ABSTRACT
In the early 1980s, Latin America adopted a free-market economic model. Opening-up national economies led to increasing deindustrialization, deteriorated labor conditions, growth of the informal sector and an increase in urban poverty. Land take was analyzed using a land cover map of Latin America derived from 500 m Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) images for the year 2008. For the country of Mexico and local analysis of Cancun and Merida a 250 m MODIS-based land cover time series was employed. Between the end of the Mexican revolution in 1929 and the first decade of the twenty-first century several authors found seven phases of urban growth and associated them to models of concentric rings. It is estimated that by 2030 the city of Tijuana will have million inhabitants which poses substantial challenges to urban planners to provide the urgently needed public services.
