ABSTRACT
On the basis of some aspects of Rostow’s theory that explore the relationship between industrialization, urbanization and development, this chapter aims to illustrate how the imbalance between urbanization and the production system helps to explain the issue of Latin America’s economic “take-off” throughout the twentieth century, and the lack of an ensuing “drive to maturity”. For that purpose, other political and social analyses are incorporated into a classification of development periods starting with the phase when Latin America first showed significant urbanization. Such a panoramic attempt is made from the historiographic and methodological premise that urbanization and development studies have often lost the historical perspective. It is therefore necessary to resume a panoramic, and to some extent comparative, review – both in historical and territorial terms. A possible contribution of this research is its periodization of Latin American development.
