Those with an interest in Latin American cities will have noticed that a host of new themes have burst onto the research agenda in recent years. While the long-standing concerns of the field – of inequality, segregation, violence and informality – remain highly relevant, there are also new questions vying for space in contemporary debates. These include (though are not limited to): an array of novel housing and transport policies, often with ambiguous ideological orientation and varied social impacts; new governance structures, ranging from participatory forums to public–private partnerships; marked shifts in spatial development trends, including renewed efforts by governments and real-estate actors to regenerate neglected downtown areas, sometimes at the cost of widespread residential displacement; and the impacts on urban life of rising incomes, consumption and access to credit among traditionally excluded segments of the population. The picture is further complicated by the fact that these diverse and contradictory trends emerged during a period in which regional economies grew largely thanks to a (decidedly non-urban) commodity boom, which, in many countries, was overseen by at least nominally leftist governments.
It is thus a propitious moment for a book that seeks to untangle these complex threads. In this respect – although it arguably raises as many questions as it answers – Urban Latin America: Inequalities and Neoliberal Reforms, edited by Tom Angotti, is a welcome contribution to the literature. The collection comprises 16 chapters written by different authors, divided into five thematic sections. The chapters are short, providing snapshots of different issues, often from the perspective of a single city. However, the first section, including contributions from some of the most prominent names in the field, helps to anchor what follows.
Angotti's introduction provides a brief background to the subject, describing the rapid process of urbanisation that transformed Latin America from a mainly rural to an overwhelmingly urban region during the twentieth century. The high levels of informal development, social segregation and weak spatial integration that resulted, and which the region's cities continue to grapple with today, are framed in familiar terms: as a form of urbanisation characteristic of peripheral/dependent capitalist contexts, and distinct from that which predominates in the global North. In this way, Angotti argues, the stark inequalities, violence and social and territorial struggles that have characterised Latin American societies since the colonial era have continued in these highly urbanised societies, though under new guises and with different dynamics.
A central proposition of the book is that a key force driving new forms of urban inequality and exclusion in the region is neoliberalism. Angotti proposes that the latter ‘seeks the deregulation of land and capital, reduction of the social welfare functions of government, and the weakening of government control over urban development’ (p. 7). However, it is not clear what exactly it is: a conscious ideology, a logic of governance, a particular set of policies, or a broader system of social and economic relations? In the absence of a bounded definition, we are left to piece together neoliberalism's dynamics and impacts through the different cases presented. Progressing through the chapters, it emerges as a kind of gravitational force, rarely exercising total dominion over governance practice, but constantly threatening to undermine steps taken towards more equitable forms of urban development. Its insidiousness comes from its ability to appear via different channels – whether as decentralisation processes that starve municipalities of vital funds or as UN-accredited ‘best practices’ – and in different forms – from unconstrained real-estate speculation in Rio de Janeiro's Barra de Tijuca suburb (in the chapter by Lawrence Herzog) that devours public space, to Medellín's ‘new social urbanism’ (Tobias Franz) that claims to be committed to creating it.
The overall consequences for Latin American cities of failing to constrain market forces comes out most clearly in Erminia Maricato's chapter. In Brazil, she claims, long-term democratising processes and the development of progressive urban policies have stalled in the face of resurgent real-estate speculation and dysfunctional urban growth dynamics (urban sprawl, traffic, pollution etc.). Similar trends can be seen in the gradual dilution of the participatory budgeting model, as it spread outwards from its radical origins in Porto Alegre (Benjamin Goldfrank), and in the worsening conditions of Bogotá's esteemed rapid transit TransMilenio system, whose governing technocrats seem determined to insulate themselves from the growing concerns of passengers (Stacey Hunt). Pressures towards marketisation, although still weak in comparison, are detectable even in Jill Hamberg's fascinating chapter on housing and spatial development policy in Cuba – a country usually considered anomalous in discussions of urban policy trends in the region.
The notion of rising market pressures shaping, or at least constraining, the actions of governments of both Left and Right is persuasive. However (although it is rarely framed in this way), the argument could also be reversed: diverse forces appear to constrain neoliberalism from appearing in unadulterated form. These include, most obviously, policies that are consciously designed to resist the penetration of market logic, as in the ‘exceptional’ cases of Cuba (Hamberg) and Uruguay's housing co-operative movement (Angotti). More typically, it includes the various forms of resistance that regularly appear throughout the book – from street protests, to online activism, to popular housing movements – that challenge technocratic and market logics. However, the simple threat of popular opposition, whether on the street or at the ballot box, appears to push political actors towards pre-emptively constraining market forces, or at least towards trying to spread their benefits – often unsuccessfully, as in the case of Mexico's financialised model of social housing production (Alfonso Valenzuela Aguilera). Diane Davis’ fascinating chapter on the redevelopment of downtown Mexico City points to a potentially even wider cast of actors – including residents, informal traders, armed gangs, real-estate actors, and politicians of various stripes – as potentially contributing to urban development trajectories over the long run, in ways that may deviate sharply from neoliberal designs.
If there is a criticism to be made of Urban Latin America, it is that we hear little of the voices of residents themselves. This is to some extent understandable in a book focused on long-term development and policy trends, and more direct forms of urban contestation. However, while governments, private interests and social movements continue to struggle over the city, ordinary residents will also, in some way or other, let their feelings be known. As Alan Gilbert's sober panorama shows, the majority of these residents are neither rich nor desperately poor, but scrape by as private tenants or homeowners in peripheral areas that have seen substantial, if inconsistent, improvements over time. They are a diverse group, concerned about the quality of local services, educational opportunities and their living and working conditions, and also about issues like crime, taxes and corruption that can make them somewhat receptive to both technocratic and conservative forms of political discourse. It would seem that the economic and political conditions that generated new kinds of urban dislocation and conflict – and also more inclusive forms of growth in Latin America – are now coming to an end. In this new context, what such urban denizens want may become less predictable and, at the same time, increasingly important in influencing the Latin American urban future.
