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Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- TABLES -- PREFACE -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- 1. Social Change in City and Nation -- 2. The Experience of Migration -- 3. Urban Careers -- 4. The Span of Social Relationships -- 5. External Relations and Neighborhood Organization -- 6. The Formation of a Voluntary Association: The Consumer Cooperative -- 7. The Organization of a Neighborhood -- 8. Reorganization of the Poor in an Urban Setting -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX

The paper examines possible sources of urban disorder and their impact on social disorganization in two times periods in Latin America. The first period is that of the region's rapid urbanization (c. 1950–1980) and the second is the current period of low rates of urbanization and slow urban growth, particularly true of the largest cities. Unlike in the US, Latin American urbanization in the first period produced social disorganization that in turn gave rise to social organization and local cohesion. The paper focuses on the intervening factors that mediate the link between poverty/inequality and social cohesion. These include the pattern of settlement of the city through different types of migration, the pattern of residential segregation in the city, and the nature of poverty. Social cohesion is defined in terms of the nature of social relationships and in terms of feelings of trust and identity with others at both neighborhood and city level. The spatial, demographic, and economic sources of disorder are hypothesized to have a positive impact on social cohesion in the first period relative to the second period when the impact is more negative.

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AbstractThis paper focuses on the similarities and differences between contemporary urban organisation and that of the 1960s in Guatemala City and other Latin American cities, mainly using data taken from a re-study of low-income neighbourhoods in Guatemala City. It looks at the impact of sharper patterns of residential segregation, changes in migration patterns, rising levels of crime and violence, and the increase in the relationships of the urban poor with external actors, such as governments and NGOs. Severe inequality persists, but is mediated by an improvement in living standards, by the range of consumer goods accessible to the poor, and by community- and family-based adaptation.

In comparing the urban poverty and marginality of the 1960s with their equivalents today, my assessment is necessarily influenced both by where I began my studies and by where I am doing research today. The contrast is both geographical, as well as in terms of levels of economic development. I began working in Guatemala City in the 1960s, one of the poorest Latin American countries with very low levels of urbanization, but with a rapid and highly concentrated urban growth. Today, I am looking at urban poverty in the Southern cone countries, which, in the 1960s, were already substantially urbanized and industrialized and which, with the exception of Chile, have experienced worsening poverty in recent decades. This highlights one important source of difference in the meaning of the "new" urban poverty in different Latin American countries. In comparison with countries such as Brazil, Central America, Mexico, and Peru, the working-and middle-class populations of Argentina and Uruguay are confrontinga much more severe deterioration in living standards, a more dramatic reconfiguration of job opportunities and, importantly, a memory of much better times. The urban populations of many Latin American countries, in contrast, have no "golden" benchmarks in the past with which to evaluate present crises. They have always struggled for survival. The ways in which these differences affect politics and the formal and informal ways in which people cope with crisis pose interesting research topics.