Spontaneous cities: Security and public space in Latin America

Abstract

This article aims to introduce the debate about the incompatibility of the “spontaneous city” as a project and the rational-normative-hegemonic city erected in our contemporary capitalist societies, embedded in global and local processes. Considering the reflections about the city and the spatial revolution remarked by Lefebvre, this paper summaries some of the current tendencies in the urbanism and the architecture that aim to create “secure spaces” and that constitute, indeed, a new commodity available only to wealthy groups of a given society. By questioning orthodox and commercial solutions to the problem of the delinquency and the criminality in Latin American scenarios, this article reaffirms the necessity of a broad critique to the process of construction and representation of crime, its geographies and its social causes.