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This book analyzes and explains the ways in which major developing world cities respond to the challenge of urban violence. The study shows how the political projects that cities launch to confront urban violence are shaped by the interaction between urban political economies and patterns of armed territorial control. It introduces business as a pivotal actor in the politics of urban violence, and argues that how business is organized within cities and its linkages to local governments impacts whether or not business supports or subverts state efforts to stem and prevent urban violence. A focus on city mayors finds that the degree to which politicians rely upon clientelism to secure and maintain power influences whether they favor responses to violence that perpetuate or weaken local political exclusion. The book builds a new typology of patterns of armed territorial control within cities, and shows that each poses unique challenges and opportunities for confronting urban violence. The study develops sub-national comparative analyses of puzzling variation in the institutional outcomes of the politics of urban violence across Colombia's three principal cities—Medellin, Cali, and Bogota—and over time within each. The book's main findings contribute to research on violence, crime, citizen security, urban development, and comparative political economy. The analysis demonstrates that the politics of urban violence is a powerful new lens on the broader question of who governs in major developing world cities.

The resurgence of informal street trading poses serious challenges for local officials responsible for the maintenance of public space. This article contextualises the tension between public space recuperation and informality, providing a detailed case study of Bogotá, Colombia (population 7.6 million). From 1988 to 2003, Bogota's mayors implemented one of the most ambitious public space campaigns in Latin America. The 'tipping-points' behind Bogota's transition are illuminated with emphasis on the introduction of free mayoral elections and the enervation of informal vendor unions. Using a cohort panel design, this research also examines the working conditions and occupational hazards faced by vendors both before and after relocation to government-built markets. It reveals how formalised vendors experienced declining income levels, but improved working conditions. The final section examines public policy implications and the extent to which Bogota's experience follows traditional models of public space planning in Latin America and the Caribbean.

It is generally assumed that there is a statistically valid correlation between the length of a roadway network, in addition to other factors such as its classification and/or average travel speed, and economic indicators such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the Municipal Relative Weight (MRW), considering that the roadway network and transport development generate economic development in a region. This study reports the results of correlating several variables which are economic indicators of roadway networks, both at a municipal and a departmental level, in Colombia; it was concluded that at the level of municipalities, there is no valid correlation between MRW, as a dependent variable, and the average travel speed and the sum of the length (in kilometers) of the roadways that connect villages, as independent variables. There was a correlation with neither the MRW as an independent variable nor the traveling distance and time for each municipality concerning the capital city of each respective department. Finally, it was found that the department agribusiness GDP was associated with the length of the tertiary roadway network and with the primary network, with an R2 of 0.7. This study concludes that activities in rural zones are the ones that generate the greatest impact on roadway investment within a region.

Few cities in Latin America provide much evidence of good governance. However, during the last fifteen years, Bogotá has been transformed and now qualifies in certain respects as an example of 'best practice'. The paper considers how Bogotá changed and whether it can continue its improvement, an especially interesting question insofar as a left-wing administration has been in charge since 2004. Of course, the city is by no means perfect and national issues continue to create difficulties both for the poor and for the local administration.

Leadership and Innovation in Subnational Government takes stock of promising innovations that began to appear in local government across the region of Latin America and the Caribbean during the 1990s. The purpose of this work—in contrast to many reports which document best practice—is to deepen our understanding of the genesis and evolution of change as local leaders cope with the challenges of governing in decentralized democracies. One of the most striking features exhibited by the cases in this volume is that local authorities have been change makers often without help from outside, from national or international agencies. The authors, Tim Campbell and Harald Fuhr, call these local enterprising risk takers an \"engine of change.\" Twenty specific cases of innovation have been documented in the study covering the core business areas of cities—finance, popular participation, service delivery, privatization, and personnel management. The book aims to show, in policy and practice, how to sustain this engine of change. One of the central messages of this work is that by supporting key steps in the process of innovation, donors can enjoy cost-effective impacts and help to achieve the next stages of reform in the region. But to do so, donors must focus on management and learning at the local level, building on the foundations of broad participation in public choice and working more actively to help local actors learn from each other.

Este artículo analiza los factores que permiten comprender por qué en algunos casos la revocatoria de mandato en el ámbito municipal logra ser activada con éxito, mientras que en otros casos se intenta activar y fracasa. Para esto se elabora un estudio comparado de casos a partir de los intentos de revocatoria de Samuel Moreno y de Gustavo Petro en Bogotá. Se argumenta que, una vez los promotores de la iniciativa han emprendido el respectivo proceso, el apoyo de al menos un líder o partido de oposición con representación política y el suficiente presupuesto para cubrir los gastos de campaña son factores clave para activar este mecanismo de participación ciudadana. Adicionalmente, se analiza empíricamente la incidencia de otros factores como los niveles de representatividad y de gobernabilidad de los alcaldes en cuestión.