Urban security in tension: Structural challenges of Latin American urbanism

Abstract

In recent decades, urban security has become one of the most pressing and complex issues in the debate on cities in Latin America. The region has some of the highest rates of urban violence in the world, and although levels vary between countries, the structural causes — inequality, spatial segregation, informality, and weak institutions — are widely shared. Traditionally approached from the police or judicial field, security is also beginning to be understood as an urban issue, linked to the city’s shape, management, and social life.

Recent literature agrees that violence and fear are not distributed randomly; they are concentrated in territories where precariousness, infrastructure deficits, low connectivity, and the absence of the state converge. Davis (2020) notes that in the Global South, contemporary forms of violence are combined with deregulated urbanization processes, generating territories of vulnerability where the precariousness of habitat and informality produce “cities at risk.” The spatial conditions — streets without continuity, poor lighting, urban voids, degraded equipment - affect both the occurrence of crime and the perception of insecurity. However, in recent years, there has been a rise in crime in urban centers, which has reduced their residential attractiveness and caused them to empty out during evenings and weekends.