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The new development agendas confirmed in the year 2015 evidence an increased global interest in cities and urban challenges. In Latin America and the Caribbean, cities have long been an established topic of study and debate. This exploration gives a brief overview of current research on urban development in the region and suggests fruitful avenues for future research. Following different ideological trends in twentieth-century urban studies, we currently see more pragmatic frameworks and a belief in technocratic solutions. Some scholars consider Latin American and Caribbean cities to be the world's new signposts in urban development, given their role as sites of innovations in politics, architecture and urban design; we see potential here for urban scholars of the region to move beyond technocratic language. In addition, we argue for an area studies approach to these cities that uses the framework of the region as a heuristic device to unsettle global urbanist epistemologies that privilege North-to-South mobilities in both policy and theory. Resumen: El desarrollo urbano latinoamericano y caribeñoLas nuevas agendas de desarrollo confirmadas en el año 2015 reflejan un mayor interés mundial en las ciudades y en los retos urbanos. En Latinoamérica y en el Caribe, las ciudades llevan mucho tiempo siendo un tema habitual de estudio y debate. Esta exploración ofrece un resumen breve de las investigaciones actuales sobre desarrollo urbano en la región y sugiere caminos fructíferos para futuras investigaciones. Siguiendo las distintas tendencias ideológicas en los estudios urbanos del siglo XX, actualmente observamos marcos más pragmáticos y una creencia en soluciones tecnocráticas. Algunos investigadores consideran las ciudades latinoamericanas y caribeñas como los nuevos referentes mundiales en desarrollo urbano, dado su papel como centros de innovación en política, arquitectura y diseño urbano; vemos potencial para que los investigadores urbanos de la región traspasen el discurso tecnocrático. Además, abogamos por un enfoque de estudios regionales para estas ciudades que utilice el marco de la región como un instrumento heurístico para desequilibrar las epistemologías urbanistas globales que privilegian las movilidades del Norte al Sur tanto en políticas como en teorías.

This book about the urban agenda in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) is timely as the world economy embraces the region with accelerated growth. An important element of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Economic Community, the GMS is expected to catch up with the rest of Asia by 2050. With urbanization levels still averaging about 30%, gross domestic product contributions of towns and cities have moved ahead to 50%–60%. By 2050, when urban areas in the GMS reach 64%–74%, urban gross domestic product will grow to an estimated 70%–80%. The challenge lies in consolidating and deepening development along the existing corridors and improving the environmental conditions to prepare for future green growth developments.

Although reviews of university lectures and courses have appeared in recent years in student newspapers on some of the more 'progressive' campuses of Britain and the U.S., one hopes that the practice will spread no further. Valuable though the occasional frank comment may be, nothing would normally persuade an academic to pronounce publicly on the content and presentation of a colleague's course. It was therefore with much hesitation that I agreed to follow the Open University's new course on Urban Development, and for a long time I was uncertain of my own ethical position in attempting to 'review' it. That this article should appear at all is the product of two considerations. Firstly, a course which is freely broadcast on radio and television can perhaps make less claim to confidentiality than a traditional university lecture course. Secondly, and this is much more important, the Urban Development course is generally so impressive that I have little but good to say of it, and with the Open University still something of a dirty word in traditional university circles, its successes deserve to be acknowledged.