Interventions in the Inner City. Contradictions of Their Development: The Case of Buenos Aires City, Argentina

HILDA HERZER; MARÍA CARLA RODRÍGUEZ; MARÍA MERCEDES DI VIRGILIO; ADRIANA REDONDO

Vancouver

Conferencia; Sociological Association Research Committee 21 on Sociology of Urban and Regional Development. International Conference: Urban Justice and Sustainability.; 2007

ISA

There is an ongoing debate in recent years about the effects of investment and renewal processes in metropolitan areas. Most certainly the tertiarization of the economy, the privatization of urban services, and the development of a real estate sector linked to the new forms of consumption and entertainment have all deeply changed the ways of economic, social and urban organisation of metropolitan Buenos Aires as from the 90s. “After almost 20 years of deindustrialization and divestment (deterioration of urban services and infrastructure, fall in real estate values) the great urban interventions in the 90s integrated ‘portions’ of the city into the globalized space and the networks society” (Keeling, 1996). These interventions had in common, that they were within a private sector logic recycling along the lines of a similar model  spaces previously devoted to activities now regarded as obsolete (Puerto Madero, the former docks; El Abasto, the ancient food supply market; soon Retiro the former multiple railway terminal. Such interventions requalify portions of territory enhancing the contrasts between a degraded Southern area and the more modern and dense Northern sections of the city of Buenos Aires.   For years, the role of the State through public policies was supposed to be aimed at integration –or, as some observers have called it “a great homogeneity within heterogeneity” (Kessler, 1999).  Is it perhaps that against the current background the trend has dramatically shifted and the private sector logic is changing parts of the city outside or against that previous aim? Or maybe we are facing a tendency headed for greater homogeneity of the urban territory in economic and social terms? Or, what is really prevailing is indeed displacement and exclusion?   Within this framework, this paper is aimed at approaching the ways informality(ies) is(are) defined around the habitat in consolidated urban areas and attempting to account for its(their) different links with the public policies sphere. The main questions of this inquiry are, among others: what are the components of informality in consolidated urban areas? How are those components linked (or not) to the insertions in the labour market, to the access to consumption (housing), and so forth? Is it possible to identify extents/degrees of informality not solely associated with housing?  How do public policies address these issues?