All Rights ReservedSanchez Guzman, Santiago2025-02-122025-02-122016978-85-7785-551-1https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14235/2682Proceedings of the IV World Planning Schools Congress, July 3-8th, 2016 : Global crisis, planning and challenges to spatial justice in the north and in the southThe Latin America urbanization process has steadily risen during the last decade following demographic transformation trends seen during the last half of the 20th century, shifting from rural and regionally distributed communities to a more spatially centralized organization with vast attracting urban poles. Today, 80% of the continent’s population is concentrated in cities, placing the region as the most “urbanized” continent of the world with nearly 470 million urban inhabitants in 2010 (U.N. Habitat 2012). However, and despite this urban growth has triggered positive and negative economic, social and environmental impacts in all of the continent’s countries, socio-spatial and economic disparity indicators still place the continent as one of the most unequal regions in the world (Kingstone 2011; De Ferranti et al. 2003). Characterized by highly fragmented built environments, Latin American urban agglomerations still struggle with high poverty and criminality rates where spatial segregation based on socio-economic stratification have generated ghettos and gated communities. In these urban agglomerations, access to technical, financial, human and social resources, knowledge, justice, education and health have been accessible mainly to higher-income classes as “services”, whereas poorer communities are burdened with environmental risks and vulnerabilities. Faced with the complexity and multiple dimensions of these challenges, many Latin American cities (including those here analyzed) have become during the last 15 years important “laboratories” for innovative urban planning and policy making strategies, contributing new responses to questions of democratic management, socio-spatial inclusion and environmental challenges.EnglishopenAccessconferenceObject107-109