Mori Dream Spaces and Blow-Ups

Abstract

The goal of the present article is to survey the general theory of Mori Dream Spaces, with special regards to the question: When is the blow-up of toric variety at a general point a Mori Dream Space? We translate the question for toric surfaces of Picard number one into an interpolation problem involving points in the projective plane. An instance of such an interpolation problem is the Gonzalez-Karu theorem that gives new examples of weighted projective planes whose blow-up at a general point is not a Mori Dream Space.