Mexico's urban centers on the border are another story, with significant changes under way in many since substantial investment in the region has resumed.
      "Mexican cities are adopting master-planned communities and are getting away from the old model of a cluster of manufacturing plants in an industrial park," says Mike White, managing director, international real estate services, at CB Richard Ellis in El Paso, Texas, and Juarez, Mexico.
      "They are very strictly zoning a ratio between manufacturing sites and residential sites, and they are co-locating the residential with the manufacturing so that the worker can walk to work and the manufacturer has a ready source of labor in his neighborhood," White explains. "This is a big plus for manufacturers, because it has reduced the amount of bus transit time and cost to the manufacturer to get their work force to the plant every day. This is making it easier for manufacturers to locate and to be successful." Plants can now be sited within industrial bands located along major highways with residential development adjacent.
      A younger, savvier development community is behind this emerging trend, but state and city governments are realizing, too, that this new approach to zoning results in a better use of the infrastructure. U.S. investors win, says White, because they do not have to compete as intensely with other manufacturers for labor.