Structure–agency duality and Latin American urbanism. Giddens in dialogue with feminisms, postcolonialisms, and territorial networks
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32870/vsao.v7i14.7768Keywords:
structuration theory, Latin American urbanism, urban informality, territorial networks, contemporary social theoryAbstract
The diversification of social theory in the twenty-first century has reopened the debate on the relevance of the structure-agency duality for interpreting urban processes shaped by inequality, informality, coloniality, gender, and socio-material networks. Drawing on a critical theoretical review of the literature, this analysis examines Anthony Giddens’s theory of structuration in dialogue with urban feminisms, postcolonial perspectives, and network studies, situating the discussion within Latin American urban processes after 2000. The review shows that structuration retains interpretive value for understanding the recursive production of space, particularly in peripheral expansion, informal settlements, housing policies, and metropolitan planning. However, it also reveals significant limitations when its categories are confronted with care practices, embodied spatial experiences, informal rationalities of planning, colonial legacies, and technological mediations that redistribute urban agency. The article contributes an articulated reading of urban social theory, in which rules, resources, institutions, and territorial practices can be analyzed without reducing the city either to structural determinisms or to local voluntarisms.References
Almandoz, A. (2006). Urban planning and historiography in Latin America. Progress in Planning, 65(2), 81–123. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.progress.2006.02.002
Arango Cardinal, S. (2012). Ciudad y arquitectura: Seis generaciones que construyeron la América Latina moderna. Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Brenner, N., Madden, D. J., & Wachsmuth, D. (2011). Assemblage urbanism and the challenges of critical urban theory. City, 15(2), 225–240. https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2011.568717
Caldeira, T. P. R. (2017). Peripheral urbanization: Autoconstruction, transversal logics, and politics in cities of the global south. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 35(1), 3–20. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775816658479
Castells, M. (2010). The rise of the network society (2nd ed.). Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444319514
Connolly, P., & Wigle, J. (2017). (Re)constructing informality and ‘doing regularization’ in the conservation zone of Mexico City. Planning Theory & Practice, 18(2), 183–201. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649357.2017.1279678
Dear, M. J., & Moos, A. I. (1986). Structuration theory in urban analysis: 2. Empirical application. Environment and Planning A, 18(3), 351–373. https://doi.org/10.1068/a180351
Duhau, E., & Giglia, A. (2008). Las reglas del desorden: Habitar la metrópoli. Siglo XXI Editores / Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana.
Elinbaum, P., Vicuña, M., & Valenzuela Montes, L. M. (2025). Planning the metropolitan region in the era of governance: Three Latin American cases. Urban Research & Practice, 18(1), 106–129. https://doi.org/10.1080/17535069.2024.2346744
Farías, I. (2011). Ensamblajes urbanos: La TAR y el examen de la ciudad. Athenea Digital. Revista de Pensamiento e Investigación Social, 11(1), 15–40. https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/athenea.826
Fenster, T. (2005). The right to the gendered city: Different formations of belonging in everyday life. Journal of Gender Studies, 14(3), 217–231. https://doi.org/10.1080/09589230500264109
Filion, P. (2021). Creative or instrumental planners? Agency and structure in their institutional and political economy context. Planning Theory, 20(3), 255–274. https://doi.org/10.1177/1473095220980499
Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. University of California Press.
Giddens, A. (1990). The consequences of modernity. Stanford University Press.
Gorelik, A. (2022). La ciudad latinoamericana: Una figura de la imaginación social del siglo XX. Siglo XXI Editores.
Hardoy, J. E. (1972). Las ciudades en América Latina: Seis ensayos sobre la urbanización contemporánea. Paidós.
Hardoy, J. E. (Ed.). (1975). Urbanization in Latin America: Approaches and issues. Anchor Press.
Healey, P. (1999). Institutionalist analysis, communicative planning, and shaping places. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 19(2), 111–121. https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456X9901900201
Hidalgo, R., & Zunino, H. M. (2011). La urbanización de las áreas periféricas en Santiago y Valparaíso: El papel de las relaciones de poder en el dibujo de la geografía socioresidencial. EURE, 37(111), 79–105. https://doi.org/10.4067/S0250-71612011000200004
Holston, J. (2008). Insurgent citizenship: Disjunctions of democracy and modernity in Brazil. Princeton University Press.
Huxley, M., & Yiftachel, O. (2000). New paradigm or old myopia? Unsettling the communicative turn in planning theory. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 19(4), 333–342. https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456X0001900402
Irazábal, C. (2024). Latin American perspectives on the urban century: Planning challenges and opportunities. Latin American Perspectives, 51(2), 116–127. https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X241257500
Kinkaid, E. (2020). Can assemblage think difference? A feminist critique of assemblage geographies. Progress in Human Geography, 44(3), 457–472. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132519836162
McFarlane, C. (2011). The city as assemblage: Dwelling and urban space. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 29(4), 649–671. https://doi.org/10.1068/d4710
Moos, A. I., & Dear, M. J. (1986). Structuration theory in urban analysis: 1. Theoretical exegesis. Environment and Planning A, 18(2), 231–252. https://doi.org/10.1068/a180231
Moulaert, F., Jessop, B., & Mehmood, A. (2016). Agency, structure, institutions, discourse (ASID) in urban and regional development. International Journal of Urban Sciences, 20(2), 167–187. https://doi.org/10.1080/12265934.2016.1182054
Müller, M. (2015). Assemblages and actor-networks: Rethinking socio-material power, politics and space. Geography Compass, 9(1), 27–41. https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12192
Oporto Berrios, J. I. (2025). The 15-minute city: Territorial justice, technological innovation, and epistemic plurality in urban transformation. International Journal of Educational Practices and Engineering, 2(6), 1–25. https://doi.org/10.70504/ijepe.v2i6.15558
Oporto Berrios, J. I., & Oporto Rosso, S. M. (2025a). Movilidad urbana sostenible desde el Sur Global: Enfoque epistémico y aportes en equidad, innovación y gobernanza. Revista O Universo Observável, 2(11). https://doi.org/10.69720/29660599.2025.000217
Oporto Berrios, J. I., & Oporto Rosso, S. M. (2025b). Urbanismo transdisciplinario en América Latina: Reimaginar la ciudad habitable desde la complejidad. Revista O Universo Observável, 2(10), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.69720/29660599.2025.000196
Parnell, S., & Robinson, J. (2012). (Re)theorizing cities from the Global South: Looking beyond neoliberalism. Urban Geography, 33(4), 593–617. https://doi.org/10.2747/0272-3638.33.4.593
Porter, L. (2006). Planning in (post)colonial settings: Challenges for theory and practice. Planning Theory & Practice, 7(4), 383–396. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649350600984709
Pred, A. (1984). Place as historically contingent process: Structuration and the time-geography of becoming places. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 74(2), 279–297. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8306.1984.tb01453.x
Purkarthofer, E., & Stead, D. (2023). Agency and structure in urban and regional planning: An illustrative overview and future research agenda. Journal of Planning Literature, 38(4), 571–587. https://doi.org/10.1177/08854122231178949
Romero, J. L. (1976). Latinoamérica: Las ciudades y las ideas. Siglo XXI Editores.
Roy, A. (2005). Urban informality: Toward an epistemology of planning. Journal of the American Planning Association, 71(2), 147–158. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944360508976689
Schteingart, M., & Salazar, C. E. (2003). Expansión urbana, protección ambiental y actores sociales en la Ciudad de México. Estudios Demográficos y Urbanos, 18(3), 433–460. https://doi.org/10.24201/edu.v18i3.1155
Soto Villagrán, P. (2018). Hacia la construcción de unas geografías de género de la ciudad: Formas plurales de habitar y significar los espacios urbanos en Latinoamérica. Perspectiva Geográfica, 23(2), 13–31. https://doi.org/10.19053/01233769.7382
Vasudevan, R., & Novoa E., M. (2022). Pluriversal planning scholarship: Embracing multiplicity and situated knowledges in community-based approaches. Planning Theory, 21(1), 77–100. https://doi.org/10.1177/14730952211000384
Watson, V. (2009). Seeing from the South: Refocusing urban planning on the globe’s central urban issues. Urban Studies, 46(11), 2259–2275. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098009342598
Watson, V. (2013). Planning and the ‘stubborn realities’ of global south-east cities: Some emerging ideas. Planning Theory, 12(1), 81–100. https://doi.org/10.1177/1473095212446301
Ziccardi, A. (2014). Poverty and urban inequality: The case of Mexico City metropolitan region. International Social Science Journal, 65(217–218), 205–219. https://doi.org/10.1111/issj.12070
Zunino, H. M. (2000). La ‘teoría de la estructuración’ y los estudios urbanos: ¿Una aproximación innovadora para estudiar la transformación de ciudades? Scripta Nova. Revista Electrónica de Geografía y Ciencias Sociales, 4(69). https://www.ub.edu/geocrit/sn-69-74.htm
Zunino, H. M., & Hidalgo, R. (2011). La producción multi-escalar de la periferia urbana de las áreas metropolitanas de Valparaíso y Santiago, Chile: Elementos conceptuales y analíticos. Boletín de la Asociación de Geógrafos Españoles, 55, 9–33.
Published
Versions
- 2026-09-17 (2)
- 2026-09-13 (1)
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Se pueden acceder directamente al contenido de manera libre y gratuita al momento que un nuevo número publicado en la plataforma. Se permite citar, compartir (electrónicamente y de manera física), imprimir y distribuir el material siempre que se indique de manera clara y explícitamente que el trabajo se publicó originalmente en la Revista V´ínculos. Sociología, análisis y opinión y siempre cuando se cite de manera correcta el trabajo y no sea utilizado con fines de lucro.
Únicamente la reproducción de imágenes institucionales (portadas y logos) requieren permiso explícito de la Universidad de Guadalajara.
