My first remarks emphasized distinctions between North and South, and center and periphery to dramatize the significance of urban inequalities. I agree with others that these categories are no longer adequate (actually they never were) to fully understand the reality in the Americas. But I don't think a that the categories are entirely irrelevant .
By any objective measure per capita income, availability of basic urban services, personal security, unemployment, etc. the gap between the U.S. and Canada on the one hand, and every single Latin American nation, without exception, on the other, is yawning.

What the North South dichotomy fails to explain are the growing gaps within the North and the growing gaps within the South.
The economic giants in the South Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Venezuela are far out ahead of most of the Central American and Andean nations. They are also the most urbanized nations in the region. And within these four leading nations, the rural urban, intra regional and intra metropolitan gaps are growing. So while reality can't simply be split in two, it is fractured into many contradictions which together make up a disarticulated and unequal urban/social system.

At the level of individual metropolitan regions, there remains in the U.S. a very clear and definable gap between central cities and suburbs, despite some recent counter trends. The divide is economic and racial (race is another real dichotomy; the Rainbow notwithstanding, "Race Matters" , as we saw in the OJ trial ). The central city/suburban divide is not as clearly defined in Latin American cities; the centers and peripheries of many metropolitan areas include high income enclaves as well as low income barrios . But who can deny the enormous economic gulf between elite enclaves and barrios , no matter where they're located?
If the U.S. model of social and spatial segregation through sprawl takes hold, the spatial pattern may change. But that really doesn't matter much; it's the unequal social pattern that's the basic problem , regardless of what spatial form it takes .

I found the analysis by Saskia Sassen/Arturo Sanchez on primacy very helpful in explaining the question of urban inequalities. They use the term primacy in a broad sense to indicate a structural imbalance in the development and distribution of economic resources and population. Important is their observation that Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, for example, are becoming inserted in the new international division of labor in a different way than other countries. A fuller discussion of the diverse modes of insertion in the global system is necessary for a fuller understanding of urban inequalities.

I believe Richard Ingersoll's concerns about the "obsolescence of space and form" are well grounded. Privatization of public spaces and the advance of cyberspace together may destroy whatever remains of the polis. But I feel he is much too pessimistic. We also need to look at the very real constraints on the "enclaving" process and on cyberspace. There are many indications that these processes are not well advanced. Against the dominant trend, large public demonstrations still take place in Mexico City's central plaza. Hundreds of thousands turned out for Lula in Brazil. Popular organizations in El Salvador recently won back public places they had lost during the decade long war. As illustrated most recently by the downfall of South African apartheid, throughout history labor has proven capable of transforming enclave systems, sooner or later, into more open systems.

The "enclaving" process is constrained not only by the political actions of labor but also by the needs of expanding capitalist production and circulation. Elites have not yet found a way to completely isolate themselves physically from labor, either in the realm of production or consumption. Indeed, how could they? Elite enclaves are built and maintained by labor, and their products are consumed by labor. Capitalists who dream of a world without labor would deprive themselves of the one element needed for their own reproduction.

The reality in Latin America is that the vast majority of people are only marginally affected by the information age in their daily lives. If you live in a barriada in Lima, you may have a TV and radio, and even an intermittently operat ing phone line. But chances are you're as far away from the Internet as you are from Jupiter. And what does privatizing space mean in a neighborhood where land has practically no value on the market? Also, thereare a lot of public (used by the public, and not necessarily government owned) spaces in the barriadas , as compared to the privatized luxury enclaves in Miraflores. The thousands of barriada residents who have fought pitched battles against displacement know very well the meaning of place.

In sum, while it often appears quite gloomy when looking at the current global situation, there is a long way to go before the placeless, privatized American dream becomes a global reality. History isn't made until it's made.

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