Liminality in Latin America’s Global Cities: constructed and imagined borderlands of the formal and the informal

This Symposium focuses on multidisciplinary approaches to urban studies in Latin America, with an emphasis on the dynamics of contemporary urban-rural environments. This year the symposium focuses on the space "in-between" and transitions between formal and informal systems. Rapid development, rural-urban migration, and urban growth during recent decades have created conflicts between formal and informal economic and political systems, social structures, and built environments in Latin America's "global cities." Through a series of lectures during the semester and a summary panel discussion, the symposium will explore multiple aspects of: economic and environmental justice; race, ethnicity, and class; citizenship, the state, transnationalism, and rural-urban transformations, among other topics.

This Symposium is organized by the Department of Architecture and the Department of Anthropology at Iowa State University.

Contact Silvina Lopez Barrera at silvinal@iastate.edu