Evolution and Collapse of Ejidos in Mexico—To What Extent Is Communal Land Used for Urban Development?

Melissa Schumacher, Pamela Durán-Díaz, Anne Kristiina Kurjenoja, Eduardo Gutiérrez-Juárez and David A. González-Rivas
Additional contact information
Melissa Schumacher: Department of Architecture, Universidad de las Américas Puebla, Cholula 72810, Mexico
Pamela Durán-Díaz: Associate Professorship of Land Management, Technische Universität München, 80333 Munich, Germany
Anne Kristiina Kurjenoja: Department of Architecture, Universidad de las Américas Puebla, Cholula 72810, Mexico
Eduardo Gutiérrez-Juárez: Department of Architecture, Universidad de las Américas Puebla, Cholula 72810, Mexico
David A. González-Rivas: Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas del Noreste CONACYT, La Paz Baja California Sur 23205, Mexico

Land, 2019, vol. 8, issue 10, 1-21

Abstract: The ejido system, based on communal land in Mexico, was transformed to private ownership due to neoliberal trends in the 1990s. Based on the theory of stakeholders being agents of change, this study aimed to describe the land policies that changed the ejido system into private development to show how land tenure change is shaping urban growth. To demonstrate this, municipalities of San Andrés Cholula and Santa Clara Ocoyucan were selected as case studies. Within this context, we evaluated how much ejido land is being urbanized due to real estate market forces and what type of urbanization model has been created. These two areas represent different development scales with different stakeholders—San Andrés Cholula, where ejidos were expropriated as part of a regional urban development plan and Santa Clara Ocoyucan, where ejidos and rural land were reached by private developers without local planning. To analyze both municipalities, historical satellite images from Google Earth were used with GRASS GIS 7.4 (Bonn, Germany) and corrected with QGIS 2.18 (Boston, MA, US). We found that privatization of ejidos fragmented and segregated the rural world for the construction of massive gated communities as an effect of a disturbing land tenure change that has occurred over the last 30 years. Hence, this research questions the roles of local authorities in permitting land use changes with no regulations or local planning. The resulting urbanization model is a private sector development that isolates rural communities in their own territories, for which we provide recommendations.

Keywords: land tenure in Mexico; ejido system; land expropriation; gated-communities; San Andrés Cholula; Santa Clara Ocoyucan (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/8/10/146/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/8/10/146/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlands:v:8:y:2019:i:10:p:146-:d:274048

Access Statistics for this article

Land is currently edited by Ms. Carol Ma

More articles in Land from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().