Neoliberalism

Effects in Latin American urbanization

Between the 1930s and the late 1970s most countries in Latin America used the import substitution industrialization model (ISI) to build industry and reduce the dependency on imports from foreign countries. The result of ISI in these countries included rapid urbanization of one or two major cities, a growing urban population of the working class, and frequent protests by trade unions and left-wing parties. In response to the economic crisis, the leaders of these countries quickly adopted and implemented new neoliberal policies due to prospect theory.

A study based on the transformations of urban life and systems as a result of neoliberalism in six countries of Latin America was published by Alejandro Portes and Bryan Roberts. This comparative study included census data analysis, surveying, and fieldwork focused in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay. Predictions of the neoliberalism were extended to these six countries in four areas: urban systems and primacy, urban unemployment and informal employment, urban inequality and poverty, and urban crime and victimization. Data collected support a relationship between the economic policies of neoliberalism and the resulting patterns of urbanization.

In the area of urban systems and primacy two tendencies were revealed in the data. The first was continuing growth in total size of urban populations while the second tendency was the decline in size of the principal city with decreased migration flows to these cities. Therefore, when calculating the urban growth rate each of these countries all showed minimal or a significant decline in growth. Portes and Roberts theorize that the changes are due to the “loss of attraction of major cities...due to a complex set of factors, but is undoubtedly a related to the end of the ISI era”. Although the relationship between the open-market and the transformation of urban systems has not been proven to be a perfect...