The public space in the tourist urban region Puerto Vallarta-Bahía de Banderas. A review from de rigth to the City

Abstract

The tourist territory around Puerto Vallarta in Jalisco, Mexico, is currently a coastal tourist urban region (CTUR), structured around that main urban node and 16 localities with different functions, which were classified into six typologies: integrated urban localities, localities that receive immigrants, localities of tourist vocation, localities in rural-urban transition, and planned tourist enclaves. In each type of location, different relationships between public space and people were also observed, whether they were residents, everyday users or tourists. This article analyzes this relationship in which public space –under its multidimensional conception– is understood as the place of representation; as well as its implications in the right to the city, which includes the involvement of society in thinking and building the city as a collective commitment. For the analysis, we used both quantitative information –collected in the surveys conducted in 2011– and qualitative information, resulting from the tour of all locations and form the interaction with its inhabitants. In each type of locality of the CTUR, processes are observed in the public space that express different affectations to the right to the city, like the dispossession of the territory in the localities of tourist vocation, the scarce access to basic services and equipment in the localities that receive immigrants, and even the denial of access and use of coast territory, that has been captured by the planned tourist enclaves.