In 2025, approximately 23 million people lived in the São Paulo metropolitan area, making it the biggest in Latin America and the Caribbean and the sixth most populated in the world. The homonymous state of São Paulo was also the most populous federal entity in the country. The second place for the region was Mexico City with 22.75 million inhabitants. Brazil's cities Brazil is home to two large metropolises, only counting the population within the city limits, São Paulo had approximately 11.45 million inhabitants, and Rio de Janeiro around 6.21 million inhabitants. It also contains a number of smaller, but well known cities such as Brasília, Salvador, Belo Horizonte and many others, which report between 2 and 3 million inhabitants each. As a result, the country's population is primarily urban, with nearly 88 percent of inhabitants living in cities. Mexico City Mexico City's metropolitan area ranks sevenths in the ranking of most populated cities in the world. Founded over the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan in 1521 after the Spanish conquest as the capital of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, the city still stands as one of the most important in Latin America. Nevertheless, the preeminent economic, political, and cultural position of Mexico City has not prevented the metropolis from suffering the problems affecting the rest of the country, namely, inequality and violence. Only in 2023, the city registered a crime incidence of 52,723 reported cases for every 100,000 inhabitants and around 24 percent of the population lived under the poverty line.

As of 2023, the top five most densely populated cities in Latin America and the Caribbean were in Colombia. The capital, Bogotá, ranked first with over ****** inhabitants per square kilometer.

This dataset supplements the scientific article by Pierri-Daunt and Siedentop (2025), which introduces a classification system for 18 cities in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), encompassing a total of 253 municipalities. It provides the dataset used for the classification, along with the cluster numbers assigned to each group.

The dataset combines various socioeconomic, demographic, and spatial characteristics of built-up areas at two scales of analysis: the city–regional scale (Data.city.origin.3HC.csv) and the municipal scale (Data.munic.orig.3HC.csv). Its purpose is to classify, compare, and identify cities and municipalities with similar typological features.

A complete description of the methodology and data sources can be found in README.txt and dataset_description_sources_information_PIerriDaunt_ISFULAC.pdf.

We identified three primary categories. City scale: Cluster 1 (saturated and well-serviced cities); Cluster 2 (vulnerabilized and dense cities); Cluster 3 (low-service and fragmented cities); Municipal scale: Cluster 1 (central, infilling, dense and well-serviced municipalities); Cluster 2 (building up at the edge and vulnerabilized); Cluster 3 (expanding, marginalized and low-density).

As of 2024, three out of ten Latin American and Caribbean cities with the highest local purchasing power were located in Mexico. With an index score of 51.3, people in Querétaro had the highest domestic purchasing power in Mexico. In South America, the city with the highest domestic purchasing power for 2024 was Montevideo, scoring 53 index points.

Latin American cities face many problems that compromise them from different angles such as lack of infrastructure, government fragmentation, and environmental degradation. At the same time, each city tries to come up with its own solutions, but there are so many difficulties that in many cases it is difficult to keep attention and efforts focused on all these directions. For these reasons, this research aims to define some of the most common problems faced by cities in Latin America. Disseminating these similarities could help to face those problems, since, if local governments recognize that they face the same situations as their neighbors, they could organize themselves to study them and find solutions. To achieve these objectives, this research reviewed the diagnoses made by hundreds of Best Practice proposals collected in the libraries of UN Habitat and the Dubai International Award for Best Practices. Based on these results, this research built a proposal for the contest "Participatory Projects in Public Space Contest" organized in commemoration of the 450 years of Caracas. This proposal served as a case study where some of these cross-cutting problems in the region were explored. At the same time, the contest served as a framework to make these results public and promote discussion on some of these important issues. Finally, this research links different stages and synthesizes some important efforts that are intended to serve as a reference framework to better understand serious and everyday problems that are manifested in Latin American cities.

Context: Currently it is not well understood to what extent there are obesity inequalities by socioeconomic status (SES) in urban Latin America. Objective: This study reviewed the literature assessing associations between overweight, obesity and SES in adults. Data sources: Pubmed and Scielo databases. Data extraction: Data extraction was conducted using the PRISMA guidelines. We extracted data on the direction of the association between SES (e.g. education and income), overweight (BMI ≥25 and <30 kg/m2) and obesity (BMI≥30 kg/m2) in Latin American urban regions. Relative differences between low and high SES groups were assessed and defined a priori as significant at p<0.05. Data analysis: Thirty-one studies met our inclusion criteria and most were conducted in Brazil (22) and Mexico. Only one study presented just non-significant associations. Fifty percent of associations between education or income and overweight were negative/inverse. Regarding obesity, 80% were negative and 20% positive. Most negative associations were found in women. Associations between BMI and SES usually followed the same pattern, except in men where they varied depending on the indicator used. Conclusion: Low SES individuals in urban Latin America, especially women, have higher BMI levels highlighting the need for interventions.

As of mid-2025, Port of Spain ranked as the second Latin American and Caribbean city with the highest cost of living. The capital of ******************* obtained an index score of ****, followed by the ********* capital, with **** points.

IntroductionWe aimed to examine utilitarian bicycle use among adults from 18 large Latin American cities and its association with socio-economic position (education and income) between 2008 and 2018.MethodsData came from yearly cross-sectional surveys collected by the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF). A total of 77,765 survey respondents with complete data were used to estimate multilevel logistic regression models with city as random intercept and year as random slope.ResultsIndividuals with high education and high-income levels had lower odds of using a bicycle compared with participants with lower education and income levels. These associations, however, changed over time with the odds of bicycle use increasing for all groups, especially among individuals with the highest education and income levels.DiscussionOur results confirm the broadening appeal of bicycling across socio-economic positions in several Latin American cities and reinforce the importance of considering policies aimed at supporting and enhancing bicycle travel for all users.

70 Latin American cities were selected for the index, including cities in Latin America with population greater than 750,000 according to the report conducted by the United Nations Population Division (UNPD 2011). Urban area definitions follow the United Nation’s Population Division (UNPD 2011). For urban extent, we used the Global Rural-Urban Mapping Project (GRUMP) urban extents based on nighttime light imagery and ancillary datasets (CIESIN et al. 2004, Balk 2009). Cities with connected GRUMP urban extents, such as Maracay, Caracas, and Valencia (Colombia), were divided based on the Global Administrative Database (GADM 2012) which defines municipal urban administrative areas. Havana was not included in the GRUMP dataset, and thus its urban extent was also defined with GADM (2012).

For riverine flooding, the unit of analysis was the city “floodshed†, comprised of all watersheds in the upstream contributing area to the urban extent of that city. Urban extents were defined by the GRUMP 2000 data set, and floodsheds delineated based on the HydroSHEDs digital elevation model. Additional watersheds were added to city floodsheds in special cases where a downstream river posed flooding threats to a city (e.g., Rio Jaqui for Porto Alegre, Brazil). A total of 780 watersheds were analyzed for 70 cities.

In 2025, San Miguel de Allende in Mexico was named the top destination in Latin America by travelers, receiving a score of 93.33. The Mexican capital followed in second place with a score of nearly 91 points.

Abstract The city territory is the locus of housing market agents’ actions, which are inducers of the cities’ demographic differentiation process. This study aimed to analyze the idea that the market action establishes a new logic of urban occupation. Our goal is to understand the relationship between the action of the housing market in the city of Recife-PE and the process of gentrification resulting therefrom. We conducted a case study in the Boa Viagem neighborhood, the main focus of the formal housing market. The work is descriptive in nature and uses a statistical model of linear regression to establish a concise understanding of the relationship between some demographic variables of the neighborhood and the housing market action. The results indicated a gradual rising of the socioeconomic variables in these neighborhoods, and this increase was higher than in neighborhoods where the market action was minor or nonexistent. The hypothesis that the housing market action establishes a process of segmentation and demographic-spatial differentiation was confirmed, denoting the occurrence of real estate change and consequent process of gentrification.

The concentration of people living in small areas has increased in the last decade, with more than half of the world's population living in cities. This is particularly true for Latin America, a region with no particular high contribution to the world total population, but hosts several large cities. The increase in urbanization causes several threats to wildlife that face the loss of their habitat and novel environmental pressures. As the number of wildlife entering cities seems to have increased in the last year, we characterize the temporal and geographical events of a widely distributed carnivore, the puma, Puma concolor. We performed an exhaustive search for media news regarding the sighting, capture, and/or killing of pumas within human settlement areas, and tried to relate them with potential explanatory variables. We found a total of 162 events in Latin America in a period of the last 10 years, particularly concentrated in the year 2020. Most records came from Brazil, followed by Argentina, Chile, and Mexico. Of the total, 41% were only sightings, 58% were captures, and a minor percentage were considered as mascotism. Almost the same number of records came from highly populated areas (cities) than from low populated areas (rural) but with important differences between countries. The countries with more records in urban areas (Brazil and Mexico) showed a larger surface occupied by cities. The countries with most records in rural areas (Argentina and Chile) present the opposite pattern of occupied surface. This might indicate that different percentages of areas dedicated to cities or urban spaces might explain the differences among countries. The most important variable related to puma events in the populated areas was sky brightness, while human density and cattle density explained minor parts. The “anthropause” due to the COVID-19 pandemic might explain the larger number of records from 2020, while the absence of high-quality habitats due to fragmentation and high cattle density, might force the pumas to enter populated areas searching for food. Minor values of night lights could be related to a facilitation of efficiency of foraging behavior. Although some bias might exist in the data, the results should be taken into account as general statements for all analyzed countries.

Supplementary Material 2.

Associated policy content analysis dataset and visualisations for article "Understanding the framing of urban policy at the intersection of smart city and urban innovation across Latin American cities: a policy content analysis"

Buenos Aires, Argentina scored 584 out of a maximum of 800 points in the English Proficiency Index 2023. That was the highest score among all the Latin American cities surveyed. In that year, nine cities in the region socred in the "high proficiency" range (550-599 points).

Rethinking, prioritizing and supporting the way care tasks are performed in urban and rural environments can contribute to reducing inequality in cities and territories, especially in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), the most unequal region in the world. To achieve this, gender mainstreaming must come to the forefront in urban policies, at all scales and phases of the policy cycle: from planning, regulation, and legislation, to design, construction and management of both cities and the services they provide. The concept of the “city of care” overcomes traditional visions of urban realities based on the dichotomy between the productive and reproductive spheres, by appropriately supporting care work, which is essential for the reproduction of society and for sustaining life and the economy. This article addresses gender mainstreaming in urban policies as a tool to shaping cities in ways that their physical, social, economic, cultural, and power dimensions can contribute to facilitating the realization of care work, by looking first into what the provision of care as a right can entail. Secondly, it looks at the spatial dimensions of care, particularly as mobility and facilities, also referred to as infrastructure, are concerned. Thirdly, it emphasizes the importance of gender mainstreaming in urban planning and legislation to achieve urban transformations that support care work. Fourthly, it showcases three examples from Latin America, two from Mexico City (Utopías and Pilares) and one in Bogotá (Manzanas del Cuidado), which have set out to advance access to rights in Latin America, including the right to care.

This study, conducted in 1961 in Santiago, Chile, investigated past and present occupations of the respondents to ascertain their socioeconomic status within the society and to discover patterns of social and economic mobility. Variables assessed the respondents' satisfaction with their jobs, their feelings of permanence in their jobs, the kind of work done, whether they were self-employed or employed by a public or private institution, the status of their occupations -- from proprietor to unskilled laborer, and their occupations at the time of the interview as well as at age 21, 28, 35, and 45. The past was further explored through questions concerning respondents' fathers and paternal grandfathers and their occupations. The study also explored respondents' awareness and understanding of the world around them at the local, national, and international levels. The focus of these questions ranged from participation in local clubs to opinions about the government of Chile to questions about Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution. Demographic variables include the respondents' age, gender, marital status, income, nationality, and place of birth.

The Urban Dashboard allows to explore and compare more than 150 quantitative indicators, public opinion polls and interactive maps of intermediate cities in Latin America and the Caribbean. These are cities that have an outstanding economic and population growth, and receive technical assistance from the Emerging and Sustainable Cities Initiative (ESCI) of the IDB. This dataset was created to feed the urbandashboard.org platform. It contains all the cities data (country, area, population, longitud, latitude, etc).

Temperature data classified as maximum, mean, and minimum temperature and relative humidity measures from the meteorological station located at the regional airport in Bogota and Buenos Aries, called the National ... Service of Hydrology and Meteorology. Mexico data was collected from the National Polytechnic Institute of Mexico and National Meteorological System. In Santiago, Chile weather data was provided by the air pollution monitoring network with stations across the city, the REDCAM2 (Red de Monitoreo Automatica de la Calidad del Aire Metropolitana) Automatic Monitoring Network of Metropolitan Air Quality. The data from these stations were averaged to obtain temperature values for the Gran Santiago region. Daily temperature and relative humidity readings were made by automatic-recording instruments.

For the past half a century, Latin American scholars have been pointing toward the emergence of new social actors as agents of social and political democratization. The first wave of actors was characterized by the emergence of novel agents—mainly, new popular movements—of social transformation. At first, the second wave, epitomized by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), was celebrated as the upsurge of a new civil society, but later on, it was the target of harsh criticism. The literature often portrays this development in Latin American civil society as a displacement trend of actors of the first wave by the second wave—“NGOization”—and even denounces new civil society as rootless, depoliticized, and functional to retrenchment. Thus, supposedly, NGOization encumbers social change.The authors argue that NGOization diagnosis is a flawed depiction of change within civil society. Rather than NGOization related to the depoliticization and neoliberalization of civil society, in Mexico City and São Paulo, there has been modernization of organizational ecologies, changes in the functional status of civil society, and interestingly, specialization aimed at shaping public agenda. The authors argue that such specialization, instead of encumbering social change, brings about different repertoires of strategies and skills purposively developed for influencing policy and politics.Their argument relies on comparative systematic evidence. Through network analysis, they examine the organizational ecology of civil society in Mexico City and São Paulo.