ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates and explains how the deplorable housing and living conditions experienced in most Latin American cities have contributed to develop a more nuanced, yet dynamic, representation of the law and the legal system as a particular social field where the legal status of certain urban practices are neither uniform nor static. The contribution is divided in two main sections. In the first section, the author reviews the existent research about the regulation of the urban residential spaces, in which they highlight the changing and often indeterminate nature of urban property regimes in Latin America. In the second section, the author presents the works that address the regulation of the streets and discuss how urban regulation has also assigned specific functions to the public space and particular ways of being there. The narrative resulting from this account shows that, through urban regulation, both the population and the authorities have constantly (re)imagined the actual and legal environment of the city and its physical elements in several different ways, thereby shaping, and reshaping the legal limits of Latin American urban space.
