Comprehensive Study Notes on Argentine Urban Geography and Systems
Social Actors and the Production of Urban Space
The urban space is a dynamic environment characterized by a rhythm of life that is considered accelerated in comparison to the more tranquil styles found in rural areas and small towns. This space is not a static entity but is continuously constructed based on the requirements, interests, resources, and objectives of diverse economic, social, and political actors.
Direct contributors to built industrial or commercial structures are the owners of the means of production. Landowners also play a crucial role by seeking economic benefits through the subdivision and sale of their land for subsequent residential or commercial construction. This specific process is often facilitated by real estate agents, who are responsible for promoting different areas and making investments to build residences. On the opposite end of the economic spectrum, excluded social groups, facing economic inequality, occupy marginal lands and generate informal settlements.
The State is a fundamental producer of urban space because its administrative functions require specific equipment, such as schools, hospitals, police stations, and administrative buildings. Furthermore, the State possesses public lands and holds normative instruments, including laws and norms, used to control and regulate the organization and growth of cities.
Dimensions and Processes of Urban Space
Urban space exhibits a double dimension: material and symbolic. While its material physical existence is used for various activities, it simultaneously acquires specific meanings and values. A primary example is the Plaza de Mayo in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, which serves as the political-administrative center of Argentina and acts as a landmark for social and political demonstrations. Within a city, the location of activities expresses a certain order through the configuration of specific areas.
Centralization involves the concentration of activities and services in a central area. For instance, the microcentro of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires gathers financial and politico-administrative activities, similar to the historical centers (cascos históricos) of various Argentine cities. Conversely, decentralization occurs when activities are distributed across different points, such as the placement of municipal government offices in various neighborhoods.
Specialized areas emerge from the concentration of a specific trade or productive activity. Examples include the commercial axes of Balvanera (the open-air commercial center known as Once) or the industrial profile of Mataderos. Furthermore, social segregation represents a trend toward separation and exclusion between different social sectors. This manifests in the creation of gated communities for those with higher purchasing power and informal settlements (villas de emergencia) for the population unable to access formal property markets, thereby expressing societal inequalities within the territory.
Criteria for the Delimitation of Localities
To study urban systems, the term "localidad" (locality) is used to designate any point of population concentration regardless of size. There are three basic criteria currently used to delimit these areas:
The Legal Criterion: This identifies a locality with a municipality or a local government area. One drawback of this criterion is that a municipality might include several separate towns divided by open fields, or it might only cover a small part of a larger urban area that functions as a single unit, such as the districts within Gran Buenos Aires.
The Physical Criterion: This defines a locality as a more or less continuous built-up area connected by a street network, referred to as an agglomeration or "mancha urbana" (urban stain). In Argentina, population censuses apply this physical criterion; thus, census localities are synonymous with agglomerations.
The Functional or Interactional Criterion: This views the locality as a community of people interacting daily. Applying this requires data on daily population movements, including commutes to work and school.
Localities are further classified based on the relationship between physical and legal criteria. A simple locality is an agglomeration contained within a single municipality, such as Mar del Plata ($600,000$ inhabitants within General Pueyrredón). A compound locality is an agglomeration extending across two or more municipalities. When a compound locality reaches $100,000$ inhabitants or more, the prefix "Gran" is added to the primary municipality's name (e.g., Gran San Miguel de Tucumán). Small compound localities also exist, such as Villa Manuel Pomar, which had only $251$ inhabitants in $2010$ across the municipalities of Rojas and Colón.
The Argentine Urban System and Urban Primacy
Urban primacy exists when the largest locality in a system is significantly larger than the secondary ones. In the Argentine urban system, the Gran Buenos Aires (GBA) agglomeration exerts intense primacy. With over $13,000,000$ inhabitants, it is nine times larger than the second-largest agglomeration, Gran Córdoba, which has $1.5,million$. Due to this extreme size difference, GBA is considered a category of its own.
Gran Buenos Aires is a compound locality encompassing the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires (CABA) and 24 districts of the province of Buenos Aires. It gathers $32\%$ of the total national population. The 24 districts included are Almirante Brown, Avellaneda, Berazategui, Esteban Echeverría, Ezeiza, Florencio Varela, General San Martín, Hurlingham, Ituzaingó, José C. Paz, La Matanza, Lanús, Lomas de Zamora, Malvinas Argentinas, Merlo, Moreno, Morón, Quilmes, San Fernando, San Isidro, San Miguel, Tigre, Tres de Febrero, and Vicente López.
Intermediate Urban Agglomerations (ATI)
Intermediate Urban Agglomerations (ATI) are those with more than $30,000$ inhabitants, excluding Gran Buenos Aires. These are subdivided into Minor ATI ($50,000$ to $500,000$ inhabitants) and Major ATI (over $500,000$ inhabitants). Their growth is linked to specific urban functions:
Provinicial capitals: Examples include Viedma and Resistencia. Service centers for rural areas: These locations, such as Pergamino, Tandil, or Venado Tuerto, provide agro-industrial activities and residences for agricultural producers. Industrial centers: Some have benefited from national or provincial industrial promotion regimes, such as Villa Mercedes or Río Grande. Río Grande, for example, reached $66,475$ inhabitants in $2010$, a $13\%$ increase from the previous census due to such regimes.
Major ATIs comprise seven agglomerations: Gran Córdoba, Gran Rosario, Gran Mendoza, Gran La Plata, Gran San Miguel de Tucumán, Mar del Plata, and Gran Salta. These serve as regional service and commerce hubs, providing diverse offerings such as university education, transport nodes (rail, air, river, maritime, road), tourism services, financial/banking activities, health services, and cultural offerings. Economically, they often utilize local resources (Tucumán with sugar, Mendoza with wine, Mar del Plata with fishing) or non-local raw materials (automobile and aeronautical industries in Córdoba, petrochemicals and shipbuilding in La Plata).
Globalization and New Urban Objects
Globalization has manifested materially in urban spaces through objects like shopping centers, hypermarkets, theme parks, and international hotels. These are massive consumption and residential spaces, often located in previously devalued areas, modifying the landscape and population behavior.
Large consumption facilities like hypermarkets and shoppings aim to concentrate various services in standardize, large-scale architectural designs. Their million-dollar investments require massive attendance and rapid automobile access, leading to locations near large avenues or highways, often on recycled industrial plots or warehouses from the $1980$s. They compete with traditional commerce, shifting vitality away from traditional "open-air" shopping streets toward these indoor environments.
International hotels emerged in the $1990$s due to the "extranjerización" (foreign ownership) of the Argentine economy and the influx of transnational corporate executives and international tourists. Majority-owned by foreign investment groups, these hotels transform the urban fabric and elevate surrounding land prices.
Modern Suburbanization and Gated Communities
Since the $1980$s, a new residential model directed at high-income sectors has emerged: the country club and the gated neighborhood (barrio cerrado). This model is driven by large national and foreign real estate companies associated with the financial system. These developments offer green spaces and security, distinguished by perimeter walls or fences, creating an "enclave" that is isolated from its surroundings.
While country clubs focus on sports facilities and are governed by Land Use Laws (allowing transitory residence), gated neighborhoods are governed by the Horizontal Property Law and serve as permanent housing. These often extend the city as "islands" along highway routes. Pilar, located $50\,km$ from CABA, contains nearly $30\%$ of such developments in the country. In the $2000$s, "countries" combining both models appeared. Recently, mega-investments like "pueblos privados" (private towns) covering thousands of hectares on recovered floodplains have emerged, posing new urban magnitude problems and environmental challenges related to water dynamics.
Case Study: Transformation of the Abasto
Until the $1980$s, the Abasto neighborhood in Buenos Aires was centered around a wholesale fresh food market housed in a $3\text{-hectare}$ vaulted building. The area was characterized by high truck traffic, waste, and a low-income population. Following the market's closure and relocation in the mid-$1980$s, the area deteriorated until the mid-$1990$s, when a foreign company transformed the market building into a shopping mall. This process displaced many neighborhood inhabitants and significantly altered the local urban and commercial profile.