Residential tourism causing land privatization and alienation: New pressures on Costa Rica's coasts.

Abstract

Costa Rica has recently seen its tourism industry change with the arrival of residential tourism. Neo-liberal policies aimed at attracting foreign direct investment have played a large role in this change; and the ‘foreignization’ and privatization of land has been the result. Femke van Noorloos examines how the north-western coast of Costa Rica has become a transnational space, in which struggles over resources and development models will continue to arise.