Business, Real Estate and Investing
By Jim Karger

Seven roadblocks to San Miguel’s future 

Let’s begin with a double dose of reality—(M)tourism is down and home sales have plummeted. 

Tourism in San Miguel is off by 20 percent, judging from House and Garden Tour numbers, the perennial measure of tourists in the city. So far, 1,300 fewer people have taken the tour compared to the same period in 2006.

San Miguel home sales are slow. One need only walk the streets and count Se Vende signs or the real estate ads in Atención to see housing inventory stacking up like cordwood.

Speculation is abundant about causes, and whether the downturns in tourism and home sales are related. San Miguel faces a turning point and must deal with at least seven dynamics if it is to stay in a top position for visitors and expatriates.

Think carefully before you proclaim, “I don’t care if tourists come here or not!” Without the 120,000 tourists a year from the US and Canada, the San Miguel economy would disintegrate. Visitors’ contributions are essential to maintaining the standard of living to which both locals and expatriates have become accustomed. Without a vibrant tourist industry, many restaurants and bars would disappear. Real estate, already plagued by oversupply and slackening demand, would fall through the floor like a sack of bricks. With the noticeable absence of industry here to fill the void, thousands of locals soon would be unemployed.


1. Traffic. Traffic is a leading cause of stress for most Americans and few tourists are looking for vacation spots that mimic this unfortunate part of their daily lives. In San Miguel, whose streets were built for donkeys, we don’t have a “Mixmaster” like Dallas, but problems with congestion, emissions and parking create a distinctly less desirable experience for both residents and tourists.

Destination photos of San Miguel show quaint cobblestone streets, not potholes and herds of buses. For a vacation destination that advertises tranquility, our fair city is working its way toward a traffic nightmare. 

Recently, I watched a tourist couple trying to cross Ancha de San Antonio in mid-morning. They waited, stepped into the street a couple of times, but always retreated. The traffic never let up, nor did any driver stop to let them cross. They finally shook their heads in disgust, gave up, and my guess is that was their last trip to San Miguel. 

The city has taken steps to address the traffic problem. The widening of Ancha de San Antonio arguably made things a bit better, but others argue it only moved the bottleneck from the glorieta to that point where the road narrows into Zacateros.
Emissions from diesel buses in San Miguel bother tourists and residents alike. The city needs to replace the urbanos with smaller, more fuel-efficient buses. The same is true of cars in the Centro—traffic must be limited and controlled if air quality is to improve.

City streets are packed with parked vehicles—legal, illegal and double. Limiting traffic into the Centro would help clear the mess and fill the outer parking lots. The Cardo lot would become more than “the parking lot no one parks in.”

2. Water. The city claims there are another 20 years of water for its citizens (Atención April 13, 2007, page 1). A key assumption is that the city is growing more slowly. Even though population doubled between 1980 and 2000, it will somehow grow by only 17 percent over the next 30 years. The city also projects a multimillion-dollar sewage treatment plant capable of cleaning the horribly polluted lake, the answer to its overexploited aquifer. Of course, there are no funds earmarked for a plant and during peak periods the current plant dumps raw sewage. The city alsohas no control over agricultural draws on the aquifer, which will grow fat broccoli while San Miguel withers.

3. Crime. Fortunately, San Miguel has not suffered the drug-related violence that victimized 2,000 people last year in Mexico, but crime is on the rise here. General crime was up 18 percent between 2004 and 2005 and another 17 percent between 2006 and 2007. Home burglaries went up 23 percent and car burglaries increased 17 percent in the same period. Recent serial rapes and murders have hurt the image of San Miguel as a safe place for female visitors. 



These are three roadblocks the city can and should address creatively and aggressively without further delay. But, to be fair, not every problem is the city’s creation, and many problems are outside the scope of city government. Demographics in play dictated by the market include prices, population, vacation trends and national bureaucracies.



4. Prices. San Miguel is one of the most expensive cities in Mexico. With success, demand for goods and services increases, and prices rise. Yet, few vacationers and expats set out looking for the most expensive place in any country to visit or live, unless the infrastructure and experience warrant it.

5. Increasing population of expatriates. Another ironic price of success is the increasing number of expats in San Miguel. Most tourists don’t come to Mexico to see how other gringos live. They want a more authentic experience, except those who are drawn to the coastal all-inclusive resorts where you eat buffet, drink all day and return home sunburned and hung over. San Miguel has always been advertised as an authentic experience, but the trend toward Americanization is troubling.

6. Vacation trends and the Bajio Airport. Experts tell us Americans work 142 more hours a year than they did in 1973 and, even when they get vacation time, they often don’t use it all. A survey by Expedia.com estimated that US workers did not use a total of 425 million vacation days in 2005. Those who do take vacations are taking shorter ones and the higher up the income ladder, the shorter the vacation. Few can take more than a handful of days at a time, so the perception of desirable destinations is changing. 

The best locations these days are those one can reach quickly. A good example? Taos, New Mexico. It never lived up to its billing as the next Santa Fe (after the latter’s urban sprawl finished off most of its charm), partly because the closest significant airport is two and a half hours away. It proved too far for most modern tourists.

San Miguel suffers the same disability with the airport at Leon/Bajio an hour and a half away. From most American cities one must travel too far for long-weekend vacations. Whether Querétaro can become a viable alternative to Bajio remains to be seen.

7. Bureaucracy. Mexico continues to change bureaucrats with administrations, thus ensuring a long and painful learning curve for the heads of every department and agency. The system makes long-term planning difficult because without a permanent bureaucracy, there is no assurance of implementation of plans that span administrations.

Despite these challenges, I am not one who concludes San Miguel should return to “the good old days.” On the contrary, San Miguel will continue to develop and to modernize. It is the natural order of things and, to that end, I find it eminently easier to live here now than just five years ago, with new conveniences like high-speed internet, Mega and Office Depot.

If the city and its residents—(M)expatriate and Mexican alike—(M)address these issues thoughtfully and promptly, San Miguel will enjoy many more years as the place to be in Mexico.

Jim Karger is a full-time San Miguel resident. His column appears regularly in Atención. © 2007 Jim Karger.