Everyday sectarianism in urban Lebanon: infrastructures, public services, and power

Abstract

scientists and planners, that the only possible path to transformation was through political radicalization. While planners and urban experts would not refrain from urban planning ideals, dependency theory provided a framework to explain that the reformist resolution to urban contradictions was impossible. Cuba, isolated from the rest of Pan-American organizations and debates on urban planning, provided a space of solace, even when the Cuban Revolution preceded the political radicalization of Chile: the overarching authority of the revolutionary Cuban state and its control over land tenure and property became a refuge for those thinkers still committed to planning as a tool for economic development and growth. The book’s third part analyses three critical Latin American intellectuals in the definition of the Latin American City as a historical and cultural construction: José Luis Romero, Richard Morse, and Angel Rama. Gorelik establishes a Latin American lineage in urban history that differs from the dominant approaches from the United States or Europe. Three key figures that the English reader should recover as well. This is a fundamental book for those who work on the production and circulation of ideas on planning in the second half of the twentieth century. While Gorelik is not keen on transnational history, urban scholars working within that perspective will find a breathtaking, overarching narrative that systematizes and organizes many institutions, figures, and ideas that plagued the post-war developmental Pan-American moment. Gorelik opened this line of inquiry several years ago, and this book is the outcome of all those years of work. More than closing the debate, his book opens more questions and possible circuits of ideas and policymaking for future research.