International Symposium "Coping with City Shrinkage and Demographic Change - Lessons from around the Globe"
30.-31.03.2006 Dresden, Germany
Sergio Moraes, Itajai Valley University (Brasil)
Sergio Moraes
Abstract
Inequality and Shrinking Cities - a close relationship in Latin America
The territorial dynamics of the cities in Latin America cannot be understood without considering their unique contexts: their enormous socio-economic inequality, and the historical, economical, and political processes that lead to that context. The income inequality, the poverty increase and the exclusion process of the Latin-American urbanization are key points for the understanding of the population mobility that leads to the abandonment of significant areas in the metropolis and medium size cities of the continent.
Specifically in Brazil, the approval of the law in 2001 known as "Statute of the City" offered opportunities for public administrators to implement plans for a re-democratization of the use of the urban land and possibilities for the reversion of the degradation and shrinking process of old industrial areas. Unfortunately, that opportunity has been lost due to the urban land oligopoly, the lack of public resources and by the inadequate use of the legal tools of urban politics expressed in the "Statute of the City".
