A PROIECTIVE SPACE FOR THE SOUTH AMERICAN HINTERLAND: RESOURCE-EXTRACTION URRANISM

摘要

Outside the dense urbanism of Sao Paulo and the cosmopolitanism of Buenos Aires, the South American continent has seen, throughout the last decade, an unparalleled push fortransnational integration and a renewed desire to recast the geometries of its productive hinterland. Initiated by former Brazilian president Fernando Enrique Cardoso in 2000 and rapidly endorsed by the eleven other South American nations, the Initiative for the Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America (URSA)1- a comprehensive energy, transport, and communications network-is the most aggressive transcontinental integration project ever planned for South America.2 Through the systematic deployment often east-west infrastruc-tural corridors, the initiative is sideliningthe Americas'time-honored north-south axis-exemplified by the Pan-American Highway-to provide Brazil, which occupies almost 50% of South America's surface,3 access to ports along the Pacific and to give its flourishing economy stronger trading ties with Asia, while providing means of enteringto remote regions that have untapped surface and subsurface natural resources.