Rubén C. Lois-González – författare

This handbook presents the great contemporary challenges facing cities and urban spaces in Latin America and the Caribbean. The content of this multidisciplinary book is organized into four large sections focusing on the histories and trajectories of urban spatial development, inequality and displacement of urban populations, contemporary debates on urban policies, and the future of the city in this region. Scholars of diverse origins and specializations analyze Latin American and Caribbean cities showing that, despite their diversity, they share many characteristics and challenges and that there is value in systematizing this knowledge to both understand and explain them better and to promote increasing equity and sustainability.

The contributions in this handbook enhance the theoretical, empirical and methodological study of urbanization processes and urban policies of Latin America and the Caribbean in a global context, making it an important reference for scholars across the world. The book is designed to meet the interdisciplinary study and consultation needs of undergraduate and graduate students of architecture, urban design, urban planning, sociology, anthropology, political science, public administration, and more.

The book addresses the situation of the urban world in Spain and Portugal in the first quarter of the 21st century. Cities and metropolitan areas have become the key to understanding the organization of the territory and the economic system in the Iberian Peninsula. Iberian cities drive financial-based business, and they constitute the main centers of commerce and tourism, since urban and economic organization are presented as two directly related variables. This reality is defined by the primacy of three main cities (Madrid, Barcelona, and Lisbon), followed by six metropolitan areas with around one or two million inhabitants (Porto, Bilbao, Zaragoza, Valencia, Seville, and Malaga). As in the large capitals, problems of income inequality and access to housing, mobility, and government also affect the remaining regional urban systems. 

This book examines these urban areas through six major themes, which are developed in more than 25 chapters. The themes are urbanization, inequality, finance and housing markets, consumers and new residents, mobility, and governance. Contributions from leading geographers and urban planners from the most important universities of the Iberian Peninsula comprise this overview of metropolitan areas of Spain and Portugal.

This book presents the history and theoretical contributions of Brazilian geography since the late twentieth century and shows how this sphere of knowledge has been organically integrated with social and territorial issues and with social movements. The relationship between the subjects and objects of research in Brazilian geography has been centred on the understanding and transformation of realities marked by injustice and inequality. Against this backdrop, the geography of the country has developed by integrating, relating to, and forming part of those realities as it headed out into the streets. Brazilian geography continues to hold theoretical debate in high regard as a result of the influence of critical theory. This book thus covers the theoretical approaches in Brazilian geography, its different lines of research, and above all its character as manifested in culture and society.