Neo-liberal changes, contradictions and uncertain future of the Latin American metropolis

Abstract

In Latin America, neoliberalism, a cyclical economic growth, the region’s insertion in the world’s capitalist accumulation and the simultaneous social crisis have changed its socioeconomic structures. Its metropolises experience mutations driven by the dominant financialreal estate capital and territorial conflicts grow. Governments have abandoned their intervening and regulatory function, adopting the facilitator of private capital; those of the "turn to the left" have followed a similar course, without achieving the expected changes and causing popular disillusionment. This, together with the capital’s and the Right’s offensive, has caused the governments’ erosion. Urban research, dependent on imported theories, does not provide accurate explanations or effective alternative policies. We must generate theories appropriate to our particular social formations that respond to the uncertain urban future caused by the wild accumulation of capital.