This book contains chapters on each of Latin America's six large cities (Mexico City, São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Lima, and Santa Fé de Bogotá). It has four thematic chapters. the first discusses the demography of urban growth in the region and the other three focus on what are particularly sensitive issues in very large cities : public administration, transportation, and land, housing, and infrastructure. (Adapté du résumé de l'éditeur).
For the first time in history, the majority of the world's population lives in cities, the result of a rapid process of urbanization that started in the second half of the twentieth century. 'Megacities' around the world are rapidly becoming the scene for deprivation, especially in the global South, and the urban excluded face the brunt of what in many cases seems like low-intensity warfare. Featuring case studies from across the globe, including Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, Megacities examines recent worldwide trends in poverty and social exclusion, urban violence and politics, and links these to the challenges faced by policy-makers and practitioners.
Berryman writes against the background of the rise of "megacities" - the sprawling urban centers that are the home of most of Latin America's population. In that context he contrasts Sao Paulo and Caracas. The Catholic Archdiocese of Sao Paulo, under Cardinal Arns and progressive Catholics, was a major point of resistance to military dictatorship. It is also a city in which Protestant Pentecostal churches especially have enjoyed explosive growth. Berryman's sure-footed feel for what is happening gives the reader a concrete feel for what is happening in both Protestant and Catholic communities. Caracas, Berryman shows, is a very different kind of megacity, one that a Protestant missionary called "the Secular City", a place where the relative wealth and consumer lifestyle make it hard for the Gospel to take hold. Catholic and Protestant churches in Caracas face challenges quite different from those of Sao Paulo. Religion in the Megacity explores those similarities and differences within the respective cities and between them. Berryman breaks new ground in showing the way in which Catholics and Protestants face similar situations, and he does so in a dynamic, readable style that gives the reader insights from knowledgeable men and women on the ground who show that facile stereotypes about what is happening in Latin America today need to be corrected.
What makes the city of the future? How do you heal a divided city? In Radical Cities, Justin McGuirk travels across Latin America in search of the activist architects, maverick politicians and alternative communities already answering these questions. From Brazil to Venezuela, and from Mexico to Argentina, McGuirk discovers the people and ideas shaping the way cities are evolving. Ever since the mid twentieth century, when the dream of modernist utopia went to Latin America to die, the continent has been a testing ground for exciting new conceptions of the city. An architect in Chile has designed a form of social housing where only half of the house is built, allowing the owners to adapt the rest; Medellín, formerly the world’s murder capital, has been transformed with innovative public architecture; squatters in Caracas have taken over the forty-five-story Torre David skyscraper; and Rio is on a mission to incorporate its favelas into the rest of the city. Here, in the most urbanised continent on the planet, extreme cities have bred extreme conditions, from vast housing estates to sprawling slums. But after decades of social and political failure, a new generation has revitalised architecture and urban design in order to address persistent poverty and inequality. Together, these activists, pragmatists and social idealists are performing bold experiments that the rest of the world may learn from. Radical Cities is a colorful journey through Latin America—a crucible of architectural and urban innovation.
For decades, the prevailing sentiment was that, since geography is unchangeable, there is no reason why public policies should take it into account. In fact, charges that geographic interpretations of development were deterministic, or even racist, made the subject a virtual taboo in academic and policymaking circles alike. 'Is Geography Destiny?' challenges that premise and joins a growing body of literature studying the links between geography and development. Focusing on Latin America, the book argues that based on a better understanding of geography, public policy can help control or channel its influence toward the goals of economic and social development.
Dr. James Canton, a renowned futurist, CEO of the Institute for Global Futures, and Fortune 1000 advisor, charts a course to steer you through the volatile changes that lie 5, 10, and 20 years ahead. The Extreme Future is this generation’s Future Shock, Alvin Toffler’s classic book on what’s next and how to prepare for tomorrow. Get ready for fast, radical and complex change. Get ready for the Extreme Future. Our world is constantly buffeted by new and dramatic changes that we can’t fully grasp. No one is fully prepared for the challenges, crises and risks that lie ahead. The Extreme Future is a blueprint for what’s next and how to navigate these changes. An advisor to three White House’s spanning more than 30 years, Dr. Canton challenges us that with the right information about future trends it is possible to identify probable outcomes. It is possible, with the right information to navigate the Extreme Future. The book covers the following major trends: How climate change and energy trends will reshape the planet How shifting population trends will transform the workforce How radical innovation trends will competitively drive business How astounding medicine trends will enhance people’s life How dangerous terrorism trends will threaten the individual. How the rise of China will bring on a new global power struggle The answers to these questions are not only available, but contained within these pages. The Extreme Future is the forecasting handbook for the twenty-first century.
The world today is far less a global village than a “global city”, as global network of multidimensional urban spaces of congestion prominently forming – and also formed by – globalization. But the relevance of cities is nothing but new. They were essential for culture and civilization worldwide, they allowed a centralization of power and knowledge and they were crucial for the division of labor and for the organization of mass demand. Further, as places of intense and continuous interactions, cities are the locations par excellence for global history to take place. Thus, there is a need to study the history of cities in connection with the history of globalization from this perspective. This book is dedicated to contribute to the still underdeveloped but growing literature connecting the history of cities worldwide and their relation to global processes. The authors do so from various disciplinary backgrounds and by referring to different times and places. We visit ancient Alexandria, nineteenth century Zanzibar, and modern-day São Paolo, among others, and we view these cities not only in their globality, but also through their heritage, their economic relevance, their architecture, or financial flows connecting them. Further, the book also contains systematic considerations about “global city”, especially the general role of cities in development, cities in global history teaching, and cities' relationships to global commodity chains.
Latin American cities have always been characterized by a strong tension between what is vaguely described as their formal and informal dimensions. However, the terms formal and informal refer not only to the physical aspect of cities but also to their entire socio-political fabric. Informal cities and settlements exceed the structures of order, control and homogeneity that one expects to find in a formal city; therefore the contributors to this volume - from such disciplines as architecture, urban planning, anthropology, urban design, cultural and urban studies and sociology - focus on alternative methods of analysis in order to study the phenomenon of urban informality. This book provides a thorough review of the work that is currently being carried out by scholars, practitioners and governmental institutions, in and outside Latin America, on the question of informal cities.
