- Sustainable Urban Design and Place-Making despite ‘Turbo-Planning’ Case Cancún Quintana Roo, México    866 kb by    Ordóñez Cervantes, Juan Felipe | juanfelipeordonez@gmail.com    Short Outline Sustainable, fast and efficient urban planning for Cancun, a fast growing 38 year-old city that is now the most important tourist destination in Mexico, and a major tourist destination in the world. Abstract With just 38 years, Cancun is now the most important tourist destination in Mexico and a major tourist destination in the world. It takes a fast and efficient planning which would prevent changes in growth trends, needs of suitable land, infrastructure, facilities and services that will require the current and future population. Cancun now has 661,176 inhabitants and it is expected that by the year of 2025 it will exceed the million, has 146 hotels with over 28,000 rooms, about 453 restaurants, 12 shopping centers, 13 golf courses, is a source of work for approximately 800,000 people , has 25 km of boulevard, sporting, ecological and adventure attractions, the second largest airport in Mexico with 54.729 flights per year and brings money into the country for about 3.073 million dollars. Unfortunately urban planning in Cancun has grown oriented to benefit tourism and real estate activity without regard to the 600,000 inhabitants living in inadequate conditions. This is the Urban Development Program of the Population Center of Cancun, which is the result of a study made by a multidisciplinary team of professionals. A participatory planning scheme is made, one that has the objective to avoid seeking expansive growth and concentrates in compact growth, increasing the urban density with mixed land uses. Current patterns of rapid urban growth are certainly unsustainable and require from the society, politicians and technicians a common effort to reorient the way. This effort should focus on spatial planning and urban population center as the best alternative to ensure a bright future for generations to come. The society suffers the symptoms of malfunctions and begins to recognize the need to rethink more compact cities and rational use of resources, environmentally friendly, to encourage bonding, and socialization within landscapes that promote quality of life and civic spirit. Keywords SUSTAINABLE URBAN DESIGN, PLANNING Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2012: Fast Forward: Planning in a (hyper) dynamic urban context   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper