BEYOND PARADISE

In the late 1960s, the Mexican government began to systematically develop the country’s tourism sector to boost the economy. Within a few years, a study examined several resort locations such as Miami Beach and Acapulco. Information such as the
number of tourists, hotel rooms, average temperatures, average rainfall, and hurricane events were compiled and put into a computer program. Government officials then visited several computer-selected sites to inspect their potential for future tourism
projects. Cancún was chosen as the first of these projects for various reasons: favorable weather for beach activities, the Caribbean sea, and proximity to Mayan ruins within easy driving distance.

The Cancún Master Plan was approved by 1969, with construction starting the next year. The plan consisted of three zones; (1) Urban areas for service workers and agriculture (2) an international airport, and (3) a hotel zone separated into three phases
in the period of 40 years. In the plan, tourists arriving at the airport would not pass through residential areas to get to their hotels and service workers could get to the hotels without crossing paths with arriving tourists. Although initiall studies predicted that foreign tourists would exceed the number of domestic visitors, more Mexicans visited Cancún than foreigners until the early 1980s. The Latin American debt crisis in 1982 negatively affected Mexico's economy and also devalued the Mexican Peso. This change brought more foreign tourists for a lower price, and as a result tourism in Cancún was dramatically expanded.

Today, Cancún contributes a third of México’s tourist income; however, this industry increase has also deteriorated the city’s environment. These ecological effects were not foreseen in the 1970 Master Plan. Cancún produces 329,000 tons of waste annually and has seen the deforestation of its mangroves, destruction of beaches, illegal sewage disposal into the Nichupté Lagoon, Caribbean Ocean, and the Yucatan Aquifer, which is the only water source in the peninsula. 80% of local coral has been lost because of human contamination. Another issue within the hotel zone is automotive traffic. When the master plan focused on expanding hotel properties, it failed to consider the traffic capacity of the single road through the hotel strip. Recently, the city has constructed a bridge over the lagoon, connecting residential to hotel zones. This bridge construction, however, has led to the loss of an additional ten hectares of mangrove.

 

Our proposal for Cancún’s future focuses on combating the enclave’s expansion beyond its planned and natural boundaries. We assume that future Cancún investors will continue to ignore the ecological consequences of expanding tourism, so we propose the systematic removal of old, declining hotels and resorts within the Hotel Zone. Based on Cancún’s history of expanding its urban and tourist areas into ecological zones, our proposal would protect the Nichupté Lagoon and Caribbean Sea from further tourist expansion. This 5 to 50-year scenario addresses existing tensions between citizens and ecologists favoring preservation versus the tourism industry’s exploitation of the Hotel Zone. With the goal of slowing and eventually reversing the 1970 Master Plan’s short-term thinking, the removal of existing hotels and portions of the Hotel Zone will produce less pollution, a decline in deforestation, and preserve a portion of Cancún’s original natural beauty. Within these blocked portions and no-hotel zones, we propose low-impact, walkable areas for visitors to view both the Nichupté Lagoon and the Caribbean Sea as a connecting point between the two bodies of water. The target of this proposal is to translate the 1970 plan to a vision of Cancún in 2024, keeping in mind the long-term environmental consequences and the possible downfall of Cancún’s picture-perfect image if the tourism exploitation continues.