The Transition to Entrepreneurial Governance in a Middle-Sized Ecuadorian City

A key issue in territorial studies in recent years has been the transition in urban governance from managerialism to entrepreneurialism. North American and European cities were pioneers in this transition, and Latin American metropolises adapted their postulates to a different reality. Middle-sized cities in the region seem to have copied the intervention models of the nearest metropolis, uncritically applying them to a context characterized by important urban and social deficiencies and low standards of urban governance. The result has been a transition from no management to urban entrepreneurialism. In the case of one middle-sized city, this model has generated islands of investment attractive to foreign capital without resolving such long-standing problems as poverty, inequality, underemployment, and scarcity.