From Spanish colonial architecture to a global, regional metropolis urban image. Loosing or reinventing urban identity in Córdoba ? Argentina.

MARENGO C.

Beijing

Conferencia; IFOU (Internacional Forum on Urbanism) 2006 Beijing International Conference. Modernization and Regionalism ? Re-inventing the Urban Identity; 2006

TU Delft ? Tsinghua University Beijing ? NTU Taipei

Transformations derived from globalization have introduced significant changes on urban systems. Cities became the fundamental technological and organizational systems in the process of economic growth and the decisive knots in the model of growth of informational societies. The new economic order means at the same time, opportunities for development and challenges due to the intensification of deep social inequalities in the urban space. In general terms, the territorial effects of the model are related to expansive growth and the restructuring of peripheries. The new and complex relationship among central areas, sub-centres and a hybrid periphery that accommodates different functions and social groups, represent the conditions that characterize the urban structure in a context of widespread mobility. Related to the social effects, one of the main transformations derived from globalization is the increasing dualism of the social structure. It assumes particular importance during the 90?s in Argentina when important economic and social transformations take place and the country experienced a process of economic growth under the impulse of neoliberalism. Economic reforms were impelled to insert the country in the world economic order and programs of structural adjustment based on the reduction of public investment, privatization, decentralization, guided toward the liberalization of the market forces, in the belief that by this way the resources would be located more efficiently. However, the ?new ? poor? a typical phenomenon of Argentinean society designates the process unequal distribution of income that accentuates in this period. Innovative urban policies have been applied in Secondary Cities in Latin America. In the case of Cordoba, the goal was to impel urban transformations, to attract foreign investments and to promote the competitive city-advantages in the regional / international context. The locations of global corporations and real state-developments have promoted urban renewal processes, bring in main transformation in the city and introducing a new architectural city-image. However, the question: To what extent urban transformations have contributed to reinvent the city identity? Seems to be waiting for debate