This story was originally Published in WIRED en Español and translated from Spanish.
Wide, manicured lawns and foliage, a playground shining under the lights, and a trampoline in the children’s play area.especially Celia Pérez Godinez envies the trampolines, bouncy castles and other playground equipment found in the wealthy neighborhoods of Cancun she frequents daily as a domestic helper.
She told me this story while sitting on a rotten wooden bench one afternoon in August. Her 7-year-old son had gotten his scooter stuck on a broken road in a small park miles north of the city, a short distance from the city’s outskirts, overgrown with trash and wild vegetation. As we talked, a homeless man laughed loudly behind us, as if he was telling a joke that only he could understand.
Pérez is a 33-year-old single mother from San Marcos, Guatemala, who moved to Mexico’s over-hyped and hugely popular tourist destination of Cancun in 2013. With barely enough time or money to go to the beach and no green or safe public spaces for her son to play, she makes do with the few parks like this one. This is not the life she expected. “I’d heard Cancun was amazing, but when you get here… it’s disappointing.”
Cancun is Mexico’s youngest city, with a history of 54 years. It was designed from scratch in the 1970s as Mexico’s newest resort destination. In this respect it was a great success. However, as an urban plan it was a failure. Planned for 200,000 people, the city’s population is now over 1 million. Previously, much of the area was jungle, but now hundreds of hotels have been built there. Accelerated real estate development has eroded the surrounding vegetation over the years.
This growth is not only an environmental nightmare, but also a social nightmare, disproportionately benefiting the city’s wealthy and poor residents. A recent study by University of the Caribbean Professor Christine McCoy found that most people in Cancun live without the minimum amount of green or public space needed for adequate recreation, leisure, rest, or socializing. This is especially true in the areas that house the most vulnerable people.
Click the play button to watch the urban development of Cancun from 1984 to 2022.
This inequality is growing even as Cancun’s rapid expansion consumes huge amounts of green space. At least 30,000 hectares of jungle were lost in the surrounding area between 2001 and 2021, according to data from Mexico’s National Forestry Commission. Land that has been cut off from the jungle is now planned for construction of housing and hotels. And more development is in the works, according to data seen by WIRED. At the federal level, the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources has received 40 requests for further land use changes in the area since 2018. If approved, this would result in the disappearance of another 650 hectares of jungle.
Data obtained through Freedom of Information shows what urban development projects have been pursued during this period, ranging from a small residential building with 2,247 units to a 20-story, 429-room all-inclusive luxury hotel. Significantly, these projects do not include applications to develop or improve public parks or green spaces in a city that is already overcrowded with tourists and has been over capacity for over a decade.
