Capital Cities of Latin America: New Approaches and Scales

This special section reexamines the study of capital cities in modern Latin America with implications concerning the history of urban planning and urban imaginaries more broadly. The articles explore the dynamics of infrastructure, visual representation and imagination, designing and building university cities, and illegal settlements on closed landfills. The cities in question include Bogotá, Lima, Mexico City, Quito, and Santiago and the time periods studied range from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first centuries. While each piece offers an individual case study, when read as a collection, they also probe the meanings ascribed to and developed by capital cities and their inhabitants across different scales and eras. Our brief introductory essay places the special section into an historiographical context and poses some questions about where the issue may take the field in the future.