Urbicide: Towards a Conceptualization

Abstract

According to the United Nations (2018), since 2007, we are living in a predominantly urban world. By 2030, more people in all world regions will live in urban rather than rural environments, even in Asia and Africa. In Latin America, more than 80% of the population lives in cities. This chapter presents a systematization of contributions from various authors from different latitudes of the world to conceptualize urbicide. It examines different definitions and case studies, from North to South but with Latin American reality as a background, presenting perspectives and discussions around the concept. We are witnessing an era of growing cities, but they do not seem to have the capacity to house people facilitating their daily lives, but rather urbicidal practices and processes promote the destruction of the city. Therefore, this chapter suggests these could be understood as “urbicidal cities” by presenting other features of urbicide and different ways in which urbicidal violence is expressed, examining three cases of urbicide experiences from the South: (i) the eradication of slums (the case of the City of Buenos Aires); (ii) abandoned neighborhoods with empty houses (the cases of Querétaro, Monterrey, and Ecatepec in Mexico); (iii) urban catastrophes (the case of Port-au-Prince in Haiti).