Urban extractivism under situations of dependency: the role of corporate power in shaping peripheral urbanization

Keywords: southern urbanism, operations of capital, business power, elites, dependency theory
Abstract Type: Virtual Paper Abstract

Abstract

Given late capitalism's tendency toward capital concentration, urban theory has a surprising blind spot when it comes to the systematic analysis and conceptualization of big business and large corporations in urban development. It is especially true in Latin America, where domestic and transnational corporations dominate the political economies and shape city planning, infrastructure development, and urban development, and are crucial to peripheral urbanization. My paper addresses this gap in the literature by combining theoretical insights from classical and new dependency theory, the varieties of capitalism school, and Marxist urban political economy.