Abstract

DE MATTOS, Carlos A. Globalización y metamorfosis metropolitana en América Latina: De la ciudad a lo urbano generalizado. Rev. geogr. Norte Gd. [online]. 2010, n.47, pp. 81-104. ISSN 0718-3402.  doi: 10.4067/S0718-34022010000300005.

During the last decades of the past century, under the intertwined effects of a new technological system articulated around technologies of information and communications in one hand, and by the implementation of a governance approach based on broad economic liberalization in the other, a new phase of capitalist modernization has been launched, which has tended to cover virtually the entire planet. Throughout this phase, there was a progressive and widespread global expansion of the area of accumulation, as a constitutive feature of the globalization process. This initiated the formation of a new global economic geography, in which a growing number of large urban agglomerations ranked as major players and these clusters, as these agglomerations became part of the global dynamic, they begun to experience a real metamorphosis, in which is possible to process their evolution towards a widespread urban. Given this evolution, this paper seeks to determine the direction, the meaning and scope of this metamorphosis, and in particular, to characterize the main features that this process has shown in Latin American cities.

Keywords : Globalization; information revolution; metropolisation expanded urban metamorphosis; widespread urban.