A recent article in The Observer suggests that high levels of violence in many Latin American and African cities may be linked to their rapid urbanisation over the last two decades. It draws from a new paper by Robert Muggah, the research director of the Igarapé Institute in Brazil, published in the journal Environment and Urbanization. [2]
Muggah argues that rapid growth can make cities 'fragile' - and by that he means a breakdown in the 'social contract' of protecting citizens in return for exercising authority over them. The result is often that authorities lose control, or end up using selective violence, sometimes ceding control to informal gangs or vigilante groups that control entire neighbourhoods.
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