ABSTRACT
Rapid urbanization is one of the consequences of cultural and economic globalization. In Latin America, not only metropolises but also smaller cities have become part of global networks. The subsequent change in consumption patterns is visible in the landscape. This chapter addresses landscape transformations in the urban periphery by focusing on a trend in the architecture of houses related to transnational migration and remittances that started to appear in the 1990s. The trend is known under different names in different places, but in this chapter it will be referred to as arquitectura de remesas, remittance architecture. Remittance architecture is conceptualized as a ‘spectacular cultural performance, a means for people ordinarily excluded from the political, economic, and social mainstreams of [Latin American] society to force themselves […] onto the public eye’ (Goldstein 2004: 3).
