Introduction, Planning Latin American Cities: Housing and Citizenship

:::::: Introduction ::::::

Planning Latin American Cities: Housing and Citizenship
edited by Clara Irazabal and Tom Angotti                                                                


After the 1973 coup in Chile, the Pinochet dictatorship, aided by advisers from the United States, became a proving ground for neoliberal reforms in Latin America. Its efforts to minimize the public role and maximize private initiative have strongly influenced social housing programs in other countries in the region. In effect, Chile’s housing reforms were recognized as best practices. The massive social housing program it launched in the early 1990s has been emulated throughout the Americas, most notably in Brazil’s Minha Casa, Minha Vida program. Following its developer-driven and neoliberal approach to housing, Chile produced a significant volume of new housing units. However, from the larger vantage point of community development and citizenship rights, the new housing has been deficient. It has generated new urban ghettos and peripheral neighborhoods and contributed to suburban expansion, auto dependency, unevenness in the provision of services, and a new form of poverty.

March Issue, Urban Latin America: Part 2: Planning Latin American Cities: Dependencies and "Best Practices"

TABLE OF CONTENTS Urban Latin America: Part 2: Planning Latin American Cities: Dependencies and "Best Practices" Edited by: Tom Angotti and Clara Irazábal

Issue 213 | Volume 44 | Number 2 | March 2017

Urban planning in Latin America reflects the historic dependencies and inequalities of peripheral capitalism. These were amplified by recent neoliberal reforms in housing, transportation and social policy. This issue looks critically at urban reforms in these areas, the role of social movements and the emergence of "best practices" including social urbanism, bus rapid transit, bicycle infrastructure, and participatory budgeting, with more to come in the next LAP issue.

Introduction, Planning Latin American Cities Dependencies and “Best Practices”

:::::: Introduction ::::::

Planning Latin American Cities
Dependencies and “Best Practices”
by Tom Angotti and Clara Irazábal


Latin America is the most urbanized region in the world, with over 80 percent of the population living in cities (United Nations Human Settlements Program, 2012). Yet most of its cities lack the basic infrastructure and services enjoyed in the North, are sharply divided into luxury enclaves and sprawling peripheries, and reflect deep social and economic inequalities.1 Alongside the growth of urban industry and trade, there is widespread violence, congestion, and pollution. Despite some progressive urban reforms promoted by social movements aimed at improving the quality of life, powerful ruling oligarchies are fragmenting cities to build financial districts, shopping malls, stadiums, and gated luxury enclaves, neglecting the problems in the daily lives of the majority of the population. When the land they are living on is coveted for new development, the poor are pushed out by market forces or unceremoniously evicted, continuing the long history of displacement and accumulation by dispossession of capitalist urbanization. The majority of the urban population lives in peripheral areas that lack basic services and infrastructure until they are singled out as profitable real estate investment targets (Irazábal, 2009).