By the dawn of the 21st century, more than half of the world's population was living in urban areas. This volume explores the implications of this unprecedented expansion in the world's most urbanized region, Latin America, exploring the new urban reality, and the consequences for both Latin America and the rest of the developing world.

By the dawn of the 21st century, more than half of the world's population was living in urban areas. This volume explores the implications of this unprecedented expansion in the world's most urbanized region, Latin America, exploring the new urban reality, and the consequences for both Latin America and the rest of the developing world.

Prepared for the World Commission on Twenty-First Century Urbanization Conference in Berlin in July 2000. This book is an entirely new and comprehensive review of the state of world urban development at the millennium and a forecast of the main issues that will dominate urban debates in the next 25 years. It is the most significant book on cities and city planning problems to appear for many years.

In this book Arturo Almandoz places the major episodes of Latin America’s twentieth and early twenty-first century urban history within the changing relationship between industrialization and urbanization, modernization and development. This relationship began in the early twentieth century, when industrialization and urbanization became significant in the region, and ends at the beginning of the twenty-first century, when new tensions between liberal globalization and populist nationalism challenge development in the subcontinent, much of which is still poverty stricken. Latin America’s twentieth-century modernization and development are closely related to nineteenth-century ideals of progress and civilization, and for this reason Almandoz opens with a brief review of that legacy for the different countries that are the focus of his book – Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela – but with references to others. He then explores the regional distortions, which resulted from the interaction between industrialization and urbanization, and how the imbalance between urbanization and the productive system helps to explain why ‘take-off’ was not followed by the ‘drive to maturity’ in Latin American countries. He suggests that the close yet troublesome relationship with the United States, the recurrence of dictatorships and autocratic regimes, and Marxist influences in many domains, are all factors that explain Latin America’s stagnation and underdevelopment up to the so-called ‘lost decade’ of 1980s. He shows how Latin America’s fate changed in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, when neoliberal programmes, political compromise and constitutional reform dismantled the traditional model of the corporate state and centralized planning. He reveals how economic growth and social improvements have been attained by politically left-wing yet economically open-market countries while others have resumed populism and state intervention. All these trends make up the complex scenario for the new century – especially when considered against the background of vibrant metropolises that are the main actors in the book.

How twenty-first-century Latin American comics transgress social, political, and cultural frontiers. Given comics’ ability to cross borders, Latin American creators have used the form to transgress the political, social, spatial, and cultural borders that shape the region. A groundbreaking and comprehensive study of twenty-first-century Latin American comics, Latin American Comics in the Twenty-First Century documents how these works move beyond national boundaries and explores new aspects of the form, its subjects, and its creators. Latin American comics production is arguably more interconnected and more networked across national borders than ever before. Analyzing works from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay, James Scorer organizes his study around forms of “transgression,” such as transnationalism, border crossings, transfeminisms, punk bodies, and encounters in the neoliberal city. Scorer examines the feminist comics collective Chicks on Comics; the DIY comics zine world; nonfiction and journalistic comics; contagion and zombie narratives; and more. Drawing from archives across the United States, Europe, and Latin America, Latin American Comics in the Twenty-First Century posits that these comics produce micronarratives of everyday life that speak to sites of social struggle shared across nation states.

This book analyzes in detail the main social, economic and special transformation of the city of São Paulo. In the last 30 years, São Paulo has become a more heterogeneous and less unequal city. Contrary to some expectations, the recent economic transformations did not produce social polarization, and the localized processes of spaces production (and the plural is increasingly important) are more and more key to define their respective growth patterns, social conditions, forms of housing production, service availability and urban precariousness. In other dimensions, however, inequalities remain present and strong and certain disadvantaged areas have changed little and are still marked by strong social inequalities. The metropolis remains heavily segregated in terms of race and class, in a clear hierarchical structure. The book shows that it is necessary to escape from dual and polarity interpretations. This did not lead to the complete disappearance of a crudely radial and concentric structure (not only due to geographic path dependence), but superposes other elements over it, leading to more complexes and continuous patterns. A general summary of these elements could perhaps be stated as pointing to greater social/spatial heterogeneity, accompanied by smaller, but reconfigured inequalities.

This book discusses urban planning and regional development practices in the twentieth century, and ways in which they are currently being transformed. It addresses questions such as: What are the factors affecting planning dynamics at local, regional, national and global scales? With the push to adopt a market paradigm in land development and infrastructure, the relationship between resource management, sustainable development and the role of governance has been transformed. Centralized planning is giving way to privatization, not only in the traditional regions but also in newly emerging regions of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Further, attempts are being made to bring planning related decision-making closer to the people who are most affected by it. Presenting a collection of studies from scholars around the world and highlighting recent advances in the field, the book is a valuable reference guide for those engaged in urban transformations, whether as graduate students, researchers, practitioners or policymakers.

This volume reflects on urban development strategies that have been implemented recently in Latin America. Over the past twenty years, there has been great improvement in governmental efficiency, with local and national governments executing important projects that increase the quality of life in cities. However, the causes of collective disadvantage – which created the problems governments attempt to resolve – continue to affect many people throughout the continent. Thus, the essays here examine a wide range of socioeconomic, political, ethnic and historical issues that have influenced the emergence of marginal urbanisms in Latin American cities. The argument most strongly presented in this book is that infrastructural insertions need to be considered as the baseline for urban development, not as its main goal. Urban infrastructure cannot be taken as the only target for urban development programmes, but rather as an instrument for achieving more significant, and inclusive, urban transformations that respond more adequately to the realities of the people who inhabit Latin American cities.

This book evaluates the impact of 20 years of urban policies in six Latin American countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Mexico. It argues that evaluating the fulfillment of past commitments is essential for framing and meeting the new commitments that were taken in Habitat III over the next 20 years. Taken as a whole, the book provides a critical assessment of the economic, social and environmental consequences of urban interventions during Habitat II. The country-level chapters have been written by recognized experts in urban issues, with first-hand knowledge of the Habitat process, and deep familiarity with the problems, statistics, actors and political contexts of their nations. The latter part of the volume considers wider topics such as the Habitat Commitment Index, the New Urban Agenda and the regional and global-scale lessons that can be extracted from this group of countries. Urban Policy in Latin America will be of interest to advanced students, researchers and policymakers across development economics, urban studies and Latin American studies.

Latin America’s diverse political and economic struggles and triumphs have captured the global imagination. The region has been a site of brutal dictators, revolutionary heroes, the Cold War struggle and as a place in which the global debt crisis has had some of its most lasting and devastating impacts. Latin America continues to undergo rapid transformation, demonstrating both inspirational change and frustrating continuities. This text provides a comprehensive introduction to Latin American development in the twenty-first century, emphasizing political, economic, social, cultural and environmental dimensions of development. It considers key challenges facing the region and the diverse ways in which its people are responding, as well as providing analysis of the ways in which such challenges and responses can be theorized. This book also explores the region’s historical trajectory, the implementation and rejection of the neoliberal model and the role played by diverse social movements. Relations of gender, class and race are considered, as well as the ways in which media and popular culture are forging new global imaginaries of the continent. The text also considers the increasing difficulties that Latin America faces in confronting climate change and environmental degradation. This accessible text gives an overarching historical and geographical analysis of the region and critical analysis of recent developments. It is accompanied by a diverse range of critical historical and contemporary case studies from all parts of the continent, providing readers with the conceptual tools required to analyse theories on Latin American development. Each chapter ends with a summary section, discussion topics, suggestions for further reading, websites and media resources. This is an indispensable resource for scholars, students and practitioners.