This introductory chapter reminds us that Milton Santos was among the most prominent public intellectuals of his generation. His intellectual ties to French analyses of regional development and American critical geography did much to transform those fields, from their somewhat parochial perspectives to perspectives more engaged in both theory and practice “from the South.” Santos helped transform the understandings of development and provided a robust critique of development planning as it unfolded in the 1960s and 1970s, while simultaneously forging new methods and practices for the transformation of communities, as well as new understandings of how nature, history, and the complexities of lived life produced citizenship, rights, and the formations of urban and rural life.