Urban Regeneration and Revitalization in the Americas: Toward A Stable State

Today, with the publication of this book, the results of the debates and reflections are offered to a wider audience in order to share the important information presented at the seminar, and to promote the validity and impor- tance of the proposal to contribute to the social, political and economic sus- tainability of our countries through an urban project. [...] THE CITY AS A COMPONENT OF STABILITY AND SUSTAINABILITY In the last half century there has been a rapid increase in the urban popula- tion and the number of cities in all the countries of Latin America, to the extent that the region is primarily urban. [...] The second part of the book, “The Politics of Urban Identity: Patrimony and Memory in the Democratic System,” refers to the relationship of his- tory (memory) and culture (identity), which should lead to a strengthening of democracy, the construction and social appropriation of the symbolic powers as well as in the socialization of patrimony. [...] Historic centers also suffer the loss of commercial relocation through the movement of headquarters to new centers (in some cases, branches are left in the historic center), the creation of economic firms outside of the historic center, and of the precariousness of commerce, industry, and serv- ices through the informalization of these economic activities in the his- toric center. [...] The Appearance of Other Kinds of Centers The appearance of other kinds of centers has to do with the transformation of the historic center from a space of encounter to one of flows.12 An inter- esting case to analyze is the formation of longitudinal centers, where the cen- ter is not a concentric point but a succession of points in a line.