Goetz, Kevin <br/><br/>
The contemporary dynamics of the urbanization process in Paraguay 

 -  2020.<br/>							 
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<br/><br/> The process of urbanization that Paraguay has been experiencing for several decades has a certain time lag in relation to other Latin American countries. Indeed, in this country, the number of inhabitants in “cities” only exceeded those in “rural areas” in 1992, whereas the same shift had taken place in the middle of the last century in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Paraguay, like Bolivia, Ecuador, Panama, and El Salvador, is a country in the process of “late but accelerated” urbanization. Paraguay’s “late but accelerated"" urbanization makes it a particularly interesting area for observation: the current generalization of urbanization is causing a real societal upheaval that is setting up new economic, social, and spatial logics. Paradoxically, however, the contemporary conditions of Paraguayan urbanization are not yet sufficiently well analyzed. As a result, it would seem that the new problems and challenges, both current and future, are not yet fully appreciated. This article puts the country’s recent urbanization trajectories into perspective and identifies the main factors involved in this process, including sociocultural change, the tertiarization of economic activities, the diversification and complexification of the social structure, the contrasting emergence of a middle class, and the pursuit and specialization of an economic development model geared toward the export of agricultural raw materials.