Office tools
Construction pulse
Shows how many square meters are planned for construction in each canton and each district according to public permit data. Updated every quarter.
Q2 2026 compared with Q2 2025
Square meters registered nationwide
Year-on-year change
Projects registered
Data from the CFIA, Construction Project Administrator (APC). Processing by LDB Arquitectura.
Square meters by canton and district
Choose the level and the use to color the map, or turn on the year-on-year change to see where it grew and where it fell. Tap or click a canton to see its districts.
With the keyboard, move through the map with Tab and open a canton with Enter.
The 15 cantons with the most square meters
The 84 cantons
LDB reading of the quarter
In Q2 2026, 2,681,001 m² were registered nationwide, 11.5% more than in the same quarter of 2025. Projects went from 8,843 to 9,222. Residential use (10.2%), industrial use (17.1%) and urban development use (19.7%) grew, while commercial use fell 5.1%. The area rose in 49 of the 84 cantons.
San José leads the quarter with 207,278 m², almost three times the figure a year earlier. Housing contributes 59,945 m² of that increase. It is followed by Santa Cruz and San Carlos, where urban development works weigh heavily. Alajuela falls 45.7% and still ranks third. By district, the leader is Tamarindo, in Santa Cruz, with 82,976 m².
Large jumps should be read with care. Tilarán and Río Cuarto multiplied their area by more than seven, and industrial use explains 90% and 83% of the increase. In Buenos Aires, Santa Bárbara and Poás, urban development works explain all or almost all of the growth. The district detail confirms it. In Quebrada Grande de Tilarán a single project accounts for 99% of the quarter’s area. In 69 of the 222 districts with at least 2,000 m², one project exceeds half of the area.
Method
What it measures
- The square meters of projects registered with the CFIA to apply for a building permit. It is a measure of the intention to build.
- It includes private and public works. Roads, bridges and subdivisions also count and appear as urban development use. The Buildings only button separates them.
- With Buildings only, roads and bridges are subtracted from the total and from the urban development use of each district and canton. The other uses do not change and the number of projects still includes road works.
- Each project is assigned to the quarter by its registration date and to the canton and district stated in the record. Q2 covers April, May and June.
- The large project mark appears when a single project accounts for more than half of the area of a canton or district with at least 2,000 m². It does not identify the project.
- Updated every quarter when the CFIA publishes the next cut, with a lag of about one month.
What it does not measure
- It is not completed work or work in progress. A registered project may take time to start or may never be built.
- It does not measure the value of the work or the employment it generates.
- As a secondary layer, the map shows the area of private-sector municipal permits published by INEC for H1 2026 in preliminary figures. It adds up to 2,245,533 m² nationwide. It should not be added to the CFIA figure because it measures another stage and only private works.
How to cite
LDB Arquitectura (2026). Construction pulse, Q2 2026. ldbarquitectura.com/en/construction-pulse/
Data from the CFIA, Construction Project Administrator (APC). Processing by LDB Arquitectura. Secondary layer with INEC data, Construction Statistics.
Canton and district boundaries from the National Geographic Institute, SNIT, 2026 version.