Latino Urbanism

“Latino urbanism” describes a culturally specific set of spatial forms and practices created by people of Hispanic origin. It includes many different aspects of those forms and practices, including town planning; domestic, religious, and civic architecture; the adaptation of existing residential, commercial, and other structures; and the everyday use of spaces such as yards, sidewalks, storefronts, streets, and parks. Latino urbanism has developed over both time and space. It is the evolving product of half a millennium of colonization, settlement, international and domestic migration, and globalization. It has spanned a wide geographic range, beginning in the southern half of North America and gradually expanding to much of the hemisphere. There have been many variations on Latino urbanism, but most include certain key features: shared central places where people show their sense of community, a walking culture that encourages face-to-face interaction with neighbors, and a sense that sociability should take place as much in the public realm as in the privacy of the home. More recently, planners and architects have realized that Latino urbanism offers solutions to problems such as sprawl, social isolation, and environmental unsustainability. The term “urbanism” connotes city spaces, and Latino urbanism is most concentrated and most apparent at the center of metropolitan areas. At the same time, it has also been manifested in a wide variety of places and at different scales, from small religious altars in private homes; to Spanish-dominant commercial streetscapes in Latino neighborhoods; and ultimately to settlement patterns that reach from the densely packed centers of cities to the diversifying suburbs that surround them, out to the agricultural hinterlands at their far peripheries—and across borders to big cities and small pueblos elsewhere in the Americas.