Circuits of urban economy and new forms of commerce in Buenos Aires

SILVEIRA, MARÍA LAURA

Nápoles

Seminario; 4th International Seminar City, Urban Retail and Consumption; 2013

Università degli studi di Napoli

In recent years Argentinean spatial formation experiences a process of economic concentration, financial expansion and modernization of territory in some agricultural, mineral and industrial areas. According this new spatial division of labor the primacy of metropolitan region of Buenos Aires is consolidated. Nevertheless structural poverty, coming of that division of labor, consumption increases because of credit, advertisement and urbanization, and at the same time the internal market becomes international. Metropolis show a manifoldness of forms of production and consumption, that we examine as two circuits of urban economy. Shops and services in Buenos Aires show the interdependence between an upper circuit, formed by activities with high-level technology, capital and organization, a marginal upper circuit, resultant of less lucrative but necessary activities to hegemonic economy, and a lower circuit which grow at central and peripheral areas and in street markets.Environment building is adapted permanently to modern demands. However these demands have an effect on in few parts of city, but increase unequal values of location and goods, still more when consumption grows by the international tourism. Commercial and financial enterprises become more strength and make new partnership with banks and credit cards and impose shopping calendars, discount forms, etc. Technological innovations of production and distribution of goods with new forms of organization arrange commercial areas. A new geography of trademarks, by franchising system, shows the power of upper circuit at the most important streets of Buenos Aires (Santa Fe Avenue by example) and shopping centers. The profits of big companies increase still more because these firms also arrange new urban centralities which its particularity is outlet commerce, by Córdoba Avenue and neighborhoods and in the old industrial district of Barracas. The more important trademarks take away local money spending in consumption but also capital, from different actors that investing in franchising commerce. A new regulation (about location, environmental building, techniques, propaganda, prix, employment, royalties, profit) appears in commercial activities of upper circuit and influences the urban economy as a whole, because marginal upper circuit and lower circuit become interstitial or expulsed to peripheries. This is an effect of oligopolies in urban economy.