The Tourist City and its Contradictions: A Reflection from the Example of Playa del Carmen

Abstract

This article analyzes the local conflicts for the appropriation of space at the different stages of the urban development of Playadel Carmen, a tourist city located in the mexican state of Quintana Roo. In a local context characterized by a rapid demographic growth and intensive real estate speculation, these conflicts show the importance of social contradictions that are directly linked with land tenure, and reveal the major role of such contradictions in the urban process. Especially, the article focusses on the housing issues that this phenomenon generates for the most vulnerable social groups and describes their struggle for the right to housing in the most important popular neighbourhood of the city, the colonia Luis Donaldo Colosio. Based on the exemple of Playadel Carmen, and using the theoretical framework of marxist filosopher Henri Lefebvre, the article proposes a reflexion on the way tourist urbanization contributes to exacerbate what the author called the “contradictions of space”, which intensity became especially pronounced in the context of the neoliberal city.