LASA 2014 – CALL FOR PAPERS

(Please see below a call for papers for the forthcoming Latin American Studies Association (LASA) Congress in Chicago, May 21-24, 2014)

Assembling the Contemporary Latin American City: South-South Circuits, Planning Exchanges, Policy Mobilities

In the wake of structural adjustment programs and region-wide reforms to democratize and decentralize central government authority, several Latin American cities became sites of increased experimentation and innovation in urban planning, urban development and public participation. Municipal authorities throughout the region reinvented land use, transportation, housing, and public space as planning tools to address a range of new and long-deferred infrastructural, social, and environmental issues. In this context, urban planning became a highly contentious and experimental arena where a range of actors –from public sector planners to NGOs to social movements to organized private actors- seized opportunities to push and legitimize new models of urban planning and development. Although North-South policy exchanges…