Fernando Carrión: the fragmented city in Latin America

The fragmented city is one where well-served areas and marginalised areas coexist without communicating with each other. Fernando Carrión, an Ecuadorian urbanist and one of the reference voices on the Latin American city, has studied it in his work on urban fragmentation, public policy and citizen security. His starting point is that urbanisation in Latin America has produced increasingly segregated cities, spatially and socially: the uncontrolled expansion of the metropolises created neighbourhoods disconnected from one another, physically and symbolically, and that disconnection widens inequality instead of diluting it.

Two worlds inside one city

Spatial fragmentation shows up as very different living conditions within the same city. Highly urbanised areas with services coexist with marginalised zones without infrastructure and with scarce access to basics: water, transport, school, health. That dichotomy affects quality of life and also social cohesion and the city's capacity to be inclusive. For Carrión, the growing inequality in the distribution of resources within the city is one of the main causes of fragmentation, not only its consequence, and it is measured in minutes of travel as much as in income.

Planning decisions that segregate

Public policies have played a decisive role in shaping these cities. Planning decisions, often influenced by private interests and neoliberal policies, have favoured projects that segregate: gated communities, large commercial developments, subdivisions that fail to integrate popular neighbourhoods. That reinforces existing inequalities and consolidates a model of city in which access to the benefits of development is stratified: whoever lives in the wrong area is left out of almost everything the city produces.

Fragmentation and citizen security

A central aspect of Carrión's work is the relationship between fragmentation and citizen security. In Latin American cities, the most marginalised areas tend to be those recording the most violence and crime. The lack of economic opportunity, combined with physical and symbolic disconnection from the rest of the city, creates the environment in which insecurity thrives. The solution, Carrión argues, cannot be reduced to more police presence: it must attack the structural causes of fragmentation and promote policies of integration and equitable development.

A social fracture, not only a physical one

The fragmented city is not only physical separation between neighbourhoods but a deeper fracture in social and economic relations. It is the product of decades of ineffective urban policies that prioritised disorderly growth and real estate speculation over people's wellbeing. The challenge for Latin American cities is to implement policies that reduce inequality and promote genuine integration of territories: transport that connects, services where they are missing, and shared public space where people from different parts of the city can meet.

Carrión's analysis proposes a critical review of the region's urban policies and defends inclusive approaches that make it possible to face urbanisation while improving security and quality of life at the same time. His lesson is that a divided city cannot be fixed in pieces: the security of some neighbourhoods depends on the integration of the others, and every wall built to protect one part of the city makes the whole of it more dangerous.