Latin America at the crossroads / guest edited by Mariana Leguia

Simultaneous territories: unveiling the geographies of Latin American cities / Patricio del Real -- PREVI-Lima's time: positioning Proyecto experimento de vivienda in Peru's modern project / Sharif S. Kahatt -- The experimental housing project (PREVI), Lima: the making of a neighbourhood / Fernando García-Huidobro, Diego Torres Torriti and Nicolás Tugas -- Elemental: a do tank / Alejandro Aravena -- Tlacolula social housing, Oaxaca, Mexico / Dellekamp Arquitectos -- Governing change: the metropolitan revolution in Latin America / Ricky Burdett and Adam Kaasa -- The Olympic Games and the production of the public realm: Mexico City 1968 and Rio de Janeiro 2016 / Fernanda Canales -- Articulating the broken city and society / Jorge Mario Jáuregui -- Formalisation: an interview with Hernando de Soto / Angus Laurie -- Playgrounds: radical failure in the Amazon / Gary Leggett -- Urban responses to climate change in Latin America: reasons, challenges and opportunities / Patricia Romero-Lankao -- Filling the voids with popular imaginaries / Fernando de Mello Franco -- Civic building: Forte, Gimenes & Marcondes Ferraz Arquitetos (FGMF), São Paulo / FGMF -- A city talks: learning from Bogatá's revitalisation / Enrique Peñalosa -- Bogotá and Medellín: architecture and politics / Lorenzo Castro and Alejandro Echeverri -- From product to process: building on urban-think tank's approach to the informal city / Interview with Alfredo Brillembourg by Adriana Navarro-Sertich -- Latin American meander: in search of a new civic imagination / Teddy Cruz -- Supersudaca's Asia stories (AKA at home on the first, second, third, fourth and fifth worlds) / Supersudaca -- When cities become strategic / Saskia Sassen -- Organising communities for interdependent growth / Enrique Martin-Moreno -- Universities as mediators: the cases of Buenos Aires, Lima, Mexico and São Paulo / Mariana Leguía -- Counterpoint: Looking beyond informality / Daniela Fabricius.

The announcement of Rio de Janeiro as the 2016 Olympic host city has placed Latin America on the world's stage. Now, for the first time since the mid-20th century when Modernist ideas were undertaken on an epic scale, Latin America is the centre of international attention and architectural pilgrimage. The mass migrations from the countryside and the erection of informal settlements in the late 20th century left cities socially and spatially divided. As a response, in recent decades resourceful governments and practices have developed innovative approaches that are less to do with Utopian and totalitarian schemes and more to do with urban acupuncture, working within, rather than opposing, informality to stitch together disparate parts of the city. Once a blind spot in cities' representation, informality is now considered an asset to be understood and incorporated. As a result of globalization, Latin America is now once again set to go through major change. The solutions presented in this issue represent the vanguard in mitigating strong social and spatial divisions in cities across the world.