Links between Barcelona and Buenos Aires: Puerto Madero as a controversial process of urban policy circulation

GUILLERMO JAJAMOVICH

BERLIN

Conferencia; RC21 conference: Resourceful Cities; 2013

Internacional Sociological Association. Research Comité 21. Sociology of urban and regional development - 
Humboldt-University Berlin, Institute for Social Science, Dept. for Urban and Regional Sociology

According to Harris and Moore (2013), last decade has witnessed an upsurge in academic interest in travelling, transferring and flowing of urban policy and planning models, ideas and techniques. In that context, this paper analyzes some exchanges between Buenos Aires and Barcelona during a period of political and economic neoliberal reforms in Argentina (1989-1992). Focusing on the Puerto Madero operation we analyze a specific process of policy mobility between cities related to an initial Catalan project for the area (Plan Estratégico de Antiguo Puerto Madero - Strategic Plan of Puerto Madero). We seek to analyze the various actors (politicians, experts, etc.) and scales involved in that circulation process of urban policies and models. Thus, we focus on some interrelated issues. Firstly, we briefly highlight some theoretical debates around the circulation of urban models, in addition to their transfers and international exchanges. Secondly, as a way of contextualizing those exchanges, we pinpoint its economic, political and technical meanings for both local and foreign experts and politicians. This allows us to emphasize different scales of exchanges. Thirdly, we focus on the main conflicts developed between local actors relating to the catalan project, stressing the fact that circulation processes may include controversial moments as well as modifications by local contextual factors. Fourthly, we analyze political and technical trajectories of local and foreign experts involved in those exchanges as a way of analyzing the circulation processes. We show that the links between local and catalan experts began before the Strategic Plan for Puerto Madero, in different political contexts. At the same time, the analysis of the trajectories allows us to introduce an historical perspective to understand why and how local actors choose to ´learn´ from the catalan experience. Finally, we uncover some of the socio-spatial consequences of those exchanges focusing on the isolated urban result of the Puerto Madero operation and we present new ways of analyzing urban transfers process in which local experts become consultants in other cities of the region.