Latin American Cities Do their Own when it Comes to Tourism

The economy of urban hubs stand for over fifty percent of Gross Domestic Products (GDP) worldwide, even though in the case of Latin American and Caribbean nations that figure could soar to just about 80 percent.

That’s the conclusion of a recent report issued in Geneva by the United Nations Program for Human Settlements (UN-Habitat) and that labels Mexico as a good case in point. The Aztec nation’s ten biggest cities –comprising only a third of the entire population- generate 62 percent of the country’s GDP.

Cities are also the end destinations of choice for immigrants and 77 millions of them have settled down in the richest burgs on the face of the earth.

The UN-Habitat report entitled Globalization and Urban Culture points to multicultural richness as the positive aspect of urban development. On the flip side of the coin, though, poverty, less social protection and the proliferation of slums –they will harbor two billion people by the year 2020- are the main standouts.

The report also highlights that this unbalanced contribution that cities make to the national economies is largely ignored all over the world.

UN experts believe this unbalance is “extremely dangerous because cities are not only left to bear the brunt of the countries’ economies, but also cluster the impacts of globalization.

A good case in point is Buenos Aires, a capital that produces 53 percent of Argentina’s GDP. For their part, Santiago de Chile comes up with 47.4 percent of the Andean nation’s GDP, Peru’s Lima accounts for 43.1 percent, and San Salvador amasses 44.1 percent of El Salvador’s.

This situation accrues as urban population rises. Right now, nearly 2.9 billion people live in cities, though UN-Habitat experts consider that figure will jump to approximately 5 billion in the year 2030.

In that span of time, the world urban growth rate will hover around 1.8 percent in cities, compared to a meager 0.1 percent in rural areas.

On the planet today, there are 39 cities with more than five million inhabitants, while sixteen of them harbor over ten million residents, including Mexico City, Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro.

Latin American’s most populated urban areas are Mexico City (18.1 inhabitants), followed by Sao Paolo (17.9 million people), Buenos Aires (a dozen million residents), Rio de Janeiro (10.6 million), Lima (7.4 million), Bogota (6.8 million) and Santiago de Chile (5.5 million).