Rapid development as a factor of imbalance in urban growth of cities in Latin America: A perspective based on territorial indicators

© 2016 Elsevier Ltd One of the main factors of imbalance in the urban development of cities is undoubtedly their growth rate. In this sense, one of the main characteristics of rural-urban migration phenomena that have shaped the development of megacities in developing countries has been the need to integrate a large mass of people through processes of rapid growth of its urban plot. In this paper the growth of five different cities in Latin America is analyzed from the perspective of the impact of these processes of transformation in the urban landscape, describing different levels of pathology in their development. Consumption of periurban space, cityscape misconfiguration, or the long-term sustainability of these processes of transformation are complex issues that need to be addressed from a rigorous and technical perspective. These variables will be subject to GIS evaluation and diagnosis by territorial indicators in order to establish patterns of behaviour.