While Urban Environmental Management has received increasing worldwide attention in the last 50 years, much of the international attention to this growing field has focused, as is the case with most scientific fields, on the English language literature. Nevertheless, much professional work of interest has been taking place in Latin America, where the problems of the urban environment have been identified early and considered major difficulties in the development of this heavily urbanised region. Consequently, the purpose of the research that this article summarises is to address the Spanish and Portuguese language literature written in Latin America on Latin America itself to identify the trends in the field that have emerged, and are continuing to emerge, there and, eventually, to determine what lessons they offer to other regions.
KeywordsUrban Environmental Management, Latin America, Cities, Urban Planning, Sustainability, Spanish, Portuguese
IntroductionUrban Environmental Management has been receiving increasing attention since 1970 in both developed countries, where it has emerged as a subject of academic research and professional interest, and in developing countries, where it has become increasingly an area of donor concern as well. As a field, it is more like planning or engineering rather than geography, economics or sociology; and it represents an integrated view of environmental problems at city, and increasingly, regional level. Such problems are multi-sectoral (e.g., manufacturing, services, household, etc.), multi-system (e.g., water supply, sanitation, transport,
