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Water utility planning efforts are becoming increasingly difficult throughout the world. Located in a semi-arid region, Ciudad Juárez, Mexico is a fast growing municipality that faces both physical infrastructure and water supply constraints. This paper examines monthly water consumption in Ciudad Juárez utilizing a linear transfer function procedure (LTF). Analysis is carried out for per customer usage and for the total number of municipal water system accounts. Models estimated for both series are subjected to a series of simulation benchmark tests. Findings suggest that water consumption in Ciudad Juárez reacts quickly to changes in economic and weather conditions. Out-of-sample simulation results are mixed. Per customer usage forecasts do not fare as well those for total customers relative to random walk benchmarks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Waterborne diseases are a serious concern in the sister cities of El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, where many residents still lack access to plumbing. After using a relative risk method to illustrate the characteristics of neighborhoods at risk for waterborne diseases based on lack of plumbing, we ran spatial regression models predicting lack of plumbing to uncover similarities and differences between the two cities. In terms of similarities, lower mean education and higher proportions of young children were associated with lacking plumbing in both cities. Lower population density and higher proportions of female-headed households were significant only in Juárez, and proportion renting was negatively associated with lacking plumbing in Juárez, but positively associated in El Paso, pointing to differences in socio-spatial structure between the cities. In framing this issue as an environmental injustice, this study draws attention of the existence of households lacking plumbing in the United States and Mexico. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of the valuation of housing attributes have been conducted for numerous metropolitan markets. Empirical analyses of this nature for cities in Latin America and Mexico are less common. This study utilizes data for 175 new houses in Ciudad Juarez, a major metropolitan economy in northern Mexico, to estimate a hedonic pricing model. All units in the sample were completed and sold between November 2006 and April 2007. For each house, a total of 14 characteristics relating to structure and location are employed as explanatory variables. Estimation results indicate that the structural characteristics play bigger roles than the neighborhood amenities. Surprisingly, neighborhood parks are found to lower housing values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decades of research in countries of the Global North have revealed distinct environmental injustices whereby industrial hazards tend to be located in poor and minority neighborhoods; few studies have investigated similar relationships between humans and hazards in the Global South. This study uses conventional quantitative environmental justice methodology to investigate spatial relationships between residential socio-demographics and maquiladoras (i.e., final assembly plants) in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. When predicting maquiladora density using percent children and social class in a spatial error regression model, we find that percent children was a positive and significant predictor, while social class was not significant. Adding formal residential development to the model, social class becomes a negative and significant predictor. Formal residential development and percent children are also positive and significant. As is the case in the Global North, relationships between neighborhood characteristics and transnationally operated maquiladoras along the northern border of Mexico are linked to urban development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on business ethics. The author focuses on comparing the socioeconomic and ethical conditions of business communities located in Grand Rapids and Muskegon, Michigan, and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico to the ethics discussed in the literary work "Faust," by Goethe. The author has chosen to study Grand Rapids and Muskegon because businesses there are largely locally financed, and Ciudad Juarez because businesses there are mostly externally financed. It is suggested that social and economic problems present in the city of Grand Rapids mirror that experienced by Goethe's Faust. It is further proposed that community commitment is integral to the improvement of economic conditions.