Martha Patricia Martínez Barba

General Director of the Institute for Development Planning and Management (IMEPLAN)

Patricia currently serves as the General Director of the Institute for Development Planning and Management (IMEPLAN) of the Metropolitan Area of Guadalajara. She began her career in urban mobility as an activist. She was a local Deputy in the LXII Legislature of Jalisco. Before that, she was in charge of the General Coordination of Integrated City Management in the Government of Guadalajara, from 2015 to 2018. In this position, she implemented important projects including: integration of the metropolitan network of urban forests, revitalization of large parks in the city, development of partial urban development plans and development of Visor Urbano platform integrating land use information of the city, which was internationally awarded by the Bloomberg Philanthropies Foundation.

She was also General Strategic Coordinator of Territorial Management (CGEGT) in the Government of Jalisco, where she was responsible for developing and executing strategic projects of the Ministries of Infrastructure and Public Works (SIOP), Environment and Territorial Development (SEMADET), Transportation (SETRAN) and Integral Water Management (SGIA). She developed and coordinated the implementation of the public policy for the integral recovery of the Santiago River, the most polluted river in Mexico. In this role, Patricia worked on following through and managing cross-cutting mobility and urban renewal projects such as: Mi Macro Periférico, a 41.5 km BRT corridor, metropolitan cycling infrastructure network, and the Verificación Responsable program to control motor vehicle emissions. 

More recently, she has worked on the implementation of Mi Pasaje Apoyo a Mujeres, a targeted subsidy program for public transportation users, as well as the design and implementation of measures to adapt to the climate crisis, such as Nidos de Lluvia, a rainwater harvesting systems program in homes and schools recently awarded by C40 and Bloomberg Philanthropies.