GLOBALIZATION, URBAN SPACE AND CONSUMPTION

Abstract

The objective of this essay is to explain the transformation of the Latin American city from the transition of the import substitution model to neoliberalism. In this structural context, the restructuring of urban spaces is subordinated to privatization, financing of the economy, administration and manipulation of crises and investment of state redistribution. In the economic model based on the free market, some of the characteristics are: the change from centralization to decentralization, segregation and spatial integration resulting from the disorderly growth of Latin American cities, the decrease in the relative size of the main cities, the evolution of the labor market and unemployment, the deterioration in the conditions of social inequality and the increase in crime and victimization. Globalization reorganizes the spaces of capital geographically by inducing a deep fragmentation of spaces where historical centers converted into spaces of commercial exchange of goods and services and the spaces built by global capital coexist: malls, shopping centers, urban entertainment centers and business parks. Consumption acquires centrality by transcending economic need and redefining urban cultural patterns.