Preservation, Rehabilitation, and Management of Heritage Wetlands in Mexico - Restorative Redevelopment of Devastated Ecocultural Landscapes - page 181

and food (Figure 11.17). Real estate values have soared, with affluent individuals
leaving the city to build expensive canal-side homes in their new Mexican Venice
(Figure 11.18).
Farther afield away from most of the partying tourists, it is possible to move along
wonderfully pastoral canals (Figure 11.19) through a landscape filled with float-
ing mats of young plants, mostly flowers where in the past it had been vegetables
(Figure 11.20). These flowers are being grown for the nearby newly constructed
flower market that has two thousand stalls over an area of 11 ha and is the largest
such operation in Latin America (Figure 11.21). It is this element that elevates this

FIGURE 11.18 Villas alongside the restored canals.