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Over half of the world’s population now lives in cities, and the trend towards accelerated urbanization is projected to continue. By 2050 about 70% of people worldwide will become urban residents. Members of the Organization of Ibero-American States make up 15.3% of the world’s territory and account for 8.7% of the world’s population. Latin America is one of the most urbanized regions: 2/3 of its population is concentrated in cities of 20.000 people (or more). Latin America has some of the most populous urban areas, including Mexico City (21,91 million inhabitants), São Paulo (21,49 million), Buenos Aires (15,76 million), Rio de Janeiro (12,31 million). The degree of urbanization of the Iberian countries is slightly lower, varying from 69.5% in Spain to 66% in Portugal. The Iberian megalopolises such as Madrid (3,34 million inhabitants), Barcelona (1, 65 million), Lisbon (2.8 million) are not as populous, yet these urban areas are just as important as those in Latin America and the Caribbean. Iberoamerican urbanization is characterized by promoting «smart cities», with a focus on cultural and educational development. Iberoamerican countries are committed to the UN Global Urban Agenda which seeks to manage urban areas more efficiently, improve the quality of life in cities, and preserve cultural and environmental heritage via innovative projects.

Across Latin America, there continues to be strong resistance to the claim that racism plays a role in the production of urban space. Deemed antipatriotic, this issue remains widely unaddressed in urban planning and geography. Based on qualitative research in Bogotá and secondary literature on other Latin American cities, this article explores the afterlife of mestizaje (racial mixture) as a racial–colonial project from the viewpoint of its materialisation in the city and society–space relations. In particular, it illustrates how racism in the city is transfigured as 'always something else' (e.g., culture, class, regionalism, displacement) through a variety of normative, discursive and operational devices. Thus, the article confronts the need to divest from the racial hegemony of mestizaje in urban planning and geography, suggesting that it is hindering the path towards more equitable urban futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the twentieth century, the Buenos Aires metropolitan area underwent a process of significant territorial and demographic growth. Highly heterogeneous peripheries were formed through the different migratory flows arriving in the city. The disparate ways the state has intervened in the metropolitan area, the logic of the market, and the practices of residents have produced spatial and social divisions beyond the classic center-periphery pattern. Furthermore, the asymmetrical provision of infrastructure and services has resulted in heterogeneous spatial quality in the peripheries, according to their location and position in the urbanization process. Thus, throughout the expansion and metropolization of the city during the twentieth century, different peripheries were produced: inner peripheries, former peripheries, and new urban peripheries. This article examines the urban, housing, and population dynamics of the inner and former peripheries in the metropolitan area from a comparative perspective. It analyzes settlement processes, the quality of housing stock, and infrastructure, with attention to the economic and political factors that have influenced them in the inner and former peripheries. The approach is based on data from the Spatial Mobility Survey (EME) applied to different housing submarkets on the fringes of the metropolitan area. We contend that it is impossible to speak of a single periphery. On the contrary, it is necessary to think about multiple peripheries in order to understand the processes shaping the inner and suburban fringes. In Buenos Aires, modes of housing production have shaped peripheral spaces that, despite being functionally integrated into the metropolis, retain their status as peripheries strongly marked by their morphology and land market dynamics. Durante el siglo XX, el área metropolitana de Buenos Aires experimentó un proceso de gran expansión territorial y demográfica. Con la llegada de diferentes flujos migratorios a la ciudad, se estructuraron periferias muy heterogéneas. Las formas en las que el Estado ha intervenido en la metrópoli, la lógica del mercado y las prácticas de los habitantes han estructurado un patrón de división social del espacio que supera la clásica diferenciación centro-periferia. La disímil provisión de infraestructura, equipamientos y servicios permitió una calificación heterogénea contribuyendo en la diferenciación periferias según su ubicación y su inserción en el proceso de urbanización. Así, a lo largo del siglo XX, en el proceso de expansión y metropolización de la ciudad, se configuraron distintas periferias: antiguas periferias, periferias conurbadas y nuevas periferias urbanas. Desde una perspectiva comparada, el artículo examina las dinámicas urbanas, habitacionales y poblacionales de las antiguas periferias y las periferias conurbadas del área metropolitana. Analiza los procesos de poblamiento, la calidad del parque habitacional y la infraestructura en las periferias interior y suburbana, teniendo en cuenta los condicionantes económicos y políticos. Lo hace con base en datos de la Encuesta de Movilidad Espacial (EME) aplicada en diferentes periferias y submercados habitacionales en el área metropolitana. Sostenemos que es imposible hablar de una sola periferia. Por el contrario, es necesario pensar en las periferias para comprender los procesos que configuran los bordes internos y suburbanos. En el el área metropolitana de Buenos Aires, los modos de producción de vivienda han condicionado espacios periféricos que, a pesar de estar integrados funcionalmente a la metrópoli, conservan su condición de periferias fuertemente marcadas por su morfología y dinámica de mercado de suelo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the first half of twentieth century, Europe was the world vanguard for urban planning ideas. European urbanists traveled to Latin America, participated in urban plans, influenced local professionals, and had their ideas replicated by secondary sources. This influence transformed not only Latin American cities but also their academic and professional practice of urbanism. First, two items contextualize the discussion: the third part discusses the reality of Latin American largest cities in early 1900s, and the fourth part identifies main traveling urbanists and their trajectories in Latin America. The last part presents a temporal reading of facts and urban trends. The fifth part discusses the legacy of old vertical dialogues and shifts in the relation between Latin America and central countries. Main conclusions are that (1) between Latin America and Europe existed a vertical and almost exclusive dialogue, and (2) recent shifts seem to impair the old model of central–peripheral transfer of urban planning ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the twenty-first century Latin America has become the most urbanized region on the planet and, at the same time, the one that has the highest level of inequality. This article discusses how this tension is expressed in cinema, an eminently urban art, through two case studies: the Mexican Nuevo orden (dir. by Michel Franco, 2020) and the Brazilian film Era uma vez Brasília (dir. by Adirley Queirós, 2017). Both works are independent films that deal with issues of urban violence and authoritarianism through a distinct style that combines the techniques of realist representation with fictional elements borrowed from dystopian and science fiction genres. While the two show a preoccupation with the economic and racialized inequality that characterizes urban space in the capital cities of Mexico and Brazil, they ultimately evoke two modes of utopian discourse. Whereas the first film can be considered anti-utopian, criticizing the impulse to seek social change, the second one, though pessimistic, retains a utopian call for political action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identifying if and how health drives urban policies is critical for highlighting knowledge gaps and communicating evidence about health impacts to policymakers. A scoping review of grey literature published by international organizations from 1996–2018 identified the ways health is used to justify urban policies in Latin America. We reviewed 58 documents and identified 80 policies related to social inequalities, social inclusion and poverty; urban renewal, revitalization and housing upgrading; mobility and transport; emissions and pollution control; and urban safety and violence. Over half of those policies focused on social inequalities, over a third of those focused on urban renewal or mobility and transport, and all policies focused on emissions and pollution control referenced at least one health justification. Of 77 justifications identified, 22.1% related to health services utilization and access, 16.9% to general health, 18.2% to physical health, 18.2% to other general measures, 11.7% to health behaviors, 9.1% to health equity, and 3.9% to mortality. Only eight (10.4%) health justifications cited scientific evidence; only one referenced a peer-reviewed publication. Generally, health arguments were generic, underdeveloped, healthcare-focused, and/or unfounded in scientific evidence. Our findings highlight the need to effectively communicate scientific evidence on the health impacts of urban policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fate of the Jardim Colombo favela in São Paulo changed with the birth of a youth‐led urban movement during the first art festival held in 2018. Planned and delivered in one month, the festival gathered dozens of volunteers and hundreds of residents to dream together about transforming a dumping site into a park for the community. The excitement of this initial action soon materialized into a self‐aware social infrastructure ready to face future and unexpected challenges—including a pandemic, to which the young leaders in Jardim Colombo would respond with creativity, preventing devastating health outcomes. Drawing on three months of fieldwork and an ongoing relationship with the community leaders, I explore how this one‐off celebration turned into an urban movement that is pursuing increasingly ambitious social and material goals. Sustained by four pillars—youth, women, creativity and planning—I present this story as a deployment of celebratory insurgency strategically engaging in festive practices to subtly push its counter‐hegemonic political agenda in relation to cultural and identity matters. I argue that framing this creative approach as a planned urban celebration may inspire other planning initiatives seeking social justice in the peripheries of cities across the global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Neighborhood Impact Assessment (NIA)1 is an important instrument of the Brazilian Urban Policy enacted in the City Statute, Federal Law 10.257/2001. Considered by the national academic literature as a relevant instrument for local urban environmental management. However, in Brazil, the understanding that the environmental and the urban are part of the same context is not yet a reality within the local public administration sectors, with a deep disconnection of management and governance between the urban and environmental departments. The objective of this work was to analyze the application of NIA in medium-sized cities in the state of São Paulo and to evaluate its contribution to the local urban environmental management of these cities. We also intend to evaluate the NIA integration with other sectors of local public management such as the environment, urban mobility, social housing, etc. As a methodology, we used NIA Process Components, verifying the absence or presence in the urban laws of four (04) medium-sized cities in the state of São Paulo. We also interviewed civil servants from the environmental and urban sectors, supplementing information that was absent in laws and official documents. The results reveal that most municipalities do not have a specific law that regulates the NIA, and Master Plans, Land Use and Occupation Law regulate this instrument. Civil servants emphasize the weaknesses and strengths of the instruments. As potentialities of this instrument, they observed public participation, increased state control in environmentally sensitive areas, greater urban-environmental compensation mechanisms, and so on. Weaknesses signalize were: conflicts involving urban land subdivision, interference of the real estate market in the use and occupation of urban land, changes in the Master Plans by the city councilman aiming to meet the interests of private financial capital. The four cities, which are part of the Case Studies, have not yet effectively incorporated elements of climate change in their local governance. Issues related to social housing, expansion of slums, occupation of protected environmental areas by poor populations are still the most urgent priorities in these cities, as well as in many Latin American cities. The improvement and advancement of the articulation of the urban and environmental sectors in Brazilian cities must require thinking about better scientific methodological and governmental improvements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2019, Cuba approved a new political constitution that calls for deepening citizen participation to strengthen local governance. The emerging decentralization processes and the role of new actors in urban development open new possibilities for inclusive planning. While citizen participation is widely documented in the global South and under Western liberal democracy regimes, participatory urban planning in the context of Southern socialist cities such as Havana has been less scrutinized. This paper aims at mapping the framings, trajectories and legacies of such participatory planning initiatives. Based on mapping workshops and desktop research, we find that participatory initiatives within Havana are spatially dispersed, sporadic, lacking at the city level, and occurring in isolation at the neighbourhood level. We argue that establishing sustained participatory urban planning practices in Havana requires decision makers to scale outwards and upwards the lessons learned from existing initiatives to foster a city-wide participatory planning strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous works on the expansion of the Latin American cities are mostly based on theoretical and methodological perspectives arising from different socio-spatial contexts. However, a recent call has been made from postcolonial urban studies to open the understanding of the production of space from the Global South. Considering the above, an alternative theoretical-methodological proposal is presented, which could evidence the production of a space not recognized by the predominant categories used in the literature. In theoretical terms, differentiated spaces could be interpreted from the margin, understood as a space located outside a pre-existing totality; thus, allowing the production of new spatial forms. In terms of method, an analogical dialectical reasoning is proposed to identify the similarities and differences between the expansion space and the predominant categories used to interpret it. To achieve this, geographical space is studied from a perspective that integrates its physical and social dimensions. Finally, the methodology is presented taking as cases the city of Santiago, Chile and Morelia, Mexico. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smart city initiatives in Latin America aim to harness information and communication technologies to make urban service provision and management more efficient, transparent and user-friendly. Latin American cities have been relatively slow to adopt such initiatives, but there is inter- and intra-urban variety in the region. We offer illustrative vignettes of Rio de Janeiro, Santiago and Medellín, which have experimented with different formats for smart city programme design, implementation and management. While top-down and flashier smart city projects in these cities reflect worlding aspirations on the part of urban elites, mixed and bottom-up approaches serve to provincialise and often informalise the initiatives in manners that destabilise elitism and more equitably distribute costs and benefits. One of the biggest challenges these cities share in developing smarter initiatives is inequality, given that most interventions are located in or benefit higher-income areas and actors. As instruments to provincialise the discourses and practices of smart cityness in the region, we propose that cities adopt the '6-Es smart cities framework' (efficiency, economy, ecology, equity, education and engagement) and mobilise public–private– people partnerships within city plans and implementation processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable cities are analyzed with the theoricalcritical perspective help named Coloniality of Power, identifying the difficult of implementing sustainable cities because it's an exclusionary and distorting Latin America model reality. We proposed, first, rethink Latin American cities from a vision that doesn't involve the Eurocentric view, including historical-structural heterogeneity. Subsequently, the urbanization processes in Latin America and their products. Finally, dominant sustainability as a model to be copied in Latin America, eliminating its own characteristics and specificities that hinder -or make it incompatible- its implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How are civil society organizations responding to COVID-19's impacts on informal settlements? In Latin America, civil society organizations have developed a repertoire of collective action, seeking to provide immediate and medium-term responses to the emergency. This paper aims to map these initiatives and identify strategic approaches to tackle the issues, given the strengths of those undertaking the initiative, and the scope, purpose and sphere of intervention. Using direct contact, a survey, and a virtual ethnography with social organizations has allowed us to identify and characterize the initiatives. The repertoire focuses on emergency measures around food security, and pedagogies for prevention, sanitation and income relief at the neighbourhood and district levels. We argue that the civil society response repertoire is diverse in form and resources but limited in scope; meanwhile the urgency of the situation and the mismatch with state action mean that crucial spheres of informality, vital to cultivating grounds for a healthy recovery phase, are being neglected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between the last decades of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, cities in Latin America were subject to interventions based on the ideas of the Hygiene Movement, which later developed towards urbanism. This period was characterized by efforts to address unsanitary conditions in relation to aspirations for progress and modernity. This paper intends to demonstrate the efforts of governments and professionals who wanted to transform their vital spaces by implementing and reframing theories, techniques, methods, laws, and administrative areas, inspired primarily by European models. A historical analysis based on the processes achieved by urban planning was undertaken. Urban planning originated from different problem analysis, construction of interpretive and propositional theories, creation of methods and techniques, preparation of laws, and adoption of plans and projects. Primary sources of that time as well as contemporary authors were consulted, and relevant cities were directly visited. This made it possible to present aspects of the history of urbanism in Latin America that need further investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Patrimônio e Memória is the property of Centro de Documentacao e Apoio a Pesquisa and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this paper, we focus on the role and economic effect of land ownership and land monopoly in emerging urban environments. Land monopoly in conventional economics is a theoretical 'impossibility' which, nonetheless, allows for a spatial empirical approach. We design a spatial land monopoly test of our own, understood as a pricing strategy where land prices can be 'over and above' those determined by city-wide location, urban regulation and externalities. We use the city of Barranquilla (Colombia) as a case study. This city offers ideal conditions for investigation of theories of land monopoly, given extreme land concentration in its highly regulated elite northern fringe. We found no evidence of land monopoly pricing using different specifications of the spatial tests, which conformed to standard urban economic expectations: the pattern of development pointing to different, political channels influencing development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This article discusses the Brazilian city through the perspective of its written idealisation, both in the format of Master Plans and their resulting legislations. The analysis reflects ideas expressed by local society, legislators and urban planners, recognizing that a myriad of intermediate agents play specific roles and confirming the main features in the way the city is understood. The discussion is based on a selection of 26 Master Plans for the ten largest cities in Brazil between 1960 and 2015. This timeframe reveals distinct phases constructed with different priorities and ways of idealising Brazilian cities and, by extension, those on the Latin American continent. The study suggests an increase in legal complexity, expansion of municipal responsibilities and the maintenance of physical-territorial priorities as the main instruments of urban management. Many of the themes observed in the selected Plans also indicate an overlapping symbiosis between the comprehensive Master Plans themselves and the laws for urban land use they encompass. The impressive expansion of responsibilities adopted by local governments, as well as holistic aspirations, has made achievement of the ideal city more difficult than ever. Efforts to democratise urban land access and appropriate use have gained importance in the composition of the ideal city; however, the access of the low-income population to proper land and basic infrastructure and services still relies on controversial and structural changes. Analysis of the desired city – here considered as the idealised city – during the selected period reveals a strategic absence of emergent features and points to both optimistic and pessimistic approaches. Highlights • A discussion on the Brazilian city through the perspective of their written idealization: Master Plans and legislations. • Discussion is based on 26 Master Plans for the ten largest cities in Brazil for the 1960-2015 period. • There is an increase of legal complexity, enlargement of municipal responsibilities and a physical-territorial priority. • Democratization of urban land access and its adequate use have gained importance in the idealized city proposed by Plans. • The idealized city in the Plans lacks emergent social novelties. • There has always been distance between what is idealized and what is accomplished. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities are defined by more than just their buildings and streets; it is the spontaneous situations that occur in quotidian places that give them a sense of urban life. When inhabitants provoke relations built on dissidence and resistance, they are constructing strategies that defy the official establishment, resulting in a new type of city. This article examines the invisible networks of La Jota Street, located in the south of Quito, Ecuador, as a paradigm of what is a Latin-American counter-city. We analyze the hidden and often disregarded urban parameters that shape this kind of territory by using counter-cartographies, a novel graphic methodology based on research-by-making. In La Jota, this method consists of tracing the everyday spatial practices of inhabitants in the corridor's urban form of narrow streets and passages. Key findings of this study include: an urban theoretical framework that goes beyond the examination of morphology to incorporate active, conflicting, and sensitive notions such as resistance and dissidence mainly in Global South cities; the production of counter-cartographies based on bodies, occupations, and affects as evidence of spatial constructions against the state apparatus designs; and potential implications to design strategies that include and respond to the actual lived experiences of inhabitants. • Counter-cities are sensitive, bodily, and dissident, or they won't be. • Bodies, affects and occupations must be understood as urban parameters. • Counter-cartographies draw the invisible networks ignored by official planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explanatory models on the urban expansion process have focussed mainly on the dynamic of cities in the developed countries that are characterized by a strong institutional framework, a culture of urban planning, and compliance with the rules. This paper analyses the phenomenon of urban expansion in three Latin American cities (Buenos Aires, Santiago de Chile and Mexico City), taking into account cities with a strong process of urbanization and where the local administration does not have enough control over the growth of cities due to the high rate of migration determining sub-urbanization, peri-urbanization, exo-urbanization, and counter-urbanization processes similar to developed countries. However, these processes may be related to hidden or displaced urbanization in rural areas of municipalities and metropolitan areas or intermediate cities due to the dynamics of urban consolidation. In every Latin American country, the participation and combination of these phenomena are different, although the results are similar: the advance of urban expansion with more segmented, disperse and distant patterns of large urban centres. This analysis determine the characteristics of the urbanization process taking into account physical and geographic aspects, urbanization trends and socioeconomic features in cities selected of Latin America and determines their impact determining the importance to formulate adequate policies that integrates environmental and socioeconomic aspects to achieve sustainable development in urban contexts.

Lima, as the capital of Peru, has become its first megacity with more than 10 million people in an area that extends over 80 km in a North-South direction. As a city of this size, it faces complex mobility issues with a strong reliance on informal transport modes (buses, minibuses, and paratransit vehicles) due to the deterioration of its transit system quality during the 20th century. This paper examines the current urban situation in Lima through an analysis of the city’s structure, with an emphasis on its transport history and the resulting types of walking, transit, and car-oriented fabrics that can be identified. The mobility analysis was made through data collection, including daily trips by public and private modes, annual passenger kilometers and vehicle kilometers of travel, length of exclusive lanes for public transport and freeways, car and paratransit modes ownership, transport emissions, and safety. These data are used to position Lima in a comparative global context showing its relative strengths and weaknesses in urban form and mobility and providing suggestions for a more sustainable transport and land use system. It is asserted that Lima is an informal transit-oriented city, as distinct from recognized transit metropolises (e.g., Tokyo or German cities such as Berlin or Munich), which often involve private companies, operating under an umbrella of strong government regulation, fare setting, and high service standards. Lima is shown to have some important qualities such as a high density, comparatively low car ownership and freeway provision and still healthy levels of transit and non-motorized mode use despite non-ideal conditions for either. These qualities, if combined with effective governance structures, government commitment to higher quality formal transit systems, which better integrate the important informal transit sector, cessation of high capacity road building, greater protection and encouragement for non-motorized modes and some effective controls over growing car and motorcycle ownership, would see Lima develop a more sustainable transport system.

This paper addresses the links between real estate production, transport infrastructure and class-related spatial tensions in the context of urban neoliberalism in Chile. As case studies we focus on two of the most intensely redeveloping areas in Santiago, the Estación Central municipality in inner Santiago which experiences rapid high-rise property-led redevelopment, and the peri-urban growth zone of Chicureo in the municipality of Colina. From the perspective of urban political economy and using mobility-related questionnaires, in-depth interviews with inhabitants and media analysis we detect important differences between inner-city and peri-urban dynamics. While the redeveloping inner area of Santiago, in spite of being an exclusionary space where lower income-oriented affordable housing is absent, is not a disputed space in terms of access to mobility means, the expanding fringes of the city show strong class-related differences among new and old inhabitants. It seems that with view to mobility opportunities urban neoliberalism has variegated geographies that at the same time might show temporarily positive (Estación Central) and very negative results (Chicureo). In terms of public policy these results indicate that the inner area of Santiago is an opportunity for locating social housing production, given the relatively equal access to mobility opportunity for the different income groups. In the meanwhile, the deepening of mobility-related inequalities on the urban peripheries is highly problematic and needs more scholarly and political attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current processes of urbanization in Latin America, continuously incorporate large territorial extensions to the urban limits, generating an unequal metropolization and socioenvironmental problems that affect the habitability of its population. The City of Puebla (Mexico), has grown rapidly in recent decades, so this work aims to assess the conditions of habitability that they live the residents of the City of Puebla, using a synthetic index that integrates various indicators. The results showed highly heterogeneous habitability conditions in the Puebla periphery, accentuating in areas to the west and north of the city, neighboring to the state of Tlaxcala. This work will serve as the basis for future research that proposes to address emerging social conflicts in these areas of the City. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following from a public lecture at City University London, the articles discuss the interface between creativity, urban transformation, precariousness and social networking. This introduction places the lecture within the framework of North–South academic exchanges and in relation to how Latin American cities are responding to the rise of the creative economy in urban policy development. The main article, written by Néstor García Canclini, provides the foundation for an anthropology of precariousness and creativity in the context of globalised urban discontent and the transformation of space through information technologies. Voicing classical cultural studies concerns about identities, economy, global imaginaries and political resistance, he examines the strategies and networks that young creative producers, cultural entrepreneurs and artists use to navigate contradictory transnational processes. The article offers a renewed critical perspective into creative urbanism, connecting local cultural practices with global processes of neoliberal economic restructuring, urban violence and social exclusion. In doing so, it delineates the possibilities for an emancipatory transformation of urban space in times of increasing uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the circulation of ideas regarding the city among selected countries in Latin America. It discusses convergences between academic and scientific institutions and investigative weakness in partnerships between Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico. It identifies two historical moments: one of vertical dialogues between Latin America and central countries in the elaboration of urban plans (20th century) and another of contemporary academic exchange signalling a horizontal dialogue that is fragile and sporadic but distinct from those observed in the past. Empirical reference is obtained from the analysis of scientific events and papers published by distinguished post-graduate programs concerning urban topics in selected countries, during the time frame of 2000–2015. The methodological approach is based on a bibliographic review and content analysis. Results indicate that the old “one-way” of transfer of urban planning ideas from central countries to Latin America is changing; slowly, the continent has been growing more independent in terms of knowledge creation and circulation.

Urban Latin America has become synonymous with violence and insecurity. Whereas levels of violence since 2000, in terms of homicide rates, dropped everywhere else in the world, Latin America and the Caribbean were the exception. Often, efforts to explain this make a connection between poverty, crime, and violence that finds its typical representation in peripheral urban areas: shanty towns. This paper challenges such one-dimensional assumptions by critically examining the complex nexus between violence, insecurity and urban space in urban Latin America. We will define contemporary urban violence in the region and discuss its key characteristics and explanatory factors. Then, we will examine the socio-spatial dimensions of violence and insecurity in three domains: the linkages between criminal gangs, drugs, and violence in peripheral areas; the impact of violence and fear on the strategies of seclusion employed by specific social classes; state responses, especially policing, to show how regimes of public security are differentiated in socio-spatial terms We will argue that these differences reflect differences in citizenship status and citizenship subjectivity, between the privileged and the excluded. This in turn generates bottom-up responses by urban residents that take matters of security and law enforcement in their own hands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cuando en 1976 los primeros modelos de la ciudad latinoamericana fueron publicados, la región estaba todavía bajo la influencia económica de la estrategia de industrialización para la sustitución de importaciones. Los procesos económicos y de planificación, aun en el espacio urbano, estaban fuertemente dirigidos por el Estado. Desde entonces, todos los países latinoamericanos -con excepción de Cuba- cambiaron a un nuevo paradigma económico, basado en el neoliberalismo, y se percibe la fuerte influencia de la globalización. La retirada del Estado, la privatización y la desrregulación permitieron a los inversores, planificadores y ciudadanos mayores libertades. Todo esto puede ser observado en la estructura de las ciudades. Por tanto, es tiempo de adaptar los modelos, los cuales deben ser generalizaciones de la realidad, a la estructura actual de las ciudades. En orden a demostrar las dinámicas de la estructuración urbana, el desarrollo urbano es modelado en cuatro momentos, los cuales son identificados como el período de la ciudad colonial, la ciudad sectorial, la ciudad polarizada y finalmente, la ciudad fragmentada. Se intenta mantener elementos de modelos anteriores en uno nuevo, así como diferenciar con claridad el periodo mas reciente del desarrollo urbano de épocas anteriores.Abstract When in 1976 the first models of the Latin American city were published, the subcontinent was still under the economical influence of the strategy of industrialization for imports substitution. Economic and planning processes, even in the urban space, were strongly directed by the State. Since this time, all Latin American countries -with the exception of Cuba- changed to a new economic paradigm, based on neoliberalism, and a strong influence of globalization is to be noticed. The retreat of the State, privatization and de-regulation allow investors, planners and citizen much more liberties. All this can be noticed in the structure of the cities. Therefore it is time to adapt the models, which should be generalizations of reality, to the now existing structure of the cities. In order to demonstrate the dynamics of urban structuring, the urban development is modelled in four eras which are identified as the period of the colonial town, the sectoral town, the polarised town and, at least, the fragmented town. The attempt was to keep as much elements of former models in the new one and to differ the newest period of urban development very clearly from the former epochs.

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Abstract: This paper examines the opportunities and challenges faced by “Adaptation to the Health Impacts of Air Pollution and Climate Extremes in Latin American Cities” (ADAPTE). ADAPTE is an issue-driven research endeavor that integrates different disciplinary domains to explore the complex nature of urban vulnerability/adaptive capacity to weather and air pollution in Buenos Aires, Bogota, Mexico City and Santiago. The paper also critically reflects on some of the possible challenges to be encountered, along with the benefits to be gleaned, when doing issue-driven research that seeks to be scientifically robust and socially relevant and is defined by such attributes as integration of heterogeneous research domains, interactivity and reflexivity. ADAPTE''s efforts to integrate concepts, methods and data from different disciplines were fundamental in the design of a conceptual framework on urban vulnerability. The integrating research question and the use of quantitative and qualitative methods allowed ADAPTE to shed a slightly different light on the nature and interconnections between the different dimensions of urban vulnerability. However, it has proven difficult for us to fully explore the dynamics of urban vulnerability as well as the issues of scale and context. A set of cultural and communication challenges has arisen, not only from the diverse conceptualization approaches, methods, differing terminologies and mechanisms for analyzing and presenting results that ADAPTE has attempted to integrate, but also from institutional and interpersonal issues affecting team interactions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]