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10. Suburbanization In Latin America: Towards New Authoritarian Modes Of Governance At The Urban Margin

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Suburban Governance
This chapter is in the book Suburban Governance
IntroductionLatin America is one of the most urbanized regions worldwide. Urban expansion and suburbanization are well-established and common phe-nomena both in the large megacities and in the secondary (or even smaller) cities. Cities in Latin America display considerable growth rates in terms of land development on the urban periphery. While in cities like Lima, Bogota, or Rio de Janeiro this trend goes along with an increase in population numbers, more consolidated cities like Santiago de Chile or Buenos Aires experience simultaneous processes of central population decline, suburbanization, and, most recently, re-urbanization tendencies and thus face a situation comparable to that of many European cities (see the contribution by Kabisch & Rink in chapter 9 of this volume).Suburbanization, as we argue in this chapter, has played a central role in transforming the spatial and functional patterns of cities through-out the region for many decades. However, these trends, their driving forces, as well as their profound social, ecological, and economic impli-cations have – when compared to Europe and North America – only recently begun to attract the interest of urban analysts and policy mak-ers across the continent.This chapter seeks to understand the governance behind suburban-ization. To ground this attempt, the next section traces the origins and evolution of the forms of suburbanization in Latin America. In defining suburbanization, we follow Ekers, Hamel, and Keil, who – in the first chapter to this volume – take it as “the combination of non-central population and economic growth with urban spatial expansion” (see also Ekers, Hamel, & Keil, 2012: 209). We then move on to explore the 10 Suburbanization in Latin America: Towards New Authoritarian Modes of Governance at the Urban Margindirk heinrichs and henning nuissl
© 2018 University of Toronto Press, Toronto

IntroductionLatin America is one of the most urbanized regions worldwide. Urban expansion and suburbanization are well-established and common phe-nomena both in the large megacities and in the secondary (or even smaller) cities. Cities in Latin America display considerable growth rates in terms of land development on the urban periphery. While in cities like Lima, Bogota, or Rio de Janeiro this trend goes along with an increase in population numbers, more consolidated cities like Santiago de Chile or Buenos Aires experience simultaneous processes of central population decline, suburbanization, and, most recently, re-urbanization tendencies and thus face a situation comparable to that of many European cities (see the contribution by Kabisch & Rink in chapter 9 of this volume).Suburbanization, as we argue in this chapter, has played a central role in transforming the spatial and functional patterns of cities through-out the region for many decades. However, these trends, their driving forces, as well as their profound social, ecological, and economic impli-cations have – when compared to Europe and North America – only recently begun to attract the interest of urban analysts and policy mak-ers across the continent.This chapter seeks to understand the governance behind suburban-ization. To ground this attempt, the next section traces the origins and evolution of the forms of suburbanization in Latin America. In defining suburbanization, we follow Ekers, Hamel, and Keil, who – in the first chapter to this volume – take it as “the combination of non-central population and economic growth with urban spatial expansion” (see also Ekers, Hamel, & Keil, 2012: 209). We then move on to explore the 10 Suburbanization in Latin America: Towards New Authoritarian Modes of Governance at the Urban Margindirk heinrichs and henning nuissl
© 2018 University of Toronto Press, Toronto
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