Urban Responses to Climate Change in Latin America: Reasons,Challenges and Opportunities

Cities in Latin America have a crucial role to play in climate change. Urban areas are the main emitters of greenhouse gases, while being vulnerable to severe weather conditions such as floods, heat waves and tropical storms that environmental shifts are expected to trigger. Patricia Romero-Lankao outlines the background to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, while highlighting how development in Latin America presents unique opportunities for mitigating potential damage to the environment. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Latin America Meander: In Search of a New Civic Imagination

Teddy Cruz reviews the shifting political landscape of the last two decades in Latin America. Breaking from US dependency, the continent has charted an alternative course as municipalities have reconnected public policy, social justice and civic imagination. In order to address inequality, new models of urban development have been produced on sites of scarcity, and city mayors and administrations have been prepared to learn from each other through best practice. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Simultaneous Territories: Unveiling the Geographies of Latin American Cities

The harmonious, utopian image that housing in Latin America exuded across the world in the postwar years is very much at odds with the current view of the region, in which unbridled shantytowns dominate. Patricio del Real sets out to understand how such a rupture might have been possible: What was the process of exclusion at play in these Modernist projects? How does Modernism represent simultaneous territories in which emerging challenges to the social and political status quo were merely muffled by the architectural seduction of the 1950s?. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Rethinking Minha Casa,Minha Vida: The Resurgence of Public Space

Minha Casa Minha Vida (MCMV – My House, My Life) is a federal programme started in 2009 that provides low-interest finance to construction companies in an attempt to plug the housing crisis and roll out millions of homes for low-income families across Brazil. Architect Nanda Eskes of Atelier 77 and photographer André Vieira look at the impact that this fast-track, hands-off approach has had on the overall quality of housing provision and the urban environment; they also highlight some innovative initiatives that have been conceived to ameliorate its impact.     

Landscaping Brazil: The Legacy of Roberto Burle Marx

The Modernist landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx (1909–94) was a game changer, revolutionising the treatment of green space in Brazil. Here, architect Alexandre Hepner , co-founder of Estúdio ARKIZ, and Silvio Soares Macedo , a professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo, reflect on Burle Marx's enduring legacy.     

Salvador: The Struggle for Dialogue Within a Heritage City

Founded by the Portuguese in the mid-16th century as the colonial capital of Brazil, Salvador da Bahia on the northeast coast retains to this day a unique historical centre. Now a burgeoning metropolis, Salvador is also the country's third largest city with all the social, political and infrastructure problems and inequalities that accompany explosive urban growth. Sergio Ekerman , an architect and professor at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) in Salvador, describes how a lack of political will and consensus between private and public stakeholders is failing to produce the dialogue necessary for coherent urban development.     

The Open City and the e[ad] School of Architecture and Design

Located in Ritoque on central Chile's Pacific coast, Open City is a unique community established in the 1970s by faculty members from the nearby e[ad] school of architecture at the Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso. Here Professor David Jolly Monge , a founding member of the Open City, and Guest-Editors Christian Hermansen Cordua and Michael Hensel describe how the construction of structures on the site offer the collective community and students alike ongoing opportunities for ‘thinking, research and experimentation’.     

Recife: The Popular Struggle for a Better City

Sometimes dubbed Brazil's Venice, Recife is situated on a series of islands, articulated by waterways, on the country's northeast coast. The nation's ninth largest city, it has a historical core, but also shares many urban challenges common to other Brazilian metropolises: a beachfront blighted by speculative development, a semi-derelict port area and extensive zones of poor neighbourhoods. Architects and academics Circe Monteiro and Luiz Carvalho from the multidisciplinary research group INCITI (Research and Innovation for Cities) at the Federal University of Pernambuco, Recife, describe here why, despite a history of inconsistent development, this could now be Recife's moment to transform itself as the urban agenda comes to the fore.     

Failing the Informal City: How Rio de Janeiro's Mega Sporting Events Derailed the Legacy of Favela-Bairro

The eviction of thousands of inhabitants from informal settlements has been a regressive feature in the lead up to Rio 2016. Writer and curator Justin McGuirk describes why, on the eve of the Olympic Games, the government reverted to favela removals after the enlightened era of the Favela-Bairro in the 1990s, which saw informal communities upgraded and integrated into the formal city.     

Where to for Brazil's Cities? Citizen Empowerment or Global Marketing?

An awakening interest in public space in Brazilian cities is emphasising the value of existing civic areas. Guilherme Wisnik , a critic, curator and professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo, looks at the history and potential future of Brazil's urban spaces. He highlights how despite the introduction of innovative Modernist design in the mid-20th century, which forged ‘a new relationship between architecture, urbanism and landscape design’, more recently the country's cities have been subject to the vicissitudes of market and political forces.     

Linking the Formal and Informal: Favela Urbanisation and Social Housing in São Paulo

São Paulo is Brazil's largest city with over 20 million inhabitants, 14 per cent of which live in informal settlements. Here author, critic and editor Fernando Serapião describes various housing initiatives led by Elisabete França during her two stints at the city's Secretaria de Habitação (SEHAB – Housing Secretariat), which employed design as a tool to upgrade and more fully integrate the city's favelas in the formal city.     

Brasília: Life Beyond Utopia

Brasília is renowned the world over for its realisation of a visionary Modernist plan, designed by Brazilian architect and planner Lúcio Costa (1902–98). The reality of the city's design and its development, as explained by architect, author and academic researcher Thomas Deckker , is, however, much more complex. Contrary to public perception, Brasília falls a long way short of being ‘a unified city’, though it is one that has prospered with a growing population and stronger economy than other Brazilian cities.