Three cities, three ways of growing

We measured the same thing in three cities: where new construction lands relative to proximity to everyday services. The data differ in each case (censuses and the business directory in Cancún, the cadastre in Bogotá, building permits in Montevideo), but the question is the same and the answers are not alike.

Cancún: the established city empties and growth moves to the edge

Between 2010 and 2020, the city blocks that already existed went from 589,486 to 583,910 residents: all the growth took place on new blocks. From those new blocks, home to 317,000 people, a 45-minute bus ride reaches places with 14% of the city’s jobs; from the blocks that grew within the existing city, 31%. Meanwhile, 8,400 vacant homes sit in well-served places.

Bogotá: growing inward, but far from public services

In Bogotá, 83% of the m² built between 2016 and 2026 went up on blocks that were already built: this is not a city spreading over the countryside. But new construction lands disproportionately where daily life is far away: the quintile with the least proximity received 24.3% of new construction with 14.7% of the population, twice as many new m² per person as the quintile with the most proximity. And there it is built high: between half and three fifths of those m² are in buildings of 6 stories or more.

Montevideo: building where the city already is

Montevideo shows the opposite. Since 2013, the quintile with the most proximity received 9.3 m² of new construction per person and the two with the least, between 2.2 and 3.5. Only 21% of new housing is in those two quintiles, where 40% of the people live. Formal construction is concentrated on the coast and in the center; the western and northern periphery receives almost none.

What they have in common

In Cancún and Bogotá, where we measured zoning, it does not steer the pattern. In Cancún only 18% of the population lives where high permitted intensity and high proximity coincide, less than if zoning had been distributed at random (20%). In Bogotá, the m² that the POT allows but that have not yet been built are spread almost evenly across proximity quintiles (22.1% in the lowest and 18.7% in the highest). What gets built does not follow proximity, and zoning does not correct it.

Montevideo is not a complete solution either: concentrating construction in the well-served city leaves the periphery without formal construction and without the services that would come with it. All three cities show the same gap: there is no instrument linking where building happens to where everyday life is, or should be.