City Financing and Social Urbanism in Latin America: The Importance of Good Fiscal Management

Abstract

Each territory and culture within Latin American cities has unique characteristics which sometimes make it difficult to define a common ground between their urban dynamics. However, through more specialized reading, some dysfunctional symptoms can be perceived as recurrent patterns among South American urban systems. This includes the urgency for decent affordable housing and basic infrastructure and the need for public facilities and transportation systems in the most peripheral and vulnerable regions of larger cities.

In developing countries, the highest population densities are found precisely in highly socially vulnerable informal territories on the cities’ peripheries; at the same time, urban centers do not fully utilize their capacity in terms of existing infrastructure. It is a land use unbalance that reflects the incongruity of urban economic development.

An analysis of these territories under the light of social urbanism shows that the priority of the public sector must be...