Latin American urban development into the 21st century: Towards a renewed perspective on the city

The 20th century witnessed global processes of urbanization on an unprecedented scale, to the extent that more than half of the world's population now lives in urban areas for the first time in human history. Latin America is the developing world's most urbanized region, with over 75 per cent of its population currently residing in towns and cities. As such, it arguably constitutes something of an 'urban laboratory'. Although many of its urbanization trends are regionally specific, there also exist clear commonalities with other regions of the world, and much can be learned from the Latin American experience and the future direction it is taking. The volume Latin American Urban Development into the 21st First Century, co-edited by Dennis Rodgers, Jo Beall, and Ravi Kanbur, and published by Palgrave Macmillan, offers a collection of studies drawn from a range of disciplines that highlight some of the key issues regarding the changing nature of contemporary urban life in Latin America, and the consequences of its transformation for development more generally, and results from the broader UNU-WIDER research project ‘Development in an Urban World’. The volume will be presented by the authors and commented on by a range of experts, who will provide comparative perspectives from Africa, Asia, Europe, and Scotland.

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