Second, we are starting Season II with an interview with the University of Sao Paulo's Eduardo Marques and cohosted by Marcela Alonso Ferreira. This was an timely conversation, in that Eduardo’s work examines the conditions and dynamics of redistributive urban policies and their changes in Sao Paulo. Understood broadly, it accounts for how progressive urban agendas become policy, and the conditions for their continuity, disruption or oscillation - a pretty fundamental question for the left....

¿Qué define un modelo de ciudad progresista? O más bien, ¿qué alternativas tienen los sectores progresistas y de izquierda - ampliamente entendida - para que las ciudades sean más justas, democráticas, y equitativas? Desde la elección de Gustavo Petro y Francia Marquez a la presidencia de Colombia, esta es la pregunta que nos hemos hecho entre muches que nos alineamos políticamente con la izquierda, y que amamos las ciudades.  Por eso quisimos hablar con Maria Mercedes Maldonado, quien...

This week we are talking to Martim Smolka, the man who has been the director of the Latin American and Caribbean program at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy since it was made, 27 years ago. This is no minor thing: four of our guests on this podcast have worked or published with the Lincoln Institute, and its impact on Latin American land policy is profound - Martim has truly played an important role in the history of land policy in Latin American cities. In this episode, Flavia Leite and...

¡Bienvenides a nuestro primer episodio en español! De ahora en adelante alternaremos episodios en español con los de inglés.  Empezamos esta nueva etapa hablando con la abogada, activista y académica Carla Escoffié sobre su libro “ El Derecho a la Vivienda en México: Derechos Homónimos”, explorando cómo se ha concebido y provisionado este derecho en el contexto Mexicano, pero también en América Latina. De ahí pasamos a hablar sobre cómo este derecho se puede realmente defender ante un...

In this episode, cohost Julian Gomez and I talk to Professor Amy Offner about her book, Sorting the Mixed Economy: The Rise and Fall of Welfare and Developmental States in the Americas. This is the "untold story of how welfare and development programs in the United States and Latin America produced the instruments of their own destruction". We focus on the history of Ciudad Kennedy in Bogotá, a borough in Bogotá built with support of the Alliance for Progress, and whose history reveals  how...

It has become common sense to assert that compact cities are better, among other things because agglomeration economies make them more productive. However, what if this apparently universal rule doesn’t always apply? In today’s episode, cohost David Lopez García and I talk to Prof. Paavo Monkkonen about an article he co-authored titled Compact cities and economic productivity in Mexico. We talk to Paavo about why Mexico’s economic structure and land-use needs mean that agglomeration economies...

Does property undermine development, and specifically, the construction of infrastructure? Along with co-host Aurora Echaverria, we discuss  Prof. Alisha Holland's article "Roadblocks: How Property Rights Undermine Development in Colombia".  Looking at the case of Colombia, Prof. Holland argues that strong property rights encourage opportunistic behaviors that undermine infrastructure investments, even though political economy models define property rights as essential for economic...

Can land use regulations end up incentivizing informal settlements, or mitigate? In this episode, cohosted by Flavia Leite of UC Berkeley, we interview Prof. Cynthia Goytia of Torcuato Di Tella University in Buenos Aires. We talk to Prof. Goytia about an ambitious multi-year project which charts the relationship between land use regulation and informal settlements in over 300 municipalities across 10 different Latin American countries. We talk about the prevalence of low density residential...

Our cohost today is Irene Farah and our second guest of the season is Prof. Calla Hummel. We are discussing Prof. Hummel’s recent published book, Why Informal Workers Organize: Contentious Politics, Enforcement, and the State. Given that over half of Latin America’s workers are estimated to be informal workers, a percentage that is estimated to have grown in the pandemic, the book’s exploration of why informal workers choose to organize – or not – is very timely and important. We talk to...

Are judges the new planners? In our first episode of "Sur-Urbano", we discuss Sergio Montero, Luisa Sotomayor and Natalia Ángel Cabo's recent article “Mobilizing Legal Expertise In and Against Cities: Urban Planning Amidst Increased Legal Action in Bogotá”. The authors note that there has been a rise in legal action around urban policy and planning in Colombia, which means that legal experts and judges often end up dictating things that used to be within the realm of planners – social...