In the past The Costa Rica Star has published about uncontrolled land development and zoning in San Jose.

Few people, other than La Nacion reporters, remember that back in late 2003, a plan was set afoot, with great gravity and fanfare, to bring order to the chaos that is the Greater Metropolitan Area.

Studies, of course, didn’t get started until nearly a year later. Well, reported La Nacion this week, planning hasn’t gone much further than that. Special interests have been pushing back against zoning ever since.

No one thought it would be easy or fast, after all, planning encompasses more than 50 public entities as well as affecting construction firms, academics, environmentalists, and real estate agents.

Vice President Alfio Piva, assigned to coordination of the study by the Chinchilla Administration, says, “We have to pay attention to social demand for housing and public services, in conjuction with environmental, social, production and development variables, local and regional.

Commentary: In other words, we’re afraid to step on someone’s toes, especially if he is well connected politically. Even the Comptroller General’s Office has weighed in on the subject, bringing attention that millions have been spent on the project but the housing agency, INVU, has been positively weak-kneed on the subject.

The current controversial plan, the third version to come out of INVU, is no closer to approval than the first. It succeeded the second plan financed by the European Union (costing 18 million euros) that INVU itself shot down.

Moreover, INVU has had a time table for studies and appears about to miss its Dec. 17 deadline. There is a sketchy 1982 plan that, according to State of the Nation researcher Leonardo Merino “prevents the worst excesses,” is obviously not good enough.

INVU, stung by criticism, defends its slowness. No one said from the beginning that zoning is easy and simple. But it seems as if local officials, in their fear of controversy, have making rough going of the plan.

Lest U.S. expatriates point to this as an example of Latin inefficiency, they have nothing to sneer about, one of the most corrupt parts of the U.S. system is the city planning commission.

Knowing that it is a thankless job that will put a kink in their social relationships, most competent people refuse to take the planning commission jobs. That means that these commissions are traditionally staffed by well connected real estate agents.

They mostly are looking out for their own interests and the interest of colleagues on a ‘you scratch my back if I scratch yours’ basis. Somehow the interests of the public almost invariably get lost in the mess.

In the past decade, they have been aided by a U.S. Supreme Court unwise decision allowing real estate agents to influence city councils to demolish, under eminent domain, homes in areas where those agents want to establish urban renewal.

Urban renewal can almost certainly mean, “let’s get rid of the poor who own their own housing so we can make a building business for the rich on fat commissions.”

Zoning is also not a favoured subject by the independent minded Costa Rican, who would rather go behind the municipality’s back than get a building permit. Sometimes this is an excuse for simple selfishness, as in the case of a Cartago resident some years ago who tore down an historic building that was protected by decree as a monument.

“I do whatever I want to do,” he told La Nacion.