Latin American Urbanization and Planning

Abstract

That the quality of life in Latin American cities is in most ways dramatically inferior to the quality of life in North America is hardly disputable. For example, about two-thirds of the 20 million people living in Mexico City live in substandard housing, without adequate water supply, sewerage, garbage disposal, clinics, hospitals, parks, and schools. Latin American metropolis is characterized by mass poverty and environmental pollution on a scale generally unparalleled in the North. Inequalities between the large metropolitan regions, small cities, and rural towns of Latin American nations are gaping. Inequalities within metropolitan areas are no less dramatic. These and regional inequalities are not strictly urban problems but are a reflection of economic inequalities between North and South and within the South, and an unequal international division of labor. As Armstrong and McGee (1985: 17) note, The role of cities in both capital accumulation and the generation of dependence, structural inequality and poverty is part of the larger history of the unequal relations existing within and between societies. In this article, I will attempt to show that efforts by governments and the international aid establishment to address problems have had little success because they do not address underlying economic inequalities. Many of these planning strategies are based on the assumption that the problem lies with cities themselves and, even more so, with the size of cities. Latin America is among the most urbanized of world regions, with many of the largest metropolitan regions in the world. Thus, a good deal of importance has been placed on curbing urbanization, decentralizing the population, and limiting government initiatives to improve living conditions