There is an age-old tradition for every editor to denounce the status quo and make grand claims about the contribution that their book will make. This volume is no different insofar as the introduction argues that ‘the overwhelming majority of the research that has been conducted on Latin American cities has tended to be quite specialised and has not really attempted to get to grips with the dynamics of urbanization per se’ (pp. 4–5). It complains that too much emphasis has been placed on the ‘fractured cities’ perspective and ‘that the time has come to reconsider their unity’ in order to overcome what is considered to be ‘something of a Latin American urban “impasse”’. The book offers to provide ‘a renewed perspective on the city’ which will help swing ‘the contemporary Latin American urban imaginary’ towards ‘a more holistic notion of the city’.

I would question several elements of that description in part because the literature on Latin American cities is now so extensive that it is dangerous to summarise it in such broad sweeps of the pen. Of course, too much of the literature is over-specialised, too little works from a truly multidisciplinary perspective, there is an unhealthy emphasis on urban disharmony, segregation and violence, and there is too little in the way of serious comparative research – but to judge from their bibliography, the editors do not seem to have noticed that a great deal of recent writing does not deserve to be denounced in such broad terms.

To what extent does this volume offer a balanced analysis of urban development in the region, encourage interdisciplinary and comparative research and thereby help reorientate urban research in the region? Certainly the contents are interdisciplinary in the sense that the contributors come from a wide range of social science disciplines including anthropology, development studies, economics, history and politics, although not unreasonably they do not include scientists or students of literature or film. However, the level of interdisciplinary scholarship is limited insofar as the vast majority of the chapters are written by people from a single discipline.

Is the content comparative? To be sure, the contents take in a wide range of cities, including Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Cali, La Paz, Medellín, Mexico City, Santiago and São Paulo. Unfortunately, too few of the authors seem to know much about cities beyond the one that they are studying. This sometimes leads to grand statements that simply do not fit many cities in the region.

In its favour, most of the chapters in the book are of a professional standard, and the only complaint is that several have already been published in similar form elsewhere. The contributions also cover a wide range of topics, including violence, cocaine, mobility, neighbourhood organisation and participation, urban segregation, social movements, street markets, urban governance and violence, gas provision and welfare, and measurement of the quality of urban life.

Of course, a relatively short book cannot cover everything, but some topics are surprising absentees in a volume promising to offer a renewed perspective. There is little on infrastructure provision except the provision of gas in one area of Buenos Aires, nothing on employment beyond street traders, far too little on urban governance and really very little about urban politics or about population dynamics. Nor does the book really provide us with much guidance about how to improve the quality of urban life – the general narrative of most chapters is rather negative. There is too little about the positive experiences of urbanisation in Latin America and about some of the excellent initiatives that have been diffusing across the globe: bus rapid transport systems, conditional cash transfer programmes, participatory budgeting and urban upgrading.

It is also surprising that more is not said about the political economy of urban development. After all, there is a major difference between the ideology of governments in Chile and Venezuela, Peru and Cuba. How do different national development strategies affect urban life? Does Chile's broadly neoliberal economic path produce better or worse urban living conditions than those in Bolivarian Venezuela? How has the recently improved income distribution of Brazil affected the life of the poor in Rio, Salvador or Porto Alegre? If urban research in the region is to improve, we need more linking between urban and national processes. Indeed, this is imperative given that four out of five Latin Americans now live in urban areas.

Is it desirable for non-Latin people to identify the research foci for urban development in Latin America in the twenty-first century? Certainly, it is important to indicate areas that have been neglected and to identify biases in the literature, but this is increasingly difficult because the research on Latin America has grown so rapidly that it is impossible to keep up. Today, urban research is not just the pursuit of academics; next to the ebony tower, new edifices of learning are being erected by the multilateral banks, think tanks, NGOs and those distressingly widely cited journalists who so often produce misleading cataclysmic or populist theses.

Despite this explosion of literature, the general quality of Latin American urban research has probably never been better. Over the last few decades Latin American universities and think tanks have greatly improved their research capabilities, and more and more excellent work is emerging from the region. However, there are still ways in which they might improve their output further. One essential requirement is that Latin Americans should show more interest in what is happening beyond their own cities and particularly more interest in the region at large. In my experience, few Mexicans are prepared to look south, and while most Latin American researchers read about the United States and Europe, they too often neglect the experience of their neighbours. There is a need for more genuine interdisciplinary work, particularly on the part of economists and anthropologists, so many of whom seem reluctant to leave their intellectual silos. More serious collaboration between researchers and practitioners would also help. It would be really interesting if more high-level politicians could be persuaded to comment critically on their own performance in office and to explain what forces prevented them from implementing their electoral manifestos. Such insights might tell us what has most slowed the process of urban improvement and suggest ways in which governments might help the poor majority in the future.