The planar Cayley graphs are effectively enumerable I: consistently planar graphs

We obtain an effective enumeration of the family of finitely generated groups admitting a faithful, properly discontinuous action on some 2-manifold contained in the sphere. This is achieved by introducing a type of group presentation capturing exactly these groups. Extending this in a companion paper, we find group presentations capturing the planar finitely generated Cayley graphs. Thus we obtain an effective enumeration of these Cayley graphs, yielding in particular an affirmative answer to a question of Droms et al.