Modernization, Urbanization and Development in Latin America, 1900s–2000s
In this book Arturo Almandoz places the major episodes of Latin America’s twentieth and early twenty-first century urban history within the changing relationship between industrialization and urbanization, modernization and development. This relationship began in the early twentieth century, when industrialization and urbanization became significant in the region, and ends at the beginning of the twenty-first century, when new tensions between liberal globalization and populist nationalism challenge development in the subcontinent, much of which is still poverty stricken.
Latin America’s twentieth-century modernization and development are closely related to nineteenth-century ideals of progress and civilization, and for this reason Almandoz opens with a brief review of that legacy for the different countries that are the focus of his book – Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela – but with references to others.
He then explores the regional distortions, which resulted from the interaction between industrialization and urbanization, and how the imbalance between urbanization and the productive system helps to explain why ‘take-off’ was not followed by the ‘drive to maturity’ in Latin American countries. He suggests that the close yet troublesome relationship with the United States, the recurrence of dictatorships and autocratic regimes, and Marxist influences in many domains, are all factors that explain Latin America’s stagnation and underdevelopment up to the so-called ‘lost decade’ of 1980s.
He shows how Latin America’s fate changed in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, when neoliberal programmes, political compromise and constitutional reform dismantled the traditional model of the corporate state and centralized planning. He reveals how economic growth and social improvements have been attained by politically left-wing yet economically open-market countries while others have resumed populism and state intervention. All these trends make up the complex scenario for the new century – especially when considered against the background of vibrant metropolises that are the main actors in the book.
Contents
- Prologue
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
-
1 Introduction
Industrialization and Urbanization, Modernization and Development
On Urban Cultural History and Latin America’s Overviews
Approach and Structure of the Book -
2 Nineteenth-Century Antecedents
Postcolonial Changes
Civilization and Barbarism
European Godfathers
Conservatives and Liberals, Oligarchies and Bourgeoisies
From Postcolonial to Bourgeois Cities -
3 From Arielismo to World War I
Overshadowed by the Colossus
Arielismo, Modernism and Belle Époque
From Dictatorial Pax to Democracy
The Centenary’s Urban Agenda -
4 Good Neighbourhood, Masificación and Urbanism
From Caliban to Prospero
Towards Welfare States, Corporatism and Citizenship
Mass Metropolises
Between Vanguards and Social Sciences
Urban Reforms and the Emergence of Urbanismo -
5 Developmentalism, Modernism and Planning
Industrialization, Urbanization and Development
Fifty Years in Five
Asynchronies in Urbanization and Modernization
From Academicism to Functional Modernism
Between Urbanismo and Planning, City and Region -
6 Between Cold War and Third World
Revolution and Alliance in the Backyard
AFP, Coup and Communism
Guerrillas, Anti-Imperialism and Revolution
From Vecindades to Shantytowns
Central Planning and Regional Development -
7 Dismantling a Model
From the Oil Crisis to the Lost Decade
Between New Right and Neoliberalism
National Packages and Prescriptions
The Completion of Urbanization: From Demography to Globalization -
8 New Century and Old Demons
Post-Liberalism and Neo-Populism
Incomplete Reforms
Poverty Alleviation and Fragmented Metropolises
Trends of the 2000s -
Appendices
Initials and Acronyms
Dramatis Personae
Table 1 Urban and rural population of Latin American countries, 1955–2010 in thousands
Table 2 Urbanization, growth and level of transition, 1950–2010
Table 3 Human Development Index (HDI), 2011
