ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the links between the new international division of labour and the process of urbanization. It starts from the assumption that, like all shifts in academic perspective, recent writing has exaggerated the changes that are occurring in the world system or at least the extent of those changes in particular parts of the globe. While profound transformations are affecting the urban areas of Western Europe and Eastern Asia, it is debatable whether recent processes of economic internationalization have brought similarly dramatic change to Latin America's cities. The chapter explores the proposition by examining Latin American urban experience both before and after the new world pattern really began to emerge. It examines trends in urban working and living standards over certain years. The chapter investigates certain conventional wisdoms about the nature of the 'Latin American crisis'; for example, the contention that urban living conditions have worsened through time.
