ABSTRACT
Latin America is the most urbanized of the world’s former colonial regions in the world. By 2010, 80 percent of Latin America’s population lived in cities with more than 750,000 people. 2 It is highly urbanized because most nations in Latin America achieved formal independence from Spain and Portugal in the early nineteenth century, long before most colonial nations in Asia and Africa. It is also highly urbanized because its elites and oligarchies, freed from direct colonial rule, developed their own urban real estate interests. While strong neocolonial cultures and practices were sustained, Latin American cities are outgrowths of many national projects striving to achieve economic and political independence while at the same time never breaking with their dependence on Europe and North America. Latin America’s metropolitan regions are therefore products of the accumulation of both global and local capital.
