The Urban Caribbean
Subtitle: Transition to the New Global Economy
Contributors: Alejandro Portes (Editor); Carlos Dore-Cabral (Editor); Patricia Landolt (Editor)
Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: May 12, 1997
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 280
ISBN-13: 9780801855177
Subjects: Development economics; Development studies; Urban communities; c 1980 to c 1990; c 1990 to c 2000; Economic conditions; Urban Economics; Urbanization; Business & Economics; Sociology; Sociology - Urban; Costa Rica; Dominican Republic; Guatemala; Haiti; Jamaica; Economics - General; Caribbean & West Indies; Caribbean & West Indies - General; Development - Economic Development; Business & Economics / Economic Development; Caribbean Area; Social conditions
First sentence: The project whose results are presented in this book represents an attempt to look at a key subject in the field of development studies in a novel way.
Description: The Urban Caribbean studies urbanization in five countries - Costa Rica, Haiti, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, and Jamaica - during the 1980s and 1990s, when the region's economy shifted from one heavily dependent on imports to one directed more to producing exports. This shift caused producers and entrepreneurs to rely more on microenterprises, thus challenging the informal economy networks of the central cities.

Sociologist Alejandro Portes and the other contributors use rich, in-depth data to examine both qualitative and quantitative changes in these five countries. Their research method allows them to make generalizations applicable to all five economies while retaining the concreteness of the similarities and differences that make each country unique.