Pratt Institute

Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment

Uprooting Poverty From a Community
Ernesto Diaz

Urban Research in The Developing World

Latin America
Introduction
Urban research in the developing world, emphasizes a number of key
substantive research themes for a group of six countries: Argentina, Bolivia,
Chile, Ecuador and Uruguay, addressing topics like the general pattern of
urbanization and its relationship to the current model of development; the
economic structure of cities; the dynamics of the built environment; urban poverty
and social policies to mitigate this problem; city government; vulnerable groups;
and the urban environment.
In this particular case, I focused my analysis in three main ideas that I find
important in the process of development in Latin America, such as local
governments and their urban management, decentralization and local
democracy.

Local Government
The institutional and political format within which urban local government is being
represented is a result of a long period of political and civic activity, dating back
to the early 1960s. While it is not necessary to analyze this gestation period in
the present context, it is enough to say that in many countries the multiple
influences of a number of factors combined to focus more attention on the local:
these factors included the explosion of urban social movements, the increasing
impact of informality and the precariousness of large marginal urban populations,
a heavy obligation load at the central government level

As Latin America continues to urbanize, its largest cities expand to enormous

proportions; and even medium-sized cities begin to incorporate more and more
peripheral villages and smaller towns as the suburbs become integrated into a
seamless metropolitan area.
Technocrats, whose decisions rarely involve popular participation, typically
administer Latin American cities. Although many countries were discussing
decentralization and more democratic local government by the late 1980s, few
were actually practicing this approach, and such aspects, as transparency,
reaction and citizen's control over decision-making are still very weak.
Modernization of the state in Latin America is still in progress, and in the majority
of the Latin American countries, relatively modern centralized administrations
have

been

created

incorporating

techniques

of

contemporary

public

management. This is not generally the case in local administration, which lacks
the necessary resources. Because of an absence of technical and financial
means and the inadequate political accountability chosen to it by the central
government, local administration is stuck in out-of-date procedures

Decentralization and local democracy

During the 1980s and 1990s, two trends affected local governance in Latin
America. These trends were decentralization and local democratization.
Decentralization measures, beginning in the 1980s in many Latin American
countries, have generally given more powers to local governments (and in
particular municipalities); in some, but not all cases, these devolutions of power
and function from the national to the state and/or local level have been matched
by some degree of fiscal empowerment as well. At the same time, limited
privatizations in certain sectors (for example, water, waste management and
telecommunications) have shifted responsibility for important local services from
the public to the private (or semi-private) sector.

The story varies from country to country, and may really have very complex
explanations in many cases. Decentralization may have been a response to debt
problems at the centre, with the central government passing functions to other
levels of government because it wished to free itself from high levels of
expensive public services
If decentralization has characterized central-local relations in the 1980s and
1990s in Latin America, the quality of urban life and the elaboration of institutional
reforms at the local level has been more directly related to democratization. One
of the most outstanding trends has been the election of municipal mayors all
across the region.

Conclusions
While different countries will put different emphases on any particular sub-set of
research issues, it is important to develop networks of communication and
exchange of research findings that will make clear how contextual differences
ultimately affect and determine local policy choice. Although Latin American cities
appear to share many similarities with developing cities elsewhere, the region
has its unique characteristics and will certainly respond to global forces in a
unique style. Local researchers can make informed and reasoned judgments
about how best to incorporate useful external ideas and concepts into the local
reform process. To function effectively, such networks need adequate support
over an extended period, and a free hand to decide on their own memberships
and activities.