Metropolitan spatial plans typically aim to provide a medium- to long-term vision for development, which is, however, not always aligned with the timeframe of other plans at municipal or national levels. There is also a risk that such medium- to long-term plans may be considered too long to imply anything meaningful or realistically feasible for short-term political mandates. However, it eventually turned into gated communities (called fraccionamientos), whose development and public sendee provision mainly take place outside the control of public authorities and contribute to increasing socio-economic inequalities within the metropolitan region.