URBAN SERVICES AND URBANIZATION IN LATIN AMERICA: THE GUIDANCE BETWEEN WELFARE AND RESTRUCTURING

This article contributes to the study of urban services in Latin America, establishing the central terms of an analytical discourse. To do so, the services are related with capitalist development, particularly in the reproduction of economic and social relations in cities. It proposes to distinguish two phases of this development: the welfare state and neoliberal restructuring, focusing the analysis on the processes of services commodification and / or de-commodification, and economic redistribution associated with them. On the other hand, this article aims to identify the particularities of capitalist development in Latin America and its impact on urbanization, which are consolidated in the emergence of the "popular urbanization". Urban services are analyzed in relation to that urbanization. The article introduces the notion of orientation of urban services. This is a historical process of structural basis, directed in a commercial or no-commercial sense, and with instruments applied in concrete historical way. Finally, the article discusses the situations in popular urbanization in Latin America in two moments: import substitution development and neoliberal restructuring, to end with brief conclusions on urban services analysis.