The development of urban studies during the 1960s and 1970s was an offshoot of mainstream social sciences which, at least in Latin America, were formulated from a critical standpoint based largely on a renovated Marxism and the rise of the structuralisms. Now that this framework’s apparently solid base has come under question in the so-called ‘paradigm crisis’, what is the outlook for urban studies and, in general, for the critical social sciences? This article poses a series of ideas which hopefully will contribute to a discussion on these and other aspects of a theoretical debate which cannot be ignored by urban researchers.