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| Dunes bordering the town of Concon, Chile Children like to play with makeshift toboggans on the areas of dunes that border the beach resort of Concon. Judging from the photograph, the sand appears about to engulf the town, but in fact the opposite is true: buildings, roads, and other infrastructure are gaining land at the expense of nature. Begun in 1996, concon is the latest fashionable district in the metroplex of Vina del Mar, Chile's tourist capital, which sprawls almost continuously over 15.5 miles (25km) of beaches. Squeezed between the mountains and the sea, and blocked to the south by large port of Valparaiso, it has had no choice but to expand to the north, at the expense of the dunes. The explosion of tourism, combined with growth in the world's population and the increase in the number of city-dwellers, means that built-up areas are advancing on wild ones. Today, 37 percent of people live less than 40 miles (60 km) from a coast a number greater than the population of the entire world in 1950. |
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