Urbanización, sociedad y ambiente: Experiencias en ciudades medias

The prevailing development model, far from providing better living conditions to a broader sector of the population, has sharpened a series of relationships that currently lead to greater territorial imbalances between urban and rural areas. Such are the scope that worldwide more than 50% of the population already lives in urban areas, a situation that worsens according to the region. For example, Latin America on average has a level of urbanization between 65 and 70%. The foregoing, as a result of the growing limitations of a rural environment to offer better life expectancies to its population. In contrast to the vision of greater employment opportunities, infrastructure, equipment, services; offered by cities, has been exacerbated by the proliferation of urban-urban movements.
Said disproportionate growth of cities has exceeded any possibility of meeting the social demands referring to basic satisfiers, so we are currently witnessing cities with severe problems of social segregation, insecurity, lacking infrastructure, basic services: water, drainage, health, education, decent housing, with increasingly degraded environments, among others. In this context, in Mexico, medium-sized cities - those with one hundred thousand to less than one million inhabitants - are playing an increasing role in the concentration of the population within the National Urban System and, unfortunately, also in the scene of the proliferation of social, environmental and territorial problems derived from how they grow. Urbanization, society and environment. Experiences in medium cities analyzes some relevant features on common urban problems in medium-sized cities, basically through the case study of the city of Morelia and the complement of the Latin American vision through the cases of Valparaíso in Chile and Florianópolis in Brazil .