The city is a central figure in social thought (Gorelik, 2022) and in Latin American debates (Svampa, 2016). Urbanization processes in Latin America have constituted a prism for social theory (Sassen, 2012), that is, a privileged space for understanding and debating trends in the reconfiguration of social life. In the region, we have a rich and long-standing body of key concepts for thinking about urban processes and inequalities in a situated way, which date back to debates about "dependent urbanization" (Quijano, 1967, 1968), "marginality" (Lomnitz, 1975), "peripheries" (Caldeira, 1984), and "urban exploitation" (Kowarick, 1979), among others. Not without discontinuities, resulting from dictatorial governments and economic and institutional crises, this fruitful tradition of Latin American urban studies continues to this day, making significant contributions in diverse dimensions such as "peripheral urbanization" (Caldeira, 2017), "informality" (Cravino, 2018), "mobilities" (Jirón, 2010; Lulle and Di Virgilio, 2021), "financialization" (Rolnik, 2021), among others.

However, urban studies are dominated by a “restricted geography of theory” which, as postcolonial criticism points out (Robinson, 2002; Roy, 2013), takes the experiences and histories of cities in the Global North as the norm for the urban, the modern, and the global, concluding that cities in other latitudes, associated with underdevelopment, tradition, and informality, belong to a different and deficient category of city (Segura, 2021). “Opening up” the geography of theory implies recognizing the heterogeneity, multiplicity, and asymmetries of contemporary metropolitan modernities, situating knowledge from the Global South with a view to destabilizing recurrent binaries in urban theory such as modern/traditional, West/Third World, and global/local.

The situated nature of urban knowledge presents us with the epistemological challenge of avoiding both the pitfalls of universality and the incommensurability of urban processes. In this sense, CLACSO constitutes an unparalleled platform for deepening the dialogue on urbanism at the regional level, with the aim of developing a diagnosis and prognosis regarding urban processes in the production and reproduction of inequalities and injustices, as well as the mechanisms for reversing them.

Latin American cities have undergone unique processes linked to the historical conditions that shaped their territories, as well as to colonial legacies, modernization projects, international dependency, and neoliberal economic restructuring, among other factors. These processes have generated profound inequalities that are structural and persistent. At the same time, they have given rise to resistance movements and social struggles aimed at securing access to and continued presence in the city for various marginalized sectors. This dual condition, long-standing and constantly evolving, is evident, on the one hand, in the urban structure resulting from the urbanization processes of Latin American and Caribbean cities and, on the other hand, in the urban processes in which diverse actors with asymmetrical relationships and conflicting perspectives on the city (state, market, social and political organizations, activist groups, residents, etc.) engage in the unfolding of conflicting logics and dynamics surrounding social and urban (in)equalities and (in)justices.

It is especially important to consider the socio-spatial dynamics of inequalities and injustices that relate both to the prevailing urbanization trends and their effects on various dimensions of social life (labor, education, environment, gender) and to situated urban processes that range from the expulsion and displacement of the population due to dynamics such as gentrification, public policies on "informal" residential spaces, the increase in housing costs, among others, to the various forms of resistance to these dynamics and the organizations (neighborhood, community, gender, etc.) that contest access, permanence and enjoyment of the city. In this regard, a vast body of literature has indicated in recent years (Prévot-Schapira, 2001; Janoschka, 2002; Portes, Caldeira, 2007; Ziccardi, 2014; Duhau and Giglia, 2008; De Mattos, 2010; Di Virgilio and Perelman, 2014; Saraví, 2015; Rojas-Symmes, 2017) that urbanization processes in the most urbanized and unequal continent in the world have changed drastically in recent decades. Instead of directly expressing migratory and demographic processes as occurred during much of the 20th century, the predominant patterns of spatialization and urban growth must be understood as an articulated result of novel (and tendentially exclusionary) forms of: new market and financial logics, new ways of producing urban land, new orientations in public policies, and changes in lifestyles and household compositions, among others.

Simultaneously with these socio-territorial processes, the emergence of different forms and scales of social organization is evident (from neighborhood organizations to national and international political coalitions, including various social movements) that, starting from urban demands and disputes, challenge injustices and inequalities and aspire to a horizon of social equality and recognition of diversity and rights. In this regard, since the beginning of the 21st century, a body of research on urban and political processes in Latin American cities has highlighted the constitution—to use Holston's (2009) expression—of "insurgent citizens," although this is rooted in previous traditions of struggle (Merklen, 2005; Grimson, 2009). On the one hand, we are faced with movements whose struggle does not begin in the central square but in the periphery, centered around rights to access a dignified life (housing, property, water, security, transportation, etc.) through which they not only build a vast new city, but also a new type of citizenship (Agier, 2015). But we are also faced with struggles to remain in central spaces and urban centers, both related to housing and to public space and its uses, for example, street vending, but also regarding youth and cultural practices such as hip hop, graffiti, and social gatherings, among others (Magnani, 2005; Moctezuma, 2021). Added to this is the growing relevance of feminist and LGBTQ+ collectives that, in line with feminist geography (Kern, 2020), question the patriarchal and gendered space-time ordering of cities (Falú, 2009) and demand the removal of barriers for equal access and permanence, as well as the coexistence of sex-gender diversities in the space of cities.

This Working Group aims to continue the work of previous Working Groups focused on urban issues: a) Habitat and Social Inclusion Working Group, coordinated by Teolinda Bolívar and Jaime Erazo; b) Right to the City Working Group, coordinated by Fernando Carrión and María Cristina Cravino; c) Urban Inequalities Working Group, coordinated by Manuel Dammert; and d) Latin American Urban Processes: (In)justices and (In)equalities Working Group, initially coordinated by Paulina Cepeda and Ramiro Segura. This proposal shares with these previous Working Groups a field of dialogue and an ever-growing network of institutions and researchers from the region at different stages of their professional careers, with the goal of generating knowledge and fostering debate around urban studies in Latin America.

Analyzing urban processes involves observing the constantly changing territory, its heterogeneous and unequal inhabitants and, mainly, their daily practices, the tensions that run through them and the collective urban production resulting from the conflictive encounter between unequal agents, interests and real estate ventures, as well as public and private institutions at various scales (Delgadillo, 2014; Rodríguez and Di Virgilio, 2016; Ziccardi, 2020; Jirón et al., 2021; Rojas-Symmes, 2022). The resulting unequal urban configurations (Reygadas, 2008, 2020; Saraví, 2015; Dammert, 2018; Segura, 2020) are part of a negotiation process between the forces, interests, and power of actors in the market, the state, and society, within a context of multiple, tense urban realities. Among these, exclusion and expulsion, on the one hand, and resistance and self-management, on the other, stand out as poles of a complex and conflictive continuum. The continuation of a working group focused on urban processes resulting from the intersection of urbanization and (in)equality and (in)justice in Latin America seeks to advance at least three intertwined issues that deserve highlighting:

Axis 1. Urban commodification and extractivism:

In recent years, processes of commodification, speculation, and financialization of access to land and housing, as well as urban services and public space, have intensified. The logic of economic exchange tends to expand even into practices and strategies that (although always fraught with contradictions and ambivalences) had been characterized primarily by social bonds, reciprocity, and disputes surrounding space as a use good, rather than as an exchange good. In this context, new logics of dispossession, hoarding, exploitation, and rent-seeking are emerging in different dimensions of urban production and experience, and are perpetrated by diverse actors: investors, entrepreneurs, property owners, leaders of grassroots organizations, and criminal actors, among others.

Axis 2. Right to the city:

The formulation of the right to the city has circulated widely in academic debates, public policy programs, and social movements. Its uses and conceptualizations are diverse and, in many cases, contradictory and even opposing: sometimes it functions as an emancipatory horizon, and at other times it is framed within an institutional language that, while responding to the demands and concerns of social actors, also allows for the management and limitation of demands from a governmental perspective. Thus, the right to the city refers both to processes of social struggle and contemporary citizenship—such as the defense of access to affordable housing, neighborhood permanence, and the participation of marginalized sectors in decisions about urban conservation and transformation; resistance to evictions and displacements associated with rising land prices; and the confrontation of rent-seeking and financialization dynamics that turn the city and housing into assets and investment vehicles— as well as social policies and programs that have sought (with different emphasis and scope) to reduce socio-spatial inequalities through social housing policies, as well as through the development of urban infrastructure and public services aimed at reducing inequalities and physically and socially integrating popular neighborhoods.

Axis 3: Unequal urban mobilities:

Latin American cities are undergoing significant transformations related to urban mobility. Available infrastructure, its production and management, its unequal distribution across the territory, and the quality of services reveal historical gaps in access, safety, and the experience of daily commutes. These gaps not only shape travel times and routes but also produce unequal conditions of exposure to risks, access to urban opportunities, and use of public space, which are further compounded by differences related to gender, age, class, physical appearance, disability, racialization, and location.

These three analytical dimensions for addressing (in)equalities and (in)justices constitute an emergent property of the collective work developed in the previous three years of the GT and share the question of gender relations and care regimes as a cross-cutting analytical dimension.

It is expected that progress on these issues will be made through a combination of various instances, tools, and support. First, progress will be made in organizing the researchers into three (non-exclusive) subgroups around the three analytical dimensions to advance lines of dialogue and cooperation with a view to consolidating the Latin American and comparative dimension of the exploration of urban processes. Secondly, a battery of virtual devices (meetings, workshops, spaces for debate and encounter, among others) are intended to energize and multiply dialogues, involving civil, social and political organizations, as well as representatives of public bodies and institutions. Within these devices, the continued production of the bimonthly podcast of the GT "Spoken Cities" is planned. An oral archive of Latin American urban studies? (created by Paulina Cepeda and Ramiro Segura). We will also continue the "Continuing Education Seminar", a virtual forum that in this period will be coordinated by Manuel Dammert and Hernando Sáenz, in which young researchers present and discuss their research progress. Likewise, within this axis are located a set of activities planned for the next three years to strengthen the link with other CLACSO Working Groups, the University Network of Urban Studies of Ecuador (CIVITIC), regional research networks such as MECILA and CALAS, institutions such as the Center for Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies (CLACLS) of the City University of New York (CUNY), the International Associated Laboratory "The territorial question in France and Argentina: lifestyles, markets and environment in comparative perspective" (LIA EMMA), among others. Third, at least two annual hybrid GT seminars will be organized, with venues already confirmed: Mexico City in 2026 and Santiago de Chile in 2027. Each of these seminars will be organized in three defined spaces: colloquium of young researchers, open call thematic tables and central debates with experts, and field trips with local researchers, as already happened in Bogotá (2024) and Asunción (2025). Furthermore, the co-organization of at least three international seminars (hybrid or virtual) is planned in conjunction with the CLACSO Working Groups on Poverty and Social Policies. (as already happened in Buenos Aires in 2023) and "Inequalities and social change?" whose foci are: 1. International seminar "Urban social policies, inequalities and forms of state intervention"; 2. International Seminar – Social, Economic and Urban Crisis. The new agenda of public policies in Latin America and the Caribbean?; and 3. International Forum? From left to right. The reconfiguration of the social and urban agenda in Latin America and the Caribbean? Finally, the aim is to close the three years of the GT with at least two (2) dossiers in scientific journals on commodification and urban extractivism, the right to the city and/or unequal urban mobilities (it is planned to propose dossiers in journals such as Transporte y Territorio, Quid 16, IJJUR, Revista Mexicana de Sociología, Tramas y Redes) and one (1) collective book that compiles the most significant contributions to address contemporary urban processes in/of Latin American cities.