Latin American Cities and Regions

GUILLERMO JAJAMOVICH; OSCAR SOSA; GABRIEL SILVESTRE

The Wiley - Blackwell Companion to Urban and Regional Studies

Wiley-Blackwell

Año: 2021; p. 41 - 61

This essay discusses Latin American cities and regions as an analytical category and a material reality. Rather than providing a definitive definition of what the Latin American city isvis-a-vis other categories, this essay traces the intellectual history of the category and describes current urbanization dynamics to highlight long-standing tensions between specificity, exceptionalism and generalization that haveand continue to shape how scholars understand and analyze urbanization in the region. The essay begins by tracing the Latin American city as an idea that has correlated with economic, political and intellectual realities of different historical moments. A second section discusses contemporary dynamicspresent across the region, focusing on the last two decades of the 20th Century and onward. A final section serves as conclusion by reflecting on what ongoing and nascent research avenues on Latin American Cities might tell us about these cities? position vis a vis today?s urban studies field.