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THE FRAGMENTED CITY
CHANGING PATTERNS IN LATIN
AMERICAN CITIES
By Axel Borsdorf and Rodrigo Hidalgo
COVERPHOTO:AerialviewofaBarrioCerradointheSouthernpartofSantiagodeChile,byAxelBorsdorf
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THE FRAGMENTED CITY
CHANGING PATTERNS IN LATIN
AMERICAN CITIES
By Axel Borsdorf * and Rodrigo Hidalgo**
Introduction
In most Latin American cities the traditional polarization between rich and poor quarters in the urban
fabric (ciudad rica and ciudad pobre) is – although still visible – weakening. New rich quarters rising
in formerly poor neighbourhoods seem to suggest that the texture of society is changing and that rich
and poor are beginning to mix. Yet, on closer inspection, it immediately becomes obvious that socio-
spatial segregation has become more pronounced. The millionaires in the hermetically closed off
luxury quarters mostly do not care less about the social environment beyond the walls of their
communities They are islands of the rich located within an ocean of poverty. Accordingly, Janoschka
(2002a) called contemporary Buenos Aires a “City of Islands”, and the islanders are the ones who have
won. Indeed, they are “los que ganaron”, as Svampa (2001) has pointed out.
______________________________
*AxelBorsdorf,born1948inBadOeynhausen,Germany.Studiesofgeography,humanities,geologyandearlyhistoryin
Göttingen,Valdivia/ChileandTübingen.PhD1976,isprofessoratUniversityofInnsbruck,DepartmentofGeography.
DirectoroftheInstituteforMountainResearch:Man&EnvironmentandfullmemberoftheAustrianAcademyof
Sciences.VicePresidentoftheAustrianInstituteofLatinAmerica.CoeditorofDieErde,eco.mont,memberofthe
EditorialBoardofvariousjournals.VistingProfessorattheUniversitiesofChile;CatholicUniversityofChile;Universityof
Tamaulipas,Mexico;ChulalongkornUniversityatBangkok;andBerne.Authorofover30booksandmorethan300
articles.

**RodrigoHidalgo,born1968inValparaíso,Chile.StudiesofgeographyandregionalplanningattheCatholicUniversityof
Chile(PUC),Santiago.PhD2000attheUniversityofBarcelona,Spain.AssociateProfessorattheDepartmentof
Geography,PUC,SantiagodeChile,from20022005headoftheHumanGeographyDepartment.VisitingProfessoratthe
UniversidadMayordeSanSimón,Cochabamba,Bolivia.EditorofRevistadeGeografìaNorteGrande.Authorandeditorof
10booksandabout80articles.
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Nevertheless, it would be too simple to blame only the rich for spatial segregation. Contemporary Latin
American cities abound with walls. Middle class neighbourhoods are walled off and even marginal
quarters tend to construct fences. Walls and gates protect leisure clubs, shopping centres, office towers,
business districts, industrial estates, and even some quite normal public streets. Polarization thus has
been superseded by fragmentation, not only in the urban structure but also in the social fabric, the
functional pattern, and the infrastructure of the agglomeration. Two decades ago, modern malls, copies
of the U.S. American model, were only to be found in the “rich city” (Bähr/Mertins 1995: 107);
nowadays they are found in towns everywhere.
Urban researchers have taken a while to notice the significance of these structural changes in Latin
American cities. Even recent monographs (see e.g. Wilhelmy/Borsdorf, 1984/85; Gilbert1994;
Bähr/Mertins 1995) contain only few hints on new segregation tendencies. Furthermore, none of the
above authors have recognized the implications of these developments for the urban structure. Neither
did those few studies published in the early 1990s that focus on upper class quarters (Achilles 1989;
Köster 1995). Only the latest publications on Brazilian towns deal with the intensification of
segregation and the rise of gated communities (Lopes de Souza, 1993; Pöhler 1999; Wehrhahn 2000;
Coy/Pöhler 2002), following Brazilian academic research results (Viera Caetano O’Neilll 1986;
Caldeira 1996). Subsequently, the first studies on the new trends in the Spanish cultural subcontinent
have appeared (Borsdorf 1998, 2000, 2002a; Janoschka, 2000a, 2000b, 2000c; Meyer/Bähr 2001;
Rovira 2002, Sabatini, Caceres & Cerda 2001). Supported by young scholars working on their diploma
theses (like Evangelisti 2000, Kanitscheider 2004, Kohler 2001, Goumas 2002), an Austrian research
team (Borsdorf, Parnreiter, Fischer, Jäger, Kohler) carried out field work in Argentina, Chile, Ecuador,
Mexico, and Peru. The results of these studies form the basis of this article.
The changes observed in the socio-spatial structure of Latin American cities brought about a discussion
of the so-called “model of the Latin American city”. Meyer/Bähr (2001) presented a new model for
Santiago de Chile, Janoschka (2002b) for Buenos Aires, and Borsdorf (2002b) modified his model of
urban development in Latin America. Joining forces, Borsdorf, Bähr, and Janoschka integrated their
results and published a new model of the Latin American city structure and development in 2002.
Drawing on these reflections, this chapter deals with the conditions, procedure, and results of the
restructurization of the urban fabric in Latin America in order to find out whether these developments
justify a modification of the traditional “model of the Latin American city structure”.
Recent social and economic changes in Latin America
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Massive changes have been taking place in Latin American societies since the early 1980s, when re-
democratization processes started to replace the military regimes installed one decade before.
Regardless of whether the orientation of the new democratic governments was left-wing or
conservative, the politics they implemented were capitalist and neo-liberal without exception. These
political changes coincided with the crisis of the development strategies that had prevailed since the
end of WWII. Promoting the substitution of imports by internal industrialization, these policies had
been accompanied by restrictions on imports and active economic intervention by the state (Parnreiter
2004). Since the 1980s this development strategy has steadily been replaced by a model that tends
towards integration in the world market and involves the reduction of tax barriers. State-owned
companies and formerly state-organized services were privatized. The ensuing attractiveness of the
market radically transformed the economic activities in Latin America. Foreign Direct Investment and
the subjugation to open market laws diminished the importance of the state. Furthermore, fierce
competition from imported products induced a de-industrialization process in many countries. This
neo-liberal economic path seems to have had a serious impact on the social structure of Latin American
societies. Social polarization has increased substantially (cf. Ciccolella 1999) and unemployment has
risen markedly, despite the high economic growth rates which most Latin American countries have
experienced in the 1990s.
Since the crisis of the financial market in the late 1990s, Latin America’s economic panorama has
changed enormously. With the exception of Chile and Mexico, the latter country profiting from the
NAFTA integration process with the USA and Canada, the growth of the Latin American economies
has markedly slowed down. The Latin American countries slid from boom to bust. Capital flows
reversed in 1998 and have been negative ever since. Economic growth has been low and the income per
capita has been decreasing slowly. Some countries such as Argentina, Uruguay, or Venezuela fell into
serious economic depression accompanied by internal political problems. As a consequence social
polarization has surged (cf. Ocampo 2003, Ruiz 2003).
The political and economic changes have also left their mark on the cities. Especially in the last 15-25
years, urban structures have been going through a rapid modernization process. Mainly driven by
foreign investment, this process was on the one hand concentrated on basic urban services such as
telephone lines and water provision. These are now owned by international companies that provide
services conforming to international standards for the middle and upper classes. However, more
investments went into urban elements that exemplify the globalization of urban spaces and illustrate the
growing importance of a new imported lifestyle oriented towards leisure activities. These include the
expansion and privatization of motorways, the establishment of private industrial parks, international
hotel chains with integrated business facilities, shopping malls and hypermarkets, urban entertainment
centres, multiplex cinemas and, last but not least, gated and access-restricted residential quarters both
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in urban and suburban areas. These infrastructural novelties are signs of post-modern urban
development which finds expression in their exclusive architecture and social target (cf. Janoschka
2002b). As the state did not intervene in urban planning processes, and private investment to a large
extent neglected public means of transportation, a new, car-based lifestyle has flourished, causing an
even greater degree of fragmentation and spatial segregation.
The changed lifestyle has also become the motor of urban expansion. Before the 1980s urban growth
was primarily driven by lower class migration from rural to urban areas. These patterns have changed.
While migration declined strongly, the space needed per capita has increased, chiefly driven by
changes in residential areas of the upper and middle classes, and this has become the main driving force
of urban expansion in the last two decades.
Socio-spatial segregation in Latin America
Although globalization is a major driver of urban segregation and fragmentation, it is not the only
relevant force in this process. This becomes obvious if we take a quick look at the distribution of gated
communities in Latin America. These are not limited to the regions heavily incorporated into the global
market system, such as the Central Zone of Chile, the Mexican border region with the U.S., or the
metropolitan areas of the Iberian nations. Barrios cerrados have also been established in very
conservative regions like the Ecuadorian or Peruvian sierra, the extreme South of Chile, and the
Yucatán peninsula, as well as in medium sized Brazilian towns (Lima Ramires/Ribeiro Soares 2002), in
Rosario (Bragos/Mateos/Pontoni 2002) or in Puebla y Toluca (Rodríguez Chumillas/Mollá Ruiz-
Gómez 2002).
The economic transformation towards neo-liberal models enforced privacy and generated deregulation
policies that have liberated the real estate market, weakened urban planning and undermined the norms
and rules of previous habitat policies. These economic factors have facilitated the rise of
neighbourhoods outside the public space.
Another factor in this development is the changing understanding and organisation of governance. New
liberal tendencies and the orientation towards individualism and private initiatives are perceived to be
important drivers of fragmentation and segregation. Moreover, the economic crisis, growing poverty,
terrorism, and the increase in criminality in many Latin American countries have enhanced the demand
for safe enclaves providing protection from a dangerous social environment. Finally, we should not
neglect basic human demands, such as the desire for a quiet and safe place to live, for a safe
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environment for children, in other words for a life without fears and horrors. Moreover, the upper
classes search exclusivity, individuality and the possibility to realize their own lifestyles.
The changing conditions on these three levels, the global, the national and the private, explain the rise
of gated communities all over the world. It really is a global phenomenon as well as a phenomenon of
globalization. However, while in many cultures gated communities are limited to the upper classes,
Latin America has a wide spectrum of forms and structures and a great variety of types of fenced
neighbourhoods.
The global phenomenon produces various forms that depend on local specificities. As demonstrated by
Rovira (2002) and Borsdorf (2002a), Latin American cities have been pervaded by trends of
privatization and exclusion from the beginning of urban history. The patio house and the monastery
cities were early expressions of these demands, whereas modern tugurios, conventillos and vecindades
that are closed off from the road by strong doors are striking examples of their persistence. Fig. 1.1
demonstrates the causes for the rise of gated communities in Latin America.
Terrorism and
criminality
Poverty
Economic crisis
Individuality
Exclusiveness
“Lifestyle”
Global life-style model
Liberal real estate market
Deregulation of land policy
and urban planning
E
conomic transformation and
g
lobalisation
E
conomica
l
and political
conditions
g
overnance
Safe dwelling
Safe environment
for children
Upper class
Lower class
+
Barrios Cerrados
g
lobal leve
l
L
evel o
f
the state
Social an
d
individual
D
rivers o
f
tradition
elevant drivers on
levels
Conventillos
Tugurios
Early enclosures
(country, golf)
H
uman
needs
Patio house Monasteries
Pre-forms
Fig.1.1:DriversforgatedcommunitydevelopmentinLatinAmerica.Source:Borsdorf2003a,modified
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Types of gated communities
Latin American city regions are currently experiencing a phase of strong increase in gated residential
neighbourhoods. A typology of these developments would first of all have to deal with the variety of
names that are used to refer to the different types of gated housing complexes in Latin America.
Condomínio fechado (Brazil), Barrio Privado (Argentina), Urbanización Cerrada or Conjunto Cerrado
(Ecuador), Condominio, Coto or Fraccionamiento Cerrado (Mexico) describe various products of the
real estate market in the different countries. Furthermore, the meanings of the same word can vary
substantially between the different countries. The term Barrio Cerrado (closed neighbourhood), which
is used as an overarching term in recent publications (Borsdorf, Bähr & Janoschka 2002, Borsdorf
2003), refers to a wide variety of gated communities. Generally speaking, Barrio Cerrado serves to
describe a dwelling complex that contains more than one unit, has a common infrastructure, and is
separated from the public by gates and fences or walls. The infrastructure may include anything from
playgrounds, kindergartens, and swimming pools to tennis and golf courts and club houses. Thus a
secured apartment building is a gated community if it is fenced off and equipped with a common
infrastructure.
Considering only aspects such as structure, location and size, we can differentiate between three main
types of gated neighbourhoods.
Urban gated communities are usually groups of attached houses or even towers or skyscrapers
that only offer a limited number of facilities. These developments cater for either middle or lower
middle class families in intermediate locations (they could even be social housing projects) or
upper middle to upper class families in central areas. This concept also involves the massive
enclosure of existing areas, in most cases high standing single-family housing areas in central or
intermediate locations.
Suburban gated communities predominantly cater for the middle and upper classes. They offer
oversized single detached houses and share wide areas for common sports facilities. However,
suburban gated communities that are located in the periphery and do not include common
facilities may be oriented toward lower middle class income groups.
Mega-projects with integrated cultural and educational facilities are still rare. However, this
segment is rapidly growing due to the dynamics and the internationalization of the real estate
market, as new transnational developers are mostly involved.
A more detailed typology needs to take into account social structure, legal status, age, and historical
evolution of the respective communities. The mind map, provided in fig. 1.2, should provide some
orientation in the quite complex world of gated communities in Latin America. However, it does not
include the – invisible – legal status of these developments, a key element with regard to their
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sustainability. In legal terms, there are three main types of gated neighbourhoods. The real
“condominiums”, which are common property, are legally one single unit. Their inhabitants own shares
or interests but not individual elements of the community. As the infrastructure, such as roads etc., is
included in these properties, they may be fenced in or walled off and gated. However, the right of
access to the individual units within these communities cannot be restricted. A wall and gate hindering
the public freedom of movement is in this case somewhat semi-legal, even if it was foreseen in the
original plan. The establishment of these fraccionamentos and urbanizaciones cerradas, as they are
called in Mexico and Ecuador, has been facilitated by neo-liberal rule that diminished the power of the
state. This is even truer for the ex-post facto road closures by gates, the so-called “calles cerradas”,
which restricted open access to public roads.
Fig.1.2:ClassificationcriteriaforgatedcommunitiesinLatinAmerica.Amindmap.Source:Borsdorf2003a,modified
Barrios Cerrados
Rise and development
Country clubs
> 1920
Closed streets
> 1965
Safety towers
> 1970
Ecological o
r
ideological
condominios > 1975
> 1975
Mega-
barrios
cerrados
> 1990
Vertical Horizontal
Small:
1-10units
Middle:
11-50 units
Large:
51-100 units
Mega:
> 100 units
Periurban / rural
Urban
Suburban
Localisation
Lowe
r
classes
Middle class
Upper class
“new rich”
Traditional
upper class
Basic
infrastructure
Luxury
infrastructure
Complete
infrastructure
Infrastructure:
medium level
Tall apartment
building
Single familiy
houses
Standardized
houses
Semi detached
houses
US American
style houses
Individual
architecture
houses
Ecological
houses
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The rise of gated communities
There has been a boom in gated communities all over Latin America in recent years. In Mexico City
alone around 750 new gated neighbourhoods with almost 50.000 housing units were thrown on the
market between 1990 and 2001 (Parnreiter 2004). The Argentinean capital Buenos Aires has more than
450 suburban gated communities; a dozen of them reach a size of more than 5.000 inhabitants each
(Janoschka 2002a). The exact number of the urban gated communities, called garden towers in
Argentina (Torre Jardín, cfr. Welch 2002), is unknown. However, more than 130 of these garden
towers offered new appartments in the local Argentinian newspapers in 2002. Estimations of their total
number of inhabitants range between 300.000 and 600.000 people. Pöhler (1999) states that more than
100.000 people live in condomínios fechados in Rio de Janeiro’s upper class and beach-oriented city
expansion area called Barra da Tijuca. Brazil’s biggest mega-city São Paulo also counts on a mega-
project, ‘Alphaville’, with around 35.000 inhabitants and more than 100.000 people working inside the
gates. Gated communities have also diffused to secondary cities such as Córdoba, Argentina (1.3
million inhabitants). This city has more than 50 gated residential developments, with one of them
(Valle Escondido), promoted as “the new city”, offering a cluster of different gated communities for a
total population of approximately 25.000 inhabitants (Roca 2001). Curitiba in Brazil has approximately
300 gated communities. Thus gated communities pervade in most big Latin American cities and are
becoming more and more common in medium size cities (< 500.000 inhabitants) and in some cases
even in small towns (for example Gualeguaychú, Entre Rios in Argentina; Valdivia, Temuco,
Rancagua in Chile).
Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to estimate the exact market share of gated housing complexes
in these cities, not only due to the substantial differences between the countries. Statistical data on the
construction sector is poor and in most cases the differentiation between the products is not clear. In
Buenos Aires, the number of units in suburban gated communities amounts to about 100.000, while the
whole number of dwellings reaches approximately 3 million. So suburban gated housing represents no
more than three per cent of the housing stock. However, if we look at the total of suburban housing, the
market share of gated communities rises to 10 per cent. Furthermore, if we limit the calculation to the
demand group (which are the upper 15-20 per cent of the population, equivalent to 450.000
households), these 100.000 units represent between 20 and 25 per cent of the market share. These
calculations exclude the number of ‘quasi’ gated communities (streets and neighbourhoods with strong
vigilance and closure of access during the night or posteriorly enclosed neighbourhoods) which are not
marketed as gated communities in the open real estate market. They also neglect gated housing at the
other end of the social pyramid, for example social housing projects from the 1970s which nowadays
are walled and gate-guarded, or the whole range of areas that are inaccessible due to the predominance
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of criminal structures. To resume, it is a fact that in Buenos Aires, the market for single detached
houses and the construction of detached houses in suburban locations are situated predominantly in
gated communities. The expansion of gated communities accounted for 80 to 90 per cent of the urban
expansion during the period of macroeconomic stability from 1991 to 2001.
Modeling the fragmented city
Before the crisis of internal development strategies in the 1980s, one of the basic principles of Latin
American cities was the strong polarization of urban spaces. Differentiation in social status was heavily
bound to location within the city. Urban space fell into polarized sectors such as the rich and the poor
city (cf. Gilbert 1998). This tendency has changed during the last two decades. The strict urban
frontiers between the rich and the poor have become blurred. High income members of the population
have started to occupy suburban areas that used to be poor whereas poor families have settled in
abandoned middle and upper class spaces. This process has been accompanied by a new and strict
delimitation of small areas, often by way of private security services. These novel homogeneous,
highly segregated and protected islands within the urban neighbourhoods promote the physical
fragmentation of urban space (Sabatini, Caceres and Cerda 2001; Parnreiter 2004). This change is of
fundamental importance for the development of a new model of the Latin American urban
agglomeration.
From a geographical or urban point of view, the term “model” has three different meanings. First, city
models can be a constructive utopia – a vision or Leitbild for further urban development, such as the
modern city in its time or the garden city movement. Second, a city model can be the result of
theoretical studies based on deductive logic, as presented by Christaller or Thünen. Finally, a model
may reduce the complexity of urban life in order to provide a better understanding of a certain type of
city (cf. Borsdorf, Bähr and Janoschka 2002). The last approach constitutes the basis of regional city
models that try to analyse social behaviour through the modelling of city structures, from the early
urban models of the Chicago school up to the latest works of authors such as Dear (2000) or Soja
(2000). Latin American city structures and the question whether models can ever do justice to the
complex reality have been heavily debated in the US as well as in Europe from the 1970s up to the
present (Griffin/Ford 1980, 1993, Gormsen 1981, Deler 1989, Crowley 1995, Bähr/Mertins 1981,
Borsdorf, 1982). Starting point of these intense discussions were two models of the Latin American
city structure published independently by the German geographers Bähr and Borsdorf in 1976.
The dramatic transformations of the Latin American city regions from the 1980s onwards have only
recently generated new theoretical approaches by Ford (1996), Meyer/Bähr (2001) and Borsdorf
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(2002b). Drawing on the latest empirical data, these authors either redesigned the traditional models or
developed new ones (Janoschka 2002b, 2002c). Joining forces, Bähr, Borsdorf and Janoschka (2002)
updated their individual investigations and produced a new joint model which integrated the different
arguments of the three authors (see fig. 1.3). According to this model, city development in Latin
America falls into four phases which correspond to different degrees of state intervention (urban
planning) in the real estate market.
Fig.1.3:ModelofLatinAmericanurbanstructuraldevelopment.Source:Borsdorf,BährandJanoschka2002;adapted.
The model departs from the observation that these different phases of urban development are each
characterized by specific structural principles and urban policies. In the early phase, the colonial time,
the urban body was compact and the social status of the inhabitants decreased with the increasing
distance from the central plaza where the central social and political functions were located. This
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compact urban model was a realization of the royal instructions for the foundation of cities in Spanish
America. The central plaza and its immediate surroundings were reserved for the most important
functions which in turn attracted the colonial elite.
After independence, linear structures began to intersect this compact city. The upper classes moved into
new houses along a main street – the Prado. Vegetable growers and craftsmen settled along the most
important roads to the countryside. Later on some industrial sectors were established. These sectoral
patterns did not dissolve the ring structure but strongly transformed the cities.
From 1930 onwards the flight from rural areas to urban centres caused a strong increase in the
population. The ensuing agglomeration process was accompanied by the polarization between rich and
poor areas – a phenomenon that is typical of the modern industrial city (Marcuse 1989). The upper
classes abandoned their central locations for suburban areas. At the same time the poor areas in the
cities grew enormously. Political guidelines for urban development became obsolete – not only due to
the high growth rates but also because corrupted and polemic policies alternated with authoritarian
regimes during phases of dictatorships. The main characteristic of urban development was the growing
polarization, superimposed on the sectoral principle of urban growth. Only some time later, a process
of cell-type growth came to be established in the peripheries. Social housing communities were built in
suburban or outer urban areas, as well as illegal marginal settlements. Hence the cellular principle can
be traced back to this earlier phase of urban development.
During the last two decades, urban expansion has again followed a different scheme, mainly driven by
the following principles (cf. Janoschka 2002a, 65f).
Gated communities for the upper and middle classes have spread throughout the metropolitan area,
undermining the sectoral class structures.
Malls, shopping centres and urban entertainment centres are no longer restricted to upper class
sectors but can be found in the whole agglomeration.
The gated communities tend to get larger and to include more and more urban functions. Major
gated communities in large cities such as São Paulo and Buenos Aires and even smaller cities such
as Córdoba, Argentina now surpass small cities in complexity and size.
Transport infrastructure has come to play a key role in urban development. Thus proximity to a
motorway entrance determines the attractiveness and price of detached suburban housing areas.
Industrial production has been transferred to suburban areas and is located in peripheral industrial
or business parks or centres of logistic activities.
The access to poorer communities and marginal areas has been restricted by walls or informal ways
of separation.
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These changes demand new theoretical approaches which are mirrored in the new scheme of the Latin
American city structure. The fragmentary and urban nodal structure has been facilitated by the
transformation of the transport infrastructure. Private investment has turned the insufficient and
congested motorways into a modern and effective system. The ensuing major reduction in commuting
time has been decisive for attracting middle and upper classes, whose time is restricted, to suburban
locations. In this way private and privatising urban development in the neo-liberal political and
economic system is driven by private interventions which respond to the demands of the real estate
market.
The second important structural change also follows the principles of post-modern urban development.
The cellular elements in the periphery (in former times predominantly marginal areas) have been
integrated into the market sphere and have become increasingly interesting for investment by real estate
enterprises. Furthermore, fragmentation cannot only be observed for housing but also for functional
spatial units, such as the retail sector. Although the urban centres gain new importance due to
renovation programs and other upgrading interventions, they cannot compete with suburban malls,
which represent a north-American lifestyle of rising popularity. These islands of consumption and
leisure do not restrict access by walls, but exclude anyone who does not have private transport. The
first malls were clearly oriented towards the upper class market in the urban upper class sector.
However, due to the dispersion of the upper and middle class population, they can now be found in the
whole urban area.
Poorer areas have also changed during the last decades. Some marginal areas have been integrated into
the urban space – and in a number of cases were upgraded. Others were kept apart and now are almost
inaccessible nodes of criminality. The transformation of the Latin American city structure shows that
the desire for differentiation through enclosure and restriction of access is not reserved to the
population with high income, but represents a general societal principle. This should have become clear
in the historical account of the rise and diffusion of gated residential neighbourhoods.
Whether the structural changes in the contemporary Latin American city are a symptom of the
transformation in mobility (see Borsdorf 2004) or whether they reflect an even more fundamental shift
in global social and urban systems, remains to be discussed.
Consequences for the social contract in Latin America
In the last couple of decades the internal structure of cities has changed rather markedly throughout
Latin America. Concomitantly multi-level and multi-actor policy processes have unfolded in Latin
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America during the 1980s and 1990s. Authorities at urban levels have been faced with new challenges
and new ideas about privatisation of public space, enclosuring, and new social ghettos. The urban
community – once seen as a unique and, from a governance point of view, unified organism – is now
divided in different spaces with different underlying norms, structures, and also control. Urban
governance involves actors at different scales, following their respective interests and objectives. It
may be too early to give an evaluation of this change, but there are first indicators of a loss of
community consciousness, social responsibility, and socio-spatial coherence under the new conditions.
The physical fragmentation processes have thus had a serious impact on the quality and the
understanding of urban life. Inhabitants of gated communities change their lifestyle rapidly and the
access-restricted areas accommodate their daily demands. Public spaces lose their basic role as points
of interaction between different classes, as each class develops its own homogeneous space. The
growing size of these spaces and their integration of complex urban functions further accentuate this
tendency. As a consequence inhabitants live in bubbles which are detached from the local political and
social environment. As put forward in this article, the Latin American elites never did show any interest
in their own society, but rather followed lifestyles imported from Europe and later from the US. The
life behind walls in gated neighbourhoods removes these elites even further from the social reality of
their ‘home’ society. Yet, neither the Latin American media (press and broadcasting), nor politicians,
urbanists, or architects have interpreted the gates as a severe problem for society in the past two
decades. This is hardly surprising since all of these groups, relevant for urban and economic progress,
directly or indirectly benefit from the gated communities. There is an urgent need for more research
and an objective assessment of the new and accelerated segregation trends in the urban world of Latin
America. Will we have to tear down gates in the heads in order to undermine the perceived necessity of
physical ones, as some authors contend, or are these gates an indicator of the basic human need for
safety, transparency, privacy, and personal realization?
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... Estas nuevas formas de urbanización basadas en la respuesta al miedo, en una suerte de "privatopía" de los sectores sociales que pueden permitírselo (Ballet, 2007), provocaron la ruptura de la continuidad de las calles y obstaculizan la movilidad dentro de la ciudad (Berrecil- Sánchez et al., 2013), pero sobre todo han generado un proceso de segregación y fragmentación urbana (Borsdorf e Hidalgo, 2009;Rosas, 2018). ...
... De este modo, y bajo el influjo de las políticas neoliberales, como en muchas otras urbes latinoamericanas, la ciudad fue fragmentándose (Borsdorf, 2003;Borsdorf e Hidalgo, 2009) y deconstruyéndose (Lindón, 2006) lo cual, a su vez, ha comportado segregación social y un incremento de las dinámicas excluyentes (Borja, 2013 posibilitan el disfrute del medio ambiente, el sano esparcimiento y la respetuosa convivencia ante la exposición a ideas y personas distintas; mejoran la calidad de vida y promueven valores de equidad, justicia y paz. Son espacios para construir y ejercer ciudadanía, en los que se desarrollan actividades del ámbito cultural, económico, político y social, para crecer en identidad y reforzar la educación, el bienestar y la salud" (COAMSS/OPAMSS, 2020: 32). ...
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El objetivo de este informe es analizar el papel y uso social de los parques urbanos en el Área Metropolitana de San Salvador, El Salvador. Con ello se pretende también contribuir al debate sobre las políticas públicas y de cooperación que promueven estos espacios verdes dentro de las áreas metropolitanas, y en particular en los países del Sur. Por sus dimensiones geográficas, más pequeñas en comparación con las grandes metrópolis latinoamericanas, el Área Metropolitana de San Salvador (AMSS) permite analizar temáticas de carácter global con mayor facilidad. Para ello se han seleccionado cuatro parques ubicados dentro del AMSS: Parque Bicentenario, Parque Cuscatlán, Jardín Botánico y Ecoparque El Espino. La investigación tiene un carácter exploratorio, a partir de cuatro casos y su análisis comparado, y está basada en fuentes cualitativas: revisión documental; entrevistas semiestructuradas en profundidad a veinte personas relacionadas con la gestión y el uso de cada uno de estos parques; y, finalmente, trabajo de observación etnográfica a lo largo del mes de febrero de 2022, que quedó plasmada en un diario de campo, realizada en cada uno de los parques en distintos días de la semana y horarios, con el fin de identificar distintos usos y dinámicas sociales. Asimismo, se analizan los principales desafíos que enfrentan las autoridades públicas y la población salvadoreña para ampliar el acceso a parques urbanos de proximidad, seguros y en buen estado y, a su vez, superar los sesgos de clase y de género que se identifican en su disponibilidad y uso. Finalmente, se ponen en discusión los distintos modelos de gestión que pueden orientar la política pública en relación con la infraestructura verde en este contexto.
... Some features observed in the transitions for the case of the GMA also appear to coincide with findings by authors like Borsdorf & Hidalgo (2009) ...
... in regard to Latin America as a region portrayed by 'open countries containing enclosed cities'(CabralesBarajas, 2002, p.13) does shed some light on the contradictory argument implied by the creation of physical borders within a region usually characterized by wider social boundaries than those implied by the GC model. In terms of social interaction, understood within Hall's proxemics theory, countries within Latin America have been traditionally thought of as open in their social nature; as suggested byShuter (1976) in a proxemics and tactility study in Latin America, social interaction and interpersonal encounters amongst Latin Americans depict closer distances and an open-contact culture that counteracts, for instance, that of US-Americans(Shuter, 1976, p.46); despite this, walls seem to have found a fertile ground in the region based on multiple drivers that transcend the intrinsic implications and outcomes of global conditions, myriad in themselves and recognized by most authors as triggers to most processes that derived in our current urban agoraphobic conduct patterns at large.Borsdorf & Hidalgo (2009) suggest that a localized exploration of the issue would need to take into consideration, aside from global drivers, those related to the state, society, individuals as well as those derived from traditional forms of confinement which were already in existence before the emergence of GCs in the region. This approach provides a pertinent insight as it focuses on the Latin American circumstances by incorporating three key variables that are particular to the region and that seem to replicate and span themselves from northern Mexican cities down to Chilean and Argentinian instances. ...
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The Gated Community (GC) phenomenon in Latin American cities has become an inherent element of their urban development, despite academical debate, their approach thrives within the housing market; not surprisingly, as some of the premises on which GCs are based, namely safety, control and supervision intersperse seamlessly with the insecure conditions of the contexts from which they arise. The current security crisis in Mexico, triggered in 2006 by the so-called war on drugs, has reached its peak with the highest insecurity rates in decades, representing a unique chance to study these interactions. Although the leading term of this research, Urban Agoraphobia, implies a causal dichotomy between the rise in the sense of fear amongst citizens and housing confinement as lineal consequence, I acknowledge that GCs represent a complex phenomenon, a hub of diverse factors and multidimensional processes held on four fundamental levels: global, social, individual and state-related. The focus of this dissertation is set on the individual plane and contributes, from the analysis of the GC’s resident’s perspective, experiences and perceptions, to a debate that has usually been limited to the scrutiny of other drivers, disregarding the role of dweller’s underlying fears, motivations and concerns. Assuming that the current ruling security model in Mexico tends to empower its commodification rather than its collective quality, this research draws upon the use of a methodological triangulation, along conceptual and contextual analyses, to test the hypothesis that insecurity plays an increasingly major role, leading citizens into the belief that acquiring a household in a controlled and surveilled community represents a counterweight against the feared environment of the open city. The focus of the analysis lies on the internal hatch of community ties as potential palliative for the provision of a sense of security, aiming to transcend the unidimensional discourse of GCs as defined mainly by their defensive apparatus. Residents’ perspectives acquired through ethnographical analyses may provide the chance to gain an essential view into a phenomenon that further consolidates without a critical study of its actual implications, not only for Mexican cities, but also for the Latin American and global contexts.
... These complex socio-residential patterns, within this growing inequality context (Piketty, 2019), respond to what authors such as Florida (2017) call a 'new urban crisis'. Indeed, residential mobility plays an essential but extremely complex role in the social reconfiguration of metropolitan spatial interactions, generating new 'fragmented' areas (Borsdorf and Hidalgo, 2009). However, socio-spatial fragmentation -with growing segregation, polarisation and the creation of new vulnerable areasis not the only form of urban fragmentation in the 21 st century. ...
Chapter
Within the context of the European Commission’s Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy for a transition to a green, smart, and affordable transport system, local governments of large cities have implemented private vehicle restriction policies. However, do these policies come into conflict with current metropolitan suburbanisation spatial trends? (i.e. the fact that a growing share of the urban population is residing in increasingly large and fragmented metropolitan peripheries). First, this text reflects on the reasons for the spatial reconfiguration of urban and metropolitan areas; the consequences of these changes on daily mobility; and the design of European and local policies for the transition to sustainable mobility, which—this is our hypothesis—can collide with the present population and residential mobility trends in urban cores and their peripheries. This hypothesis is verified in the second part of the chapter, taking the region of Madrid as a case study. Results show that population suburbanisation trends in the last decades have led to an increase in daily mobility, and particularly, in the use of private vehicles, despite policies hampering their use and promoting public transport.KeywordsSuburbanisationDaily mobilityMetropolitan areasMadridBarcelona
... The desire to live quiet and safe, safe environment for children, and life without fear and worries are the reasons behind exclusivity, individuality which reflects in the neoliberal societies are aiming to realize their lifestyles. The political and economic changes have also left their mark on the cities, these include the expansion and privatization of motorways, the establishment of private industrial parks, international hotel chains with integrated business facilities, shopping malls and hypermarkets, urban entertainment centres, multiplex cinemas and, last but not least, gated and accessrestricted residential quarters both in urban and suburban areas (Hidalgo B. A., 2009) ...
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Cohesive urban form is often forgotten aspect in the process of making cities that results in fragmentation of urban fabric at various levels. The urbanization pattern is affecting urban entirety at every level which subsequently is posing a threat to its sustainability. This study aims to comprehend the spatial fragmentation of cities at various levels and their manifestation in tangible and intangible forms. The methodology adopted was literature reviews, morphological study and comparison of fragmentation patterns in developed countries along with case studies conducted in Bhopal city. The study shows that the urban spatial divides in Indian cities are both tangible and intangible and can be observed at macro and micro scales. Although cultural and political factors are very dominant in Indian cities, their existence is subtle in fragmenting Neo-liberal and contemporary urban structure where globalization lead lifestyle changes, increasing individualization, privatization, unconscious spatial planning, regulations, infrastructural inserts, and the economic disparities are some of the key factors causing urban fragmentation.
... However, a global review of recent theoretical and empirical con-tributions shows that residential mobility does play an essential but extremely complex role in the social reconfiguration of metropolitan spatial interactions [87]. In the absence of more detailed studies, we believe that rather than a simplistic dichotomy between affluent cores and poor rings, residential mobility generates new "fragmented" spaces in a similar sense to that applied by Borsdorf and Hidalgo for Latin American urban areas [101], although with significant differences. Indeed, Latin American cities had a historical urban structure characterized by affluent people living in city cores and poor residents inhabiting peripheries [102]. ...
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After the deep economic crisis that began in 2008, in 2014, Spain started to show signs of recovery, entering the so-called “post-crisis” period. Though it has not yet reached the entire population, economic improvement has had a positive impact on the real estate market, economic activity, and employment. Residential mobility has also increased, but flows have become more unstable and complex. The direction of these flows, the reasons for moving, and the ages and socioeconomic categories of migrants have diversified. These complex “new mobility” patterns are reconfiguring the spatial distribution of the population in Spanish urban areas. On the basis of Continuous Register (Padrón Continuo) microdata, this paper primarily aims to study population changes in the 69 Spanish functional urban areas (FUAs) defined by the National Institute of Statistics (INE)/Eurostat, focusing on their population growth or decline in their centers and peripheries during the crisis (2011–2015) and post-crisis (2015–2019) phases. Then, the paper analyzes the five major Spanish metropolises (Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, and Bilbao) in greater depth. The findings confirm the hypothesis that, during the post-crisis period, the population growth of cores and rings and thus the spatial distribution of urban inhabitants have been changing, resulting in the growing demographic heterogeneity of Spanish urban areas that are diversifying both internally and compared to each other.
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