Cities from Scratch: Poverty and Informality in Urban Latin America

(Duke University Press) The shantytowns in which most of Latin America’s urban poor live have become permanent fixtures in the urban landscape, where they are essential players in struggles over economic transformation, democratization, identity politics, and the drug and arms trade. This collection of essays offers an interdisciplinary examination of recent research from cities across Latin America. McCann is an associate professor of history at Georgetown University.