China’s recent mini economic collapse this past summer caused mayhem not only within its borders but thousands of miles away in many Latin American countries. Ever since the early 2000s China has been one of the leading foreign investors across Latin America in countries such as Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela.
Este artículo ofrece un breve análisis sobre los motivos que han llevado a la construcción de urbanizaciones cerradas y sus impactos socio-espaciales en un contexto rural. Teniendo en cuenta que las urbanizaciones cerradas pueden ser consideradas el modelo urbanístico paradigmático que ha caracterizado el desarrollo de las ciudades latinoamericanas en los últimos años, este tipo de análisis no es nuevo en un contexto urbano.
Latin America and the Caribbean are the world’s most urbanized regions with an enormous 80 percent of the population living in urban cities.1 The rapid rate of this urbanization is resulting in cities being pushed to their functioning capacity. The need to efficiently and cost-effectively move people has resulted in many cities building Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems. This worldwide transportation trend uses benefits from traditional buses and rail lines to integrate a successful public transportation system.
Global oil prices are plummeting and they are falling fast. As a result, Venezuela, which has the world’s largest known crude oil supplies, is left with an economy that is barrelling out of control. On January 22, Venezuela's oil price fell to $21.50 a barrel, compared to over $100 a barrel in 2014 (Yahoo News, 2015). As prices continue to fall, Venezuela’s surplus of oil stocks grow. Rising oil surplus, however, does not translate into food, medical supplies, and political and domestic stability in Venezuela, as President Maduro is quickly finding out.
The pervasive problem of social inequality in Latin America, manifested in a huge chasm between immensely wealthy elites and poor masses, has its origins in the colonial era. For three hundred years, Spanish American economic elites were made up of immigrants from the Iberian peninsula who got rich by entering the highly lucrative enterprises of wholesale commerce and the production of export goods, such as silver and sugar.
Technology is not only at the heart of modern day society, but it also shapes economies as technologies bring the world closer with information, businesses and health care, for example.
