Urban Planning For Social Justice In Latin America

Urban Planning for Social Justice in Latin America explores how urban planning can be used as a tool for social equity. The book examines several Latin American cities, each with specific challenges, and explores how they have gradually overcome these difficulties through policies, planning, and design, and with private/public sector coordination. The cases include: The built environment and social mobility in Bogotá; Mexico City and its difficulties with water scarcity; Addressing air quality and environmental justice in Lima; Santiago de Chile’s energy consumption and carbon footprint; Buenos Aires and the issue of urban agriculture and food security; Connectivity as a social transformation device in Medellín. The book goes beyond simply identifying the challenges and explains some of the practical day-to-day planning efforts, including interviews with staff from those municipalities, illustrations, and strategies that have been successful. As a result, this book will be helpful to planners in the region, as well as outside Latin America, because it demonstrates how fruitful results can be achieved in areas typically perceived as underdeveloped. Although based on research and data, this book offers a positive perspective on the possibilities rather than the limitations, hoping to inspire new generations of planners to pursue careers in search of social change.

This book highlights current concepts of Social Urbanism, the contemporary set of multiple and interdisciplinary urban studies that have emerged mainly from the complex realities of Latin American cities. The discussion that follows places special emphasis on public land policy and the innovative urban instruments developed in that region to promote social and territorial inclusion. Critical reflections throughout the pages of this book shed light into the local context of each case-study in order to understand their specific set of challenges and opportunities. Relevant lessons are extracted from the three cities here analyzed, the medium-scale city of Medellin, the large-scale city of Bogota, and the megacity of Sao Paulo, as well as from local innovative experiences in Argentina and Uruguay. These cities underwent promising transformation processes over two decades, applying planning and financing instruments of land policy which have produced significant shifts in the urban development paradigm in the region. The quest for social inclusion has emerged as the common denominator in these cities, awakening growing interest across several fields of urban studies, from public policies and city management to urban law, city financing, urban development, and innovative community participation processes. The book brings implications on urban land policy for transition cities in the Global South. The question of social inclusion in Global South cities is however far from being solved; the analysis presented in this book shows advances and hope, besides a long path still ahead, which can only be faced through a continuous and challenging incremental process. May this book be an incremental step.

By the dawn of the 21st century, more than half of the world's population was living in urban areas. This volume explores the implications of this unprecedented expansion in the world's most urbanized region, Latin America, exploring the new urban reality, and the consequences for both Latin America and the rest of the developing world.

Study of community development and the urban planning process in Latin America - covers social integration, the role of the community, various community development programmes, local level and general government policy, vocational training of responsible public servants, etc.

This book evaluates the impact of 20 years of urban policies in six Latin American countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Mexico. It argues that evaluating the fulfillment of past commitments is essential for framing and meeting the new commitments that were taken in Habitat III over the next 20 years. Taken as a whole, the book provides a critical assessment of the economic, social and environmental consequences of urban interventions during Habitat II. The country-level chapters have been written by recognized experts in urban issues, with first-hand knowledge of the Habitat process, and deep familiarity with the problems, statistics, actors and political contexts of their nations. The latter part of the volume considers wider topics such as the Habitat Commitment Index, the New Urban Agenda and the regional and global-scale lessons that can be extracted from this group of countries. Urban Policy in Latin America will be of interest to advanced students, researchers and policymakers across development economics, urban studies and Latin American studies.

This volume of Transport and Sustainability focuses on how spatial and social mobilities are intertwined in the reproduction of spatial and social inequities in Latin American cities.