Partial Plan of Urban Development Destiladeras – Punta de Mita

If the development of the region requires responsible growth, what can the government authorities do?

Talking of growth also involves considering all the external factors that it involves; there being more population, there is a greater demand of public services, security, housing, and development of investments as well as a greater need to provide basic resources.

Then the question would be: How do the Government Authorities of Mexico prepare for this inevitable situation? To think at large on the future growth, we need to take in consideration the new phenomena that we will face in the immediate future, which depending on the form in which we choose to resolve it, will impact on the expectations of growth,  and therefore, the quality of tomorrow’s life.

There exists a juridical technical instrument of planning and management that complements the transformation of a part of the urban land through the urban renovation or new developments, to develop these spaces as expansion lands in such a way that through this instrument is determined the ecological equilibrium with the construction demands; this also foresees the conservation of the environment, assuring its quality aside of allowing an efficient management of resources and therefore an improvement of the economy.

Partial Plan of Urban Development Destiladeras- Punta de Mita and its benefits Photo: Government of Bahía de Banderas

This is what the Mexican laws recognize as the Partial Plan of Urban Development, and there exist a series of technical requirements that must be considered for its application and development, leaving the Municipalities as the sole responsible for the management of such. These plans must accomplish all requirements and processes to be legal.

From the planning board to completion on the land to be regulated, there are about 9 stages. In this post, we will share the information up to the actual phase of the Partial Plan of Urban Development for Punta de Mita that includes the area between the common land (Ejido) of Emiliano Zapata, up to the borders with the Ejido of Sayulita, which is managed by the IMPLAN, a Municipal Planning Institution created by the current municipal administration of Dr. Jaime Cuevas.

According to the guidelines for the elaboration of urban development programs of the Secretariat of Public Works, the nine stages included, the PPDUPM is currently on stage 2.

Stage 1 Juridical – Legal administrative – At this point it must be clearly established the area of application of the urban development plan and it must be already known what has been already marked and established by law. Among the outstanding points of the Political Constitution of the United States of Mexico in its Articles 25, 26, 27 ,and 115; the General Law on Human Settlements; the General Law of Ecological and Environmental Protection; the Federal Law on Monuments and Archeological, Artistic and Historical Zones, other Planning and Urban Development codes, as the  case may be; laws on water, environmental and conservation of constructed patrimonies, Codes and Laws on citizen participation of the States, Municipal regulations and all legislations that might eventually serve of basis to the measures that be adopted in the urban development plan.

Stage 2 Analysis of Arguments and Diagnosis – The analysis of the arguments and their solutions should be constituted as the base on which the elaboration of the propositions are anchored which are the central object of the planning.

At the same time, a descriptive phase is started where factors such as the physical environment, the transformed physical environment; the socio-economic aspects, characteristics of the population, demographic growth indicators, and the projections and future sceneries to identify problems and prospects to determine the objectives and possibilities to define the objectives and the strategy to be used to plan how it is that the territory must grow.

Next continues the participative phase in which a strategy to obtain the most involvement from the population should be designed. To achieve this, citizen participation workshops should be realized to involve all the citizenry.

The Partial Plan of Urban Development of Punta de Mita is currently working in the development of stage 2. Soon, the Council of Bahia de Banderas will inform on more advances; and with this it will also start the important and most necessary participation of the civil population to whom we invite to participate in these workshops because all of this is made for a best Punta de Mita and its people.