ABSTRACT

The tourist resort of Cancún provides almost a caricature of the effects that public policy can have on the urban land market. Its very existence intentionally engendered by the Interamerican Development Bank (BID) and the Mexican government, the speed of its population growth from zero to 170,000 inhabitants in 20 years, its total dependence on particular branches of the economy (first construction and then tourism), and its relative isolation from other urban areas-all these factors, to mention a few, accentuate the processes that may be observed in towns and cities all over Mexico. For the purposes of this chapter, however, the processes we are interested in are a series of government actions that may be usefully described as urban planning.