International development agencies have recently been warning of a ‘dark side of urban growth.’ Fast-growing cities are characterized as potentially destabilizing forces preventing human progress. Indeed, in Asia-Pacific, the world’s fastest urbanizing region to date, the number of...

This paper offers insights into dynamics of urban violence in two Central American countries that have evolved very differently historically. Costa Rica boasts the lowest overall levels of poverty and inequality of any country on the Isthmus, and has benefited from decades of stable and...