5 - Urban growth and urban social structure

Summary

There are few historical accounts that summarize the general processes of urbanization in Latin America or that provide histories of particular Latin American cities for the entire period since 1930. A valuable account of the early (1940s and 1950s) urbanization processes is Philip Hauser (ed.), Urbanization in Latin America (New York, 1961), which was published by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), reflecting its new-found preoccupation with urban issues in developing countries. The issues covered were demographic trends, employment, economic development, migration, housing, and planning. Richard Morse, ‘Latin American cities: Aspects of function and structure, ’ CSSH, 16/4 (1962), 473–93 reviews research on urbanization in the 1950s and early 1960s, and his two-part article, ‘Trends and issues in Latin American urban research, 1965–1970, ’ LARR, 6/1 (1971), 3–52 and 6/2 (1971), 19–75 examines trends in the mid and late 1960s. An important source of information and analysis is the annual series Latin American Urban Research (Beverly Hills, Calif.), which was published from 1970 to 1976, each year having a different thematic focus, including migration, urban poverty, and metropolitanization.

From a more anthropological perspective, Douglas Butterworth and John Chance, Latin American Urbanization (Cambridge, Eng., 1981) takes account of studies carried out in the 1940s but concentrates on the 1960s and 1970s. The demographic perspective, analysing the evolution of urban primacy and the preoccupation with rapid population and urban growth in Latin America, is found in Glenn H. Beyer (ed.), The Urban Explosion in Latin America (Ithaca, N.Y., 1967). A more recent analysis of trends in city growth and urbanization is Robert W. Fox, Urban Population Trends in Latin America (Washington, D.C., 1975).