Paola Alfaro d‘Alençon, Walter Alejandro Imilan and Lina María Sánchez (eds.) (2011)
Berlin: LIT Verlag, 248 p.
Reviewed by Franziska Lind
Technische Universität Wien
Increasing rates of migration, the changing role of the state and
the liberalization of the market – among other globalization
processes – have had a strong impact on Latin American cities.
They have led to very diverse and rapidly changing forms of
socio-spatial structures. Therefore, research on urban questions
is getting increasingly complex and thus calls for a broad range
of interdisciplinary approaches.
The publication Lateinamerikanische Städte im Wandel: Zwischen
lokaler Stadtgesellschaft und globalem Einfluss (Latin
American Cities in Transformation: Between Local Urban Society and
Global Influence) is the result of a workshop organized by the
Technische Universität Berlin and the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar
in 2008. Young researchers from German- speaking countries were
invited to present and publish their recent work, creating a forum
for the exchange of knowledge on Latin American cities. The volume
was edited by Paola Alfaro d´Alençon, Walter Alejandro Imilan and
Lina María Sánchez and published by the LIT-Verlag in 2011.
The volume samples current studies on the phenomenon of
urbanization in Latin America. It provides insights into ongoing
debates on the development of urban socio-spatial structures and
processes on the continent: from private urban renewal in Buenos
Aires (17-25) to governance programs in Bogotá facing competing
demands of social inclusion and competitiveness (147-155), to the
effects of changing housing policies on settlements in Mexico
(187-195).
The book is divided into five sections and further subdivided into
a total of 25 chapters, written in German, Spanish, and English.
The publication’s geographical focus mainly lies on Mexico,
Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Chile. Each section starts with
an introductory chapter, which points out research gaps, places
the topics in a broader context and therefore highlights
unanswered questions.
In the first section, questions of urban governance and new
control strategies are raised. Urban security and participation
processes are also discussed, contextualizing them within the
wider debate surroundingthe neoliberal shift in Latin America. The
second section focuses on the former highly-industrialized
countries of Mexico and Argentina and their structural,
institutional, and territorial transformations. The globalized
division of labor and its local effects in those countries are
analyzed. Section three provides innovative approaches to
classical problems of cities, such as poverty, segregation or
environmental degradation which take on a new dimension in Latin
America.
Inter-urban competition and the role of so- called mega-cities from the global south are the topics of the fourth section. Competitive pressure and growing spatial disparities – mainly between one mega-city as a center and other national regions as its periphery – are discussed. Section five raises the question of how migration influences urbanization processes in Latin America. Different forms and causes of migration – lifestyle migration, retirement migration, intra-urban migration, intra- national migration, forced displacement – and its effects are analyzed.
The volume can be recommended to those wishing to gain insights
into urban development in Latin America and its present state of
research in the corresponding German-speaking field of study. In
addition, its perspectives might be of interest to someone already
familiar with the field as new research questions are raised and
some contributions enrich long-lasting debates by inserting new
topics. The introductory parts of each section create interesting
connections between chapters. However, due to a missing final
chapter the book does not contain overall remarks or an outlook.
Due to limitations of space it should suffice to highlight the
following points: Firstly, as Sabine Knierbein mentions in her
introductory chapter, the debate on the immaterial city and the
discursive production of the urban seems to be less popular among
the book’s authors (11). This is evident in Anja Feth’s article on
the Argentine National Crime Prevention Plan (PNPD) and its
implementation in Buenos Aires (50-59). She finds that the PNPD’s
cooperative and participatory approach are impractical. However,
her article fails to deconstruct urban security governance as
discursively generated and as part of current neoliberal urban
transformation processes. Confronting urban governance theories
with debates on the immaterial city – such as the concept of the imaginario
– could be a fruitful avenue for future research. The concept
of the imaginario was developed by Latin-American
anthropologists precisely to describe the efficiency of social
imaginations and their impact on the social production of space.
Secondly, the book’s focus mainly lies on mega-cities such as Mexico City. Less attention is devoted to urbanization processes in small or medium-sized cities. Yet, as shown by Carla Marchant and Rafael Sánchez in the example of Chile, economic growth, immigration and the liberalization of the planning system have had a strong impact on medium sized cities in Latin America (221-231).
Thirdly – and related to the former point of critique –
contributions in the third section are especially refreshing by
inserting new topics such as sustainability, planning,
verticalization (rapid increase of inner city apartment high-rise
buildings), and the new role of the state in long-standing
debates. Tanja Michaela Thung analyzes the verticalization of
urbanization processes in Brazilian cities (112-119). She
concludes that centrally-located high-rise apartment buildings
cause gentrification, yet this happens over long periods of time
and leads to social mixture. Thus, gentrification should not just
be considered an unwanted effect in the Brazilian context (117).
Thung makes it very clear that “classical” problems get ever more
complex and have to be seen as consequences of the intersection of
global power relations and local specificities. As Renato
d’Alençon concludes, new scientific technologies and methods need
to be developed in order to tackle the increasing complexity of
numerous problems (98).
The articles assembled in the volume often use terms and concepts
such as “gentrification”, “urban governance” or “suburbanism”. All
of these are founded in particular ideas of urbanity developed by
sociologists like Simmel, Park or Wirth through their observations
on European and American cities. However, this criticism extends
beyond the volume’s articles to the academic discourse on the
phenomenon of urbanization in Latin America at large. As Sabine
Knierbein puts it: “The coexistence of European and Latin American
urban research manifests itself in eurocentrist norms and values
evident in scientific studies and their conclusions [...]”.1
Bearing this in mind, it might be useful to consider the
postcolonial turn in urban theory production as proclaimed by
Jennifer Robinson (2006). A postcolonial approach would imply a
redefinition of these ideas of urbanity. As a result, existing
Western urban theory would be confronted inter alia with
Latin American literature and concepts – like the imaginario –
in order to arrive at a transnational research agenda on Latin
American cities.
Bibliography
Robinson, Jennifer (2006): Ordinary Cities,
London/New York: Routledge.
1 „Das Nebeneinander der europäischen und
lateinamerikanischen Stadtforschung manifestiert sich weiterhin in
eurozentristisch geprägten Wert- und Moralvorstellungen, die bei
der Untersuchung, bei den Schlussfolgerungen und speziell bei den
Handlungsempfehlungen zu Tage treten […].“ (14)