"The hunt begins for the foreign retiree"-Headline, La Republica

In mid-February, at the national level, Costa Rica launched a high profile initiative. To the fanfare of articles in national papers, a special government edict, web articles and enthusiastic reverberations through the real estate blogosphere, a plan was unveiled to promote retirement communities for some of the 60 million baby boomers who are starting to sail off into their golden years. It was a classic example of rediscovering the obvious.

Better late than never, I chuckled, recalling a conversation with a prominent politician almost 6 years ago. I argued that the wave of retirees in Guanacaste was bringing in at least $2500/mo. per couple, generating plenty of employment and was worth pursuing as an option for this country given the approaching retirement of the baby boomers. "It would be very interesting to run some numbers on that," he commented. Well, somebody finally did and came up with the goal of 10,000 retirees per year, synchronizing with the current trend of medical tourism and building whole ‘clusters'-or retirement communities-in a number of zones that have been identified as desirable for a variety of reasons.

Seasoned skeptics might suspect that the ink is dry on big land deals that have already been advanced in the indicated areas or that the whole effort is just a way for the government to corner a larger part of the action that is already underway.

More sophisticated observers might conclude that the "leaders" have come to their senses and realized that there is more gold--and less infamy-to be garnered from above ground activities than the nefarious open pit gold mine at Las Crucitas, enthusiastically promoted by our ‘peace with nature' presidente. Also at work is a subtle shift from the vision of this country as a future industrial export powerhouse competing with the Asian tigers, towards exploiting it's comparative advantage in terms of climate, scenic beauty and traditional cultural qualities of openness, hospitality and congeniality. In addition, there may be a dawning recognition that the halcyon days of Asian industrial growth just happened to coincide with the consumption patterns of baby boomer families in the pre-crash US. It's a safe bet that on that score things have changed for the duration.

Cabinet Ministers Jorge Woodbridge and Marco Vinicio Ruiz deserve high marks for this initiative, even if some might say that it's about time given the head start of both Mexico and Panama in accommodating ‘pensionados.' Furthermore, from my perch in the forest, I would say that the glass is still at best only half full.

Where the framers of this initiative have fallen short is in failing to insist that these projects serve as signposts along the road to addressing the historic problems of land use planning and development in Costa Rica. The rampant growth of the central valley around San Jose has paved over some of the finest agricultural soils in the world while leaving the underground water supplies in perilous condition--half empty and full to the brim with toxins. Not a week goes by without ads for new suburbs, ever further from the city centers and dependant on a decrepit road system and sewage treatment that has been decades in planning.

The retirement clusters offer the chance to deploy smart development thinking on a variety of levels. They provide an opportunity to establish Costa Rica as a pioneer in "developing peace with nature", cornering the comparative advantage in the "head hunt for retirees" and ensuring a lasting positive impact on some other long-term variables that are more important than just a positive influx of dollars.

Frankly, I am not overly optimistic that Messer's Ruiz and Woodbridge have the slightest clue of how to go about using the cluster concept to chart the course from the economics of taking nature apart, to one of putting it back together.

Recommended reading for these gentlemen would include a recent New York Times article on the South Village development in Vermont wherein a key amenity is a 16 acre farm. The article notes that nationwide, "There are currently at least 200 projects that include agriculture as a key community component."

Additional reading to help government planners guide developers into a smart-growth century would be an article by Gerry Wilhelm, whose firm Conservation Design Forum, has designed water retention and re-use systems for developments of hundreds of homes, including the award winning Prairie Crossing conservation community, not far from Chicago:

"I. Water usage approaches that shed water from an area in volumes faster than it is replaced put aquifers in deficit, cause springs to dry up, and change the base flow fluxes of rivers to the point where populations of fish and other organisms are progressively stressed.

II.  If water is handled everywhere it falls, then energy is not needed to transform it from a renegade polluted volume to a clean and useable resource.

III. Water, sunlight and wind are the resources which nature provides to the top of the hill for free. Water especially should not be debauched as a waste product."

Surfing the wave of the future in sustainable developments offers Costa Rica the chance to "put back the pieces" in an integrated fashion: infiltrate clean water, soak up atmospheric carbon, generate power within developments, employ the latest in climate-wise architecture and use the process to train and deploy a cadre of professionals and technicians with the tools and the talent to set about the task of developing a survivable ‘habitat for humanity' into the foreseeable future.

The six years since my brief conversation with Ottón Solis on the possibility of ‘mining gold from the stream of retirees' has been put to good use. In a small piece of land we have been doing precisely the kinds of things that should characterize developments nationwide: Strict attention to the hydrological cycle, food production within the project employing local people, diversifying the forest, environmentally sound sewage treatment. We even made sure that a young Costa Rican doctora would be one of the first residents. Ours is very much a walkable and hands-on-involvement community, since a guiding principle is that active living is one of the keys to long-term health.

I would cherish an opportunity to share my experiences with the powers in charge of shaping the new government initiative on retirement communities. I could even help them with their marketing. For starters, we never use terms like active retirement or ‘the golden years'. We much prefer: Pura Vida!

Tom Peifer is an ecological land use consultant with 16 years experience in Guanacaste. Phone: 2658-8018.  peifer@racsa.co.cr
El Centro Verde is dedicated to sustainable land use, agriculture and development.
http://www.elcentroverde.org/