land Article Evolution and Collapse of Ejidos in Mexico—To What Extent Is Communal Land Used for Urban Development? Melissa Schumacher 1, Pamela Durán-Díaz 2,* , Anne Kristiina Kurjenoja 3 , Eduardo Gutiérrez-Juárez 4 and David A. González-Rivas 5 1 Department of Architecture, Universidad de las Américas Puebla, Cholula 72810, Mexico;
[email protected] 2 Associate Professorship of Land Management, Technische Universität München, 80333 Munich, Germany 3 Department of Architecture, Universidad de las Américas Puebla, Cholula 72810, Mexico;
[email protected] 4 Department of Architecture, Universidad de las Américas Puebla, Cholula 72810, Mexico;
[email protected] 5 Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas del Noreste CONACYT, La Paz Baja California Sur 23205, Mexico;
[email protected] * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel.: +49-89-289-25789 Received: 13 September 2019; Accepted: 2 October 2019; Published: 7 October 2019 Abstract: The ejido system, based on communal land in Mexico, was transformed to private ownership due to neoliberal trends in the 1990s. Based on the theory of stakeholders being agents of change, this study aimed to describe the land policies that changed the ejido system into private development to show how land tenure change is shaping urban growth. To demonstrate this, municipalities of San Andrés Cholula and Santa Clara Ocoyucan were selected as case studies. Within this context, we evaluated how much ejido land is being urbanized due to real estate market forces and what type of urbanization model has been created. These two areas represent different development scales with different stakeholders—San Andrés Cholula, where ejidos were expropriated as part of a regional urban development plan and Santa Clara Ocoyucan, where ejidos and rural land were reached by private developers without local planning.