ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that industrialisation has been the single most important process of economic development in Latin America in the last forty years. Research on polarisation reversal does not specifically refer to the process of industrialisation in regional development. The post-war process of industrialisation in Latin America has been characterised by a spatial concentration of national industry with little historical precedent. At present, Latin America is developing a radically different spatial system to any other continent as it industrialises. In Latin America, multinational companies specialising in copper, tin, iron ore, aluminium and sugar have similarly been nationalised. If one looks more closely at the actual process of industrialisation in Latin America the theoretical framework of conflict between territory and function has numerous problems. In the 1960s, an institution that was influential in the regional planning process of Latin America was the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
