Urban planning, finance, and administration

Abstract

Urban and regional planning in Costa Rica, as in most other low-income countries, is not highly developed. Nevertheless, the advocates of planning are numerous and eloquent. The desire to replace ‘disorder’ by ‘coordination’ — rational, systematic, and ‘scientific’ — has the same appeal in Central America as it does in Europe and other industrialised countries. In the United States, for example, organisational manifestations of these sentiments are found in land use planning boards, coastal commissions, and other regulatory agencies.