Urban Design Lab Handbook (Dialogue-Oriented Urban Transformation Processes and Practical Approaches from Latin America and the Caribbean)

After North America, the second-most urbanized region in the world is Latin America and the Caribbean, 78% of whose population lives in cities. The result of five years of recent research by Vienna’s Urban Design Lab, this handbook contextualizes emergent planning issues at hand in the region, where cities are continuing to grow at considerably high rates. Case studies conducted between 2013 and 2018 in over 20 cities, accompanied by 250 color illustrations, offer a detailed survey of the issues facing Latin American and Caribbean urban planning in the 2010s.

Topics covered include social participation in the planning process, the role of culture in urban transformation, “human-scale” city development, and creative reinterpretation of existing municipal structures. Several detailed examinations of specific buildings—including Panamanian and Argentinian railway stations, airports and gardens—present focused and practical accounts of these new urban strategies.