Latin America’s Urban Experience

I viewed this trip as the next step in my education on cities. The Global South deals with very different urban issues – and in some ways feels more relevant right now – than the West. Its population is exploding, with all 20 of the world’s fastest-

growing cities based in Africa or Asia. More importantly, this population growth has an urban bent; because rural living in the Global South remains tough, people flood into urban centers. So for someone interested in cities, the Global South is where to be.

Beyond that, there were three main goals going into the trip. One is to expand my journalistic coverage, exploring how Global South cities inform Market Urbanism. This theory, which I’ve covered extensively as founder of Market Urbanism Report, applies free-market policy ideas to city issues. Rooted from the classical liberal tradition, Market Urbanism calls for private-

sector actions that create organic growth and voluntary exchange within cities, not ones enforced by government bureaucracy. I want to see how this high-level theory does (or does not) work in developing countries.

A second goal of my trip is to find investment opportunities, namely in a genre of privatized development that’s come to be called “startup cities.” These are common across the Global South, and I describe them below.

A third goal is to put on my consulting hat and discern which Global South urbanism lessons should be adopted by U.S. cities. That’s the point of this essay.