Watching the city grow: remittances and sprawl in intermediate Central American cities

The largest share of Latin American population lives in cities with less than half a million inhabitants. Since the publication of the Brundtland Report in the 1980s, small and intermediate cities have been regarded as places that hold out a promise for sustainable urban development. This paper explores current urbanization trends in intermediate cities in Central America. It describes the construction boom of gated communities for the middle class, in majority people with access to migrant remittances. It is argued that sustainable urbanization is challenged by the privatization of urban planning. The lack of strong governmental coordination of the housing market along with urban growth puts pressure on natural resources and on the livability of cities that used to be characterized by their human scale and rich natural environment. It is suggested that the market of existing housing should be made more attractive in order to control urban growth and prevent an oversupply of new expensive middle-class homes in the periphery, paralleled by a large number of abandoned existing houses in the urban core.