Tocopilla, in the north of Chile, is a typical case of towns shaped by extractivism.For more than a hundred years, thermoelectric power plants there supplied the mines in the hinterland.However, Tocopilla never benefitted from this essential role.With the closure of the plants that began in 2019, the town's future looks even more sombre.This article analyses whether there are prospects for endogenous development in Tocopilla.The authors present a corresponding conceptual framework and argue that Tocopilla's stagnation and decline result from the absence of the conditions whose presence normally serves to explain endogenous development.Drawing pessimistic conclusions, the article makes a contribution not only to the endogenous development approach, but also to the literature on peripheral, resource-abundant regions.
Scholvin et al. (Thu,) studied this question.