3). Decision-making processes are transparent, participatory (see Figure 1). • Contemplates laws, regulations, incentives for innovation (e.g. energy innovation, water saving), equitable pricing of basic services (water, energy).

5) Appropriate technologies and infrastructure
• Design and deployment, via process of Figure 1, of technologies and infrastructures that support sustainability of sectors like water, sanitation, energy, food and agriculture, transportation etc. • Investment and creation of climate-resilient systems (new training from Level #2).

6) Enterprise development
• Stimulation of local/regional sources of entrepreneurship, products and services, replacing seed financial capital in Level #1. • Incentives for innovation from Level #4 drive local and regional efforts socially and technically. Open Journal of Civil Engineering Figure 3. Capacity-building enterprise as a scalable socio-technical network. There are six levels of capacity for each sector, with information resources at the core of each (forming pentagons). Sectors integrate capacities at each level (e.g. Level 2: education and training across energy, water, food etc.), and connect via Level 3: the information resource core. Local and sub-region scale networks can be linked and scaled-up to regional and national scales.
insights regarding complexity and uncertainty. For example, Ahern [83] proposes that assessment of urban climate resilience should focus on multifunctionality; redundancy and modularization; biological and social diversity; multi-scale networks and connectivity networks; and adaptive planning and design. Jabareen [84] focuses on vulnerability analysis, prevention, urban governance, and planning for uncertainty, which can be quantitatively or qualitatively assessed at multiple scales. Another holistic approach is taken in the City Resilience Framework (CRF) [85], which considers a resilient system to be reflective, robust, redundant, flexible, resourceful, inclusive, and integrated. The CRF Index assesses these qualities according to 12 themes within four areas, namely health and wellbeing; economy and society; infrastructure and environment; leadership and strategy. Abdrabo [86] develops and applies an integrative framework to the challenge of sea level rise in the Nile Delta; not only does the analysis consider the physical system, socio-cultural and economic system, environmental quality, and institutional settings; unlike most other studies, the author examines linkages to surrounding rural areas and neighboring cities, which we endorse.
We compared six existing frameworks that focus on urban climate resilience to determine if they include explicit references to the six integrative domains of ICP. By our analysis, previous frameworks are limited in at least one of the following ways: 1) they focus on assessment and therefore measurable aspects of resilience, 2) they fail to consider resilience at multiple scales, including the rela- The resilience framework proposed by Tschakert et al. [90] focuses on pre-emptive learning for climate change adaptation with rooted cycles for critical reflection, anticipation and response. The United Nations Environment Programme recently published its latest Global Environment Outlook report, GEO-6 [30]. GEO exemplifies global-scale integrated assessment, and has had some success in building in-country capacity through workshops [30] [91], and has integrated countries via regional assessment teams. However, there is little operational detail about how assessment informs other stages, and the roles for in-country civil society stakeholders and universities are limited; GEO, given its huge remit, is top-down in nature. The ICP approach can be used as an analytical framework for characterizing existing approaches, and revealing gaps that may need attention. Comparisons of several existing integrative urban resilience frameworks with ICP, in terms of integrative domains and operational stages (Table 2) and the operational stages are informative: 1) Integrated efforts by multilateral agencies (e.g. United Nations programs) often rely on coordination with national governments and are therefore typically top-down, with insufficient co-ownership by civil society groups.
2) Existing efforts tend to focus on one operational stage, e.g. integrated assessment, rather than all stages, thus limiting capacity building for resilience.
3) Integrative efforts struggle to work at multiple spatial and temporal scales in parallel. 4) Universities tend to play a consultative role in assessment and planning, therefore limiting their potential as catalysts for integrative collaborative enterprises.
One recent critique of the urban resilience agenda [92] highlights some of the

Universities as ICP Catalysts and Integrators
The ICP approach is anchored by our own experiential knowledge as scho- stakeholders-or social learning [11]. The governing role of social learning in improving the relationships between humans and the socio-ecological systems they inhabit, impact and are in turn impacted by, has become a topic of growing importance [93]. Education is also a key component of the capacity building framework; it is a traditional focus of capacity building efforts, but its impact is magnified when it operates as part of an integrative, multi-level system [10].
Education has also historically viewed as one of the most effective means of so-

Social-Ecological Context
We demonstrate the utility of the ICP approach by applying it to one of the most challenging urban contexts in the world: the MLCHR. We undertook early creative thinking on this specific application of ICP in 2017 [26], and we expand  releases. In addition, many informal settlements were built on hillsides, in floodprone areas, and areas critical for aquifer recharge [99]. Natural flooding protection ended during the 1960s with construction of the "Great Sewage Canal" [100]. In the name of development, 80 km of rivers were used to build roads, resulting in a host of issues with the water supply. With increasing populations demanding water, massive hydraulic systems were built at regional level, including the Río Lerma and Río Cutzamala systems, which were built to transport water from outside of the Mexico City Basin [101].

Climate-Change Impacts
Today, the location and socio-economic situation of the MCMA make it vulnerable to projected local impacts of global climate change in the near and far term. In recent years, the MCMA has suffered from frequent natural disasters  [110]. The new infrastructure also includes a major upgrade to the deep drainage system which will help evacuate stormwater and mitigate flooding. However, flood risks in some areas remain high and need to be assessed in a more integrated way. Tellman et al. [111] recently explored how the process of infrastructure development for WATSAN, driven by city government, can either reduce or augment flood risks because of complex system dynamics that require very careful consideration in the face of the ultimate exogenous stressor: climate change. Using a historical perspective spanning centuries, they found that: 1) endogenous risks change as the city expands, and they can increase; 2) a systems perspective is needed to avoid the amplification of risks, to better inform risk management; and 3) collectively people have far more agency in and influence over the complex systems they inhabit.
In the dry season, water scarcity has worsened as aquifers are further overexploited, and supplies are unable to meet demand. Unfortunately, the location of the treatment plant means it is not able to recycle treated wastewater to offset burgeoning water demand and scarcity, as we previously recommended [112].
More than ever before, efforts need to be made to treat and reuse wastewater, off-setting supply, and stormwater needs to be directed to recharge aquifers and reservoirs. Throughout the Mexico City Basin, extraction of water from the underlying aquifer is occurring at a faster rate than the aquifer can recharge. Recent estimates are that in the next 30 to 40 years, the Mexico Basin will cease to be the main source of water for MCMA [101]. Sustainable aquifer and water supply management is clearly an important dimension of resilience for the city. In response to climate change, Mexico's federal government has implemented numerous strategies, projects, and programs aimed at various sectors. For example,

Concept
We have initiated a partnership among our three universities to co-create an ICP Pilot Project to support MLCHR's climate resilience and sustainable develop- pursuing other municipal-scale systems to treat and reuse wastewater. Indeed, the ICP framework highlights the necessity to create and deploy such entities, so that a business-minded sustainability culture dovetails with academic integrators.

Integrative Domains
With an ICP ethos (Domain 1)-the guiding philosophy and spirit-we are framing the MLCHR's climate resilience and sustainability challenges in terms of opportunities to co-create a socio-technical capacity building enterprise.
This enterprise innovates assessment and planning processes and outcomes, and places education and information resources at the center of the enterprise, with the university partnership serving as facilitator, catalyst, and integrator.
This perspective allows us to embrace multiple domains of integration (see 3.1-3.6). The guiding concept is that this represents a new kind of integrative, collaborative development project/program, one that prioritizes human capital and social capital over manufactured technological capital and financial capital, viewing the latter two as enablers-but not drivers-of climate-resilient socio-ecological systems. Our objective is to learn from the application of ICP in several pilot municipalities of the region: a sampling that represents the diversity of social, cultural, political, economic, ecological and climate-change conditions (5.1).
Domain 2 (sectors, topics, issues) is helping us to contemplate multiple sectors, topics and issues, and their interconnectedness within the region. For example, we may use WATSAN as a gateway sector in one pilot town, food and agriculture in another, public health in another, infrastructure or urban design in a fourth. The interconnections among the pilot towns and sectors will comprise one lens for looking at the region as a whole, from local scale upwards. The other, larger complementary scale will be to look at regional scale information, data and indicators, and climate-change scenarios. This is also in-line with Domain 3 (spatial and temporal scales).
Intuitively, anecdotally, and based on limited data, sectors like WATSAN, food and agriculture, energy, and public health do enjoy considerable interconnectedness-but how? We were unable to find any limited or comprehensive dynamic systems models of the MLCHR that reveals connections in terms of the stocks and flows of material and energy, people and information-let alone how climate change scenarios may impact them. We anticipate using a participatory approach to dynamic systems modeling to reveal interconnections at differing for designing systems to create regional resilience, while at the same time building resilience at the local, municipal scale. Indeed, an overarching research question is: How do we co-create resilient systems that can operate at both the re-Open Journal of Civil Engineering gional and local scales? Designers and engineers will need to create interconnectedness with some redundancies, such that regional-scale systems buffer shocks and do not allow them to proliferate. Local-scale WATSAN, energy, food and health systems will need their own resilience, coordinated and linked-but also separable-from the larger urban and regional systems.
Domain 3 (spatial and temporal scales) signals strongly to us that we need to consider multiple socio-ecological spatial scales for climate-resilience and sustainable development work: existing political and governance scales; potential new governance scales that constructively challenge power relations; socio-cultural scales that leverage socio-cultural diversities; ecological scales pertaining to ecosystem integrity and agroecology; and hydrological scales relating to water resources. GIS and remote sensing will allow us to map these and overlap them for greater spatial awareness and insight. In terms of governance, from smallest to largest these are: municipalities of states of the region (e.g. rural municipalities of the State of Puebla); municipalities of the MCMA; larger urban municipalities (e.g. City of Puebla); the urban agglomeration that is the MCMA; the MLCHR geopolitical system as a whole; and how the region and its constituents relate to the federal system of Mexico, its federal entities and governance. Hydrologically speaking, we will consider the aquifer systems of the region (70% of water used in the MCMA is from local aquifers), watersheds serving each city (and any water-supply coupled watersheds also serving a city); and the contiguous watersheds of the MLCHR (Figure 4(b)).
We encompass as our landscape unit of analysis therefore the aforementioned five major urban areas-MCMA, Pachuca, Puebla, Cuernavaca-Cuautla, and Toluca (Figure 4(a))-zooming-in and -out as appropriate. Of all of the integrative domains, arguably this one most challenges conventional thinking and practices that tend to be city-focused. While there are considerable political challenges to be overcome, the ethos of ICP-pooling assets and capacities-is expected to be disruptive in a positive sense. Limited evidence suggests that regional socio-ecological interdependencies will increase over time [116] [117]. The MCMA depends on the transfer of water from Río Lerma and Río Cutzamala watersheds to the west, resources that also serve Toluca and its environs [12] [112]. Temporally, Domain 3 also informs the need for us to be considering short-, mediumand long-term needs and priorities during conceptualization, assessment, planning, implementation and management, monitoring and beyond. Attending to pressing needs that can be met with existing capacities-yielding tangible outcomes of a nascent ICP process-will be an important strategy for sustaining our stakeholder collaboration and building trust, and is thus pivotal to the success of the effort going forward.
Domain 4 (stakeholder interests, relationships and capacities) calls on us to identify diverse MLCHR stakeholders, their interests, concerns and capacities, and to use appropriate participatory tools to engage them in meaningful ways.
We will be using social network analysis and preliminary stakeholder meetings Choosing the right partners for the pilot effort will be essential: core team partners need to represent a diversity of local stakeholder interests, but be open and willing to collaborate by pooling their knowledge and social capital.
They will also need to be strongly motivated to understand and address climate resilience and sustainability challenges for the greater social good, as well as their own tangible benefit. Among the key stakeholders in a given setting, schools, colleges and universities will be identified, local government officials with ethical standing in the community, local businesses who employ local people, and civil society organizations. Consistent with best practices of participatory development, we will listen and learn what is already happening in these communities to locate opportunities for synergistic activities. Until more financial support is garnered beyond seed monies, these stakeholders will be engaged in ways meaningful to them that do not exert a burden without a tangible benefit. The limits of volunteer energy at the outset are well known to us, and it is our intention to co-develop an ICP process, milestones and outcomes that further local and regional climate resilience and sustainability. The pilot work will help leverage larger financial support to compensate our partners going forward. An ICP's horizontal, transparent approach holds promise for sustained multi-stakeholder engagement, and the growth over time of trust and shared ownership. Lastly, Domain 6 (socio-technical capacities and networks) is informing our pilot efforts because it explicitly recognizes that there are several discrete but interrelated levels of socio-technical capacity to attend to as a partnership ( Figure 3). The six levels contemplated in ICP work (Table 1) will be used, as in our earlier pilot work [10], in each pilot town as a template for gap analysis and strategic planning. We will use it with stakeholder partners to assess existing capacities and prioritize those that need to be strengthened. Notice how Domains 1 and 6 act as bookends for the ICP process, and how all six serve as an analytical framework for assessing existing resilience and sustainability projects (3.7), and for building resilience capacities for anticipated climate change impacts.

Operational Stages
As Table 3 shows, the ICP model is helpful when considering the various operational stages of a resilience project or program in each pilot setting. As indicated in 5.1, this begins with the Core Team at Stage 1: Imagination and ideas: imagining our project as a socio-technical capacity building enterprise, operating at municipal and regional scales in the MLCHR. The Core Team will consist of representatives of our three universities, plus carefully selected representatives of the major stakeholder groups-civil society, business, government and donors-who are receptive to an ICP ethos and enjoy regional influence. Table 3. ICP operational stages, goals, questions, and descriptions (see Figure 1).

Stage
Goal(s) Key questions. Description.

Imagination, ideas
Unleash creativity. How is social capital and imagination fired? Use the power of collective imagination to expand what is possible within and across domains, and begin with unfettered thinking and ideas.

Ethos, concept & process design
Set ethos, approach and framing.
What is the driving ethos? How does it inform concept and process? Conceive of and frame the effort as an ICP using Domain 1, with up-front attention to Domains 2 -6.

Integrated assessment
Identify needs, characterize baseline conditions to inform planning.
What are the baseline socio-ecological conditions? What are the needs of diverse groups? How have conditions changed (historical trends)? How are they projected to change under business-as-usual scenario? Use indicators for social, cultural, political, economic and ecological conditions (a subset of which will be used for impacts assessment, e.g. EIA in the planning stage). Includes: Characterize multiple sectors/issues (Domain 2); consider spatial scales (local and regional) and temporal scales (short, medium, long); characterize social groups and relationships (Domain 4); leverage knowledge types (5); inventory existing social and technical capacities (6).

Integrated planning
Vision sustainable futures, compare project alternatives using impact criteria, choose most resilient, sustainable project.
What are desirable futures? What are alternative ways to respond to needs and priorities? How do alternatives compare in terms of positive and negative impacts? How do projected impacts vary across populations and landscapes? Consider multiple sectors/issues (2); consider spatial scales (local and regional) and temporal scales (short, medium, long); leverage social groups and relationships (Domain 4); leverage knowledge types (5); strengthen social and technical capacities (6) as integral to any resilience project/plan/program. What are the impacts of the project? How do they compare with assessment and planning impact projections? What are we learning that informs future projects, and related work? Connects strongly to stages 3 -5. Uses a subset of assessment indicators to gauge impacts (changes) to those indicators. These data have the capacity to re-inform stages 1 -5 in ongoing/future resilience work. Open Journal of Civil Engineering Facilitated by a university representative, the Core Team unleashes creativity to imagine what might be possible-to vision a plausible resilient future for the town and region-holding political and financial constraints temporarily at bay.

Project design
This involves the important "blue sky" visioning exercise that asks: What do we want our town and region to look like in 2030, 2050? Visioning can be assisted by the visual and performing arts, animation, simulation, and also virtual reality.
As a contrast, we can also vision the kind of future we are likely to inhabit if the trajectory of development is not changed (i.e. the business-as-usual scenario).
The former desirable vision can serve in counterpoint to the latter, and can help incentivize change. This is followed by Stage 2: Ethos, concept and process de-  [80]. To respond to our guiding research question-How do we co-create resilient systems that can operate at both the regional and local scales?-we will also be considering the impacts of published climate-change scenarios for the region, over the short-, medium-and long-term time horizons, and how these changes to climate may in turn impact Open Journal of Civil Engineering the sectors and issues we have modeled. Spatial analysis and digital mapping using GIS and remote sensing data is an essential tool for integrated assessment, and we will pay particular attention to differences, variabilities and dis- capacities and resources? Once again, all six domains will be informing this design stage, and it will be important for the municipal-scale designs to be influenced by neighboring towns and cities, and for the regional scale design to pay close attention to how actions and activities at local and regional scales are related. Implementation and project management are also being anticipated in integrative collaborative ways, and while they may appear as traditional roll-out actions and activities-for example engineering construction and project management-they will have stemmed from all previous ICP stages and domains, emerging with much stronger co-ownership and significantly greater impacts eq- jected by assessment and planning stages, and how the actuarial data can be used to improve the implemented project performance going forward, and the impacts modeling and designs for future projects. In summary, adopting an ICP approach allows for each project stage to be reimagined in the context of all other stages.

ICP Network
Domain 6 (socio-technical capacities and networks) pays attention to the different levels of socio-technical capacity across multiple sectors, and the ability to scale-up and scale-down societal responses ( Figure 3). In the context of the MLCHR, Figure 5 shows such a capacity building network, with flows of assets, information, knowledge and capacities among cities in the region. Universities in each of the five major neighboring cities will have a special role in the ICP approach. Linked together they are equipped to provide integrating architecture for the ICP network and technical support for all project stages, especially integrated assessment.

Power Dynamics, Institutions and Stakeholders
Based on empirical evidence (2.1), including our previous experience of ICP pilot work in three diverse cities of Mexico [10]-a highly stratified socio-political system (4.0), framing and actualizing sustainable development and climate resilience projects as socio-technical capacity building enterprises can be successful at mitigating obstructive and destructive power dynamics among stakeholder groups, including corruption. Eakin et al. ([118] p.1) emphasize the importance of understanding the "socio-political infrastructure" of the Mexico City context in the face of climate change impacts: "the social and political norms, values, rules, and relationships that undergird and structure the myriad decisions made by public and private actors". They recognize-as we do in the ICP approach-that this infrastructure and capacity is just as important as the engineering and "hard" infrastructure and environmental management capacity. The emphasis of the first five of the seven operational stages of the approach is first and foremost on building human and social capital (rather than manufactured and financial capital), and on constructively challenging business-as-usual practices, existing social hierarchies and power inequities. Local institutions, notably government agencies and universities, will have their interests served at the local scale by being active stakeholders in the core ICP teams of each pilot municipality. Likewise, other stakeholders. For example, our experience has shown that socially responsible, local, regional and national public agencies can escape the resource and knowledge constraints by becoming partners in a capacity-building enterprise. For example, knowledge integration, data analyses, GIS and remote sensing capacities, and modeling are all valuable capacities that benefit all stakeholders. Even politicians with narrow self-serving interests ignore social capital at their peril, and are apt to lend support to projects that solve pressing socio-ecological issues such as water scarcity, food insecurity or catastrophic flooding. Theoretically, there is a threshold politicians may perceive when failure to respond effectively to socio-ecological problems begins costing them too much political capital, while acting with intent to solve them-and following through with actions, for example as a good-faith ICP partner-gains them valuable capital [12].
With an ICP approach, universities are able to amplify their capacity to educate students and carry out research projects with positive socio-ecological impacts-also garnering a competitive advantage in the higher education arena.
Understanding power dynamics in a given setting like the MLCHR is a prerequisite for finding ways to anticipate, navigate and mitigate political risks, while working to reduce them and amplify positive, constructive power dynamics. In our collective experience, an ICP-oriented alliance among the university sector, civil society groups who are often marginalized, socially and ecologically responsible government agencies, responsible businesses, and a pro-active, influential donor sector has substantial power and will enjoy a high probability of success in the face of complex socio-ecological problems.

Conclusion
Based on rich, empirical and experiential evidence, an integrative collaborative project (ICP) approach has the potential to inform important innovations to climate change resilience and urban/regional sustainable development projects and practices. It is flexible and adaptable to diverse, hyper-complex settings, as illustrated by the MLCHR context. The ICP approach frames efforts in terms of a socio-technical capacity building enterprise, with networks working at multiple scales, pooling knowledge and capacities among stakeholders. ICPs can act as powerful learning platforms in academic programs, and more widely at the societal level, reaching beyond trans-disciplinarity,