On the basis of some phases of Rosrow's theory that explore the relationship between industrialization, urbanization and development, this article aims at illustrating how the imbalance between urbanization and the productive system helps to explain the issue of Latin America take off throughout the twentieth century, lacking the ensuing drive to maturity. For that purpose, other political and social aspects are incorporated into a periodization that has to be initiated at the phase when Latin America started to evince a significant urbanization. Such a panoramic attempt is made from the historiographic and methodological premise that urbanization and development studies have often lost the historical perspective. It is therefore necessary to resume a panoramic and, to some extent, comparative review, both in historical and territorial terms, in which a long-term periodization will be a possible contribution of this research.