Latin American Urban Development into the Twenty-first Century: Towards a Renewed Perspective on the City

Abstract

This article argues for a more systemic engagement with Latin American cities, contending that it is necessary to reconsider their unity in order to nuance the 'fractured cities' perspective that has widely come to epitomize the contemporary urban moment in the region. It begins by offering an overview of regional urban development trends, before exploring how the underlying imaginary of the city has critically shifted over the past half century. Focusing in particular on the way that slums and shantytowns have been conceived, it traces how the predominant conception of the Latin American city moved from a notion of unity to a perception of fragmentation, highlighting how this had critically negative ramifications for urban development agendas, and concludes with a call for a renewed vision of Latin American urban life.

Slumming about

“…5 Nuttall and Mbembe responded in the same issue (2005). 6 A number of recent papers have cast a backward glance at the formation of urban research over the past half century in relation to Latin America (see Roberts, 2010;Rodgers et al, 2011). 7 Roberts (1978) offered a useful appraisal that positioned urbanisation and its problems in the context of agrarian and industrial development, asymmetric engagement with the international economy and our teleological assumptions of what modernity means or might achieve.…”

Procesos urbanos y sistemas socioecológicos. Trayectorias sustentables de la agricultura de chinampa en Ciudad de México/ Urban Processes and Socioecological Agricultural Systems. Sustainable Trajectories of Chinampa Agriculture in Mexico City

“…La concepción predominante de la ciudad latinoamericana se ha desplazado desde una noción de sistemas urbanos unitarios hacia una percepción de fragmentación, con desigualdades contrastantes y espacios dispersos. En la mayoría de los casos, poseen redes y enclaves fortificados con asentamientos humanos selectivos, que exacerban la polarización y segregación socioeconómica (Rodgers y Beall 2011). Todas estas circunstancias, unidas al impacto de las propias ciudades sobre el ambiente y los sistemas socioecológicos locales, derivan en una importante reflexión conceptual acerca del desarrollo urbano, la resiliencia y la sustentabilidad, al mismo tiempo que se define otro tipo de función e intervención del Estado como regulador de la sociedad.…”

Chapter 10. Trees have Already been Invented: Carbon in Woodlands

“…For example, the "Green Municipios" program directed at the degraded areas in Para and Mato Gross states in Brazil proposes recuperation of secondary forests into intensive pastures or agro-industrial annual crops. Or such secondary forests may become part of expanding peri-urban landscapes in the increasingly urbanized Latin American tropics [177,178,179]. Secondary forests are "socially active" as well as biotically vibrant.…”