Latin American Cities and Globalisation: Change and Permanency in the Context of Development Expectations

Some interesting changes have been taking place in the urbanisation processes of Latin American countries in the past few decades, some of which are definitely related to global processes. The empirical evidence of this relation is hard to pin down due to the lack of data sources, but in this paper it is suggested that the growth in volume and diversity of mobility relations between cities can be indicators of an overlapping of urban phenomena and global processes. A diachronic analysis (1970-2008) of Latin American air transport connectivity is used to evaluate the growth and the degree of cohesion of the internal relational systems and changes and continuities in the external relational systems. Even though air transport is an indicator to be complemented with other indicators when analysing global relations, the results indicate a continuation of existing Latin American structures (centralism and polarisation) and the emergence of new forms of dependence (tourism and migration), which should not be overlooked in the study of global relational systems.