What are the Coastal Building Regulations?
The Maritime Zone runs for more than 1,500 km. (932 mi.) along both coasts. More than one third of this (590 km. (367 mi.) is open to legal development. The rest is invested in mangrove swamps, National Parks, mouth of rivers and other protected areas. Most of this land is already developed, most of it illegally. Only a small fraction is still open to development. For instance, the local municipality of Santa Cruz, Guanacaste has leased to developers 40% of the 50% of the land allotted to it in the Maritime Zone. According to the law, land can be acquired only through temporary 5-20 year concessions, and must be developed according to a detailed regulatory plan consisting of a zoning plan, showing what is going to be built and where, and a construction implementation framework, showing in detail how all this is going to be handled.
