David J. Keeling
Department of Geography and Geology
Western Kentucky University
Bowling Green, KY 42101-3576
Abstract
This paper explores the recent experience of Buenos Aires, Argentina, in adapting to global and regional economic restructuring processes. Within the broader context of urban restructuring driven by globalization, I focus specifically on landscape change as an indicator of both national and inter-national forces. Where have changes occurred in Buenos Aires, what form have these changes taken, and are such changes indicative of global influences? Underlying these general research questions is a deeper concern with the effects of social polarization in the city and the long-term future of Buenos Aires from a planning and policy making perspective. The paper concludes by arguing that a failure to consider the implications of the commodification of urban space, coupled with a lack of integrated planning, could precipitate future socioeconomic conflict in the city.
Key words: Latin America, Buenos Aires, urban change
Introduction For the past five centuries, Latin American cities have responded to the changing dynamics of global capital influences in ways that have shaped the urban environment in distinct and often controversial ways. In recent decades, the pace of change in Latin America's urban landscapes has accelerated, in part as a consequence of global economic restructuring, regional integration, national policy decisions, and rural to urban migration. Contemporary urban built environments and lifeestyles reflect these forces of change in a very tangible and observable way. Capital and culture, people and place, transport and telecommunications, image and imagination, economics and environment, skyscrapers and sidewalks: they all inexorably converge and intertwine to shape and reshape the city.
Buenos Aires, the capital and primary city of Argentina, is the quintessential Latin American metropolis. Forged from the social-political ambitions of Iberian Europe, nourished to maturity by the bounty of the Pampas, and shaped physically and ideologically by ambitions of Parisian splendor, Buenos Aires perhaps has been influenced by exogenous forces more overtly than any other Latin American urban center. Indeed, the city forged more links with Europe during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries than any of its regional contemporaries (Scobie 1974; Keeling 1996). As the twenty-first century dawns, Buenos Aires once again is caught up in dynamic structural change wrought by external forces. Buildings, neighborhoods, transportation networks, public infrastructure, and cultural iconography all are being reshaped by the forces of globalization, privatization, and free-market capitalism. However, although the ability of global forces to shape urban landscapes is significant, globalization is not an omnipotent force (Pacione>[ end p. 15}>/b> 1997). [end p. 15] Landscapes are much more than simple expressions of changing urban environments; they are complex manifestations of power relationships, policies, ideologies, cultural mores, and iconographies that operate at a variety of scales (see Cosgrove and Daniels 1988; Dear and Wolch 1987; Jacobs 1961, 1970; Sassen 1991; Soja 1997).
Within the framework of the economic reorganization underway in Argentina, several key questions are raised about restructured landscapes in Buenos Aires. Where have changes occurred in the city, what form have these changes taken, and are such changes indicative of a broader and stronger participation in the global system? Teasing out subtle changes in the provision of urban infrastructure also sheds light on the impact of privatization policies on urban accessibility and mobility. Are there identifiable cause and effect relationships between the adoption of neoliberal policies and landscape change? How have neoliberal reforms shaped the way people interact with the built environment in Buenos Aires? Have old problems simply been repackaged in new ideologies, without any serious attempt to address the root cause of the problem, or are these reforms profoundly restructuring the urban environment in a positive way? Underlying these general research questions is a deeper concern with the effects of social polarization in the city and the long-term future of Buenos Aires from a planning and policy making perspective.
The recent experience of Buenos Aires in adapting to national, regional, and global economic restructuring forces is informative in a number of ways. For example, within the context of the world city paradigm exemplified by Friedmann (1995), Sassen (1991), and others, landscape change can indicate the level and type of engagement with globalization processes. These changes, in addition, can serve as an indicator of prevailing ideologies and policy choices that shape cities from within. However, case studies from outside the developed regions that have served as the prevailing models for urban change are few and far between. An examination of changes underway in Buenos Aires, therefore, could extend the circuit of knowledge about urban restructuring that heretofore has been dominated by research on key "world" cities such as London, New York, Tokyo, and Los Angeles.
Changes to the structural landscape of Buenos Aires are dynamic, ongoing, and recursive, and they embrace myriad interacting forces. To give a broader context to the changes discussed and analyzed in this study, I first address some of the theoretical and policy developments in recent decades that have informed urban research in Latin America, and specifically Argentina. This discussion is followed by an analysis of selected representative changes to the structural and cultural landscapes of Buenos Aires. Of particular interest are new transport infrastructure, evidence of the influence of global capital on the built environment, changes in building types and functions, and aesthetic improvements that speak to the city's global ambitions. The purpose here is not to analyze quantitative, macro-level data about socioeconomic change, per se, but to cast the analytical lense on the built landscape. I conclude with a brief summary of the findings and suggestions for future research.
A FRAMEWORK FOR ANALISIS
Across the planet, cities are reacting to global economic restructuring in myriad and innovative ways. Cities are the most visual and dynamic expression of economic change within national economies and global economic forces are likely to have their most profound impacts on urban cores, particularly in the financial, service, and transportation sectors. The dynamic pace of urban growth and change since 1945 has prompted the development of myriad models, theories, and explanations of urban restructuring from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Geographers in particular are engaged with several new research paradigms that attempt to place these changes in context and to give spatial meaning to the dynamic forces that are reshaping Latin America's urban environments. Two broad frameworks for urban analysis seem to have emerged and matured since the 1980s (Fainstein 1996). A global approach to urban restructuring looks at cities along a contin-uum of regional, national, and international systems and analyzes such themes as uneven development, social polarization, and competitive economic advantage. Edward Soja's (1997) discourse on the contemporary city, or postmetropolis, proposes the concept of "cosmopolis," a term that encompasses the globalization of urban capital, labor, and culture and[end p. 16] the formation of a restructured hierarchy of global cities. The conceptualization of certain cities as powerful economic command and control centers within the contemporary world-system has spurred an increasing volume of research under the rubric of "world cities" (Friedmann 1986; Hall 1966; Knox and Taylor 1995). In Latin America, for example, analyses of Buenos Aires (Keeling 1996), Mexico City (Pick and Butler 1997; Ward 1998), and Havana (Segre et al. 1997) have drawn explicitly and implicitly on the world city paradigm to explicate the relationship between global macroeconomic forces and local urban change.
A local approach to urban restructuring explores the processes that shape the specific character of a city from "the inside out" (Fain stein 1996: 170). As the city adapts to changing external circumstances, dynamic internal forces are at work. Institutions, local actors, social structures, labor divisions, levels of accessibility, cultural iconography, and economic activities all drive urban growth and change in specific and mutually reinforcing ways. Tom Klak (1990) has suggested that Latin American urban research on these internal forces fits into four general categories: a) management crises; b) urban morphology; c) production; and d) reproduction. To these I would add a fifth category--accessibility and mobility (Gutiírrez 1997; Schuurman 1987). The purpose of this "view from below" theoretically is to mesh what Soja (1997:21) calls the "micro-worlds of everyday life" with the macro-level structuring of the city in order to understand more clearly the social and spatial urban fabric. In previous work, I have attempted to synthesize this local-global, thematic-spatial approach to Latin American urban analysis into a generalized set of interactive, integrative relationships (Keeling 1996). The three basic "pillars" of the urban fabric are labor, capital, and place. These pillars are ubiquitous in the urban system, yet shape each city in different ways because they are inextricably intertwined with distinct political, social, cultural, and environmental processes. Global capital, for instance, has a structural impact on Buenos Aires that is quite dissimilar from its impact on Mexico City or São Paulo, in part because the political, social, cultural, and environmental circumstances of Buenos Aires are unique. Thus, the strength of the interface between the pillars and the processes determines the level and type of urban restructuring likely to occur. At the foundation of the three pillars are transport and communication, which facilitate the movement of people, goods, and information in and among cities.
A deeper understanding of the structural changes occurring in urban landscapes within the context of the framework outlined above requires that several key elements or goals be more clearly defined. First, cities are somewhat like palimpsests in that past landscapes continue to shape and inform present ones. We cannot interpret the magnitude or significance of contemporary urban change without acknowledging a city's geo-historical background and experiences. However, the key goal here is to interpret new landscape changes in terms of how they differ markedly from past restructuring processes and what they say about broader, external influences. Second, the urban landscape can be thought of as the theater within which the daily drama of human life is played out. Changes in the setting and scenery profoundly affect the way in which this drama unfolds. Therefore, a clearer understanding of how the setting and scenery are changing, and how these changes are linked to external forces, is important to planning the growth and development of the city. Third, increased engagement with global economic forces argues for a heightened level of accessibility and mobility, not only within the city but also between other urban centers at the national, regional, and global levels. Transport and communication infrastructure and services are key elements in shaping the response of individuals and institutions to the forces of global change.
Finally, the urban environment reflects the ebbs and flows of capital circulation that occur along the global-local continuum of economic interaction. Thus, a key goal of interpreting the importance of landscape change is to determine how and where capital is reshaping places and landscapes. The dramatic change in the built environment of London's financial district (Kennedy 1991), the phenomenal growth of Shenzhen in China (Harris 1997), or the rehabilitation of Sydney's Darling Harbor (Stimson 1995) all suggest that international capital flows can transform urban environments in very visual and crucial ways. However, it is important to bear in mind that population size alone is not sufficient to [end p. 17] trigger world city status or to attract global capital to a city (Chase-Dunn 1985, King 1990). In Latin America, the cities of Havana, La Paz, and Quito are over one million in population, yet they exhibit little physical evidence of a strong interface with contemporary global capital. The specific socioeconomic or political circumstances of these cities, such as their weak national economies, their lack of attraction as basing points for international capital, and their location relative to growth zones of the global economy, act as inhibitors to potential globally induced change.
Nigel Harris (1997) has suggested that neoliberal reforms have a number of theoretical and practical implications for urban built environments. First, liberalization of a protected economy can force significant restructuring of a city's industrial and manufacturing sector, with frequently negative spatial outcomes. Second, profound changes in the pathways of international capital flows can transform the old-established financial centers of cities, areas that often are ill-equipped for significant expansion. Third, increased movements of people, goods, and information as a result of heightened levels of interaction pose serious threats to the physical environment. Moreover, the level of transport infrastructure needed to cope with increased interaction frequently requires the relocation of facilities, which can leave large areas of land close to the urban core derelict and blighted. Finally, the opening up of local and national economies to global competition can encourage the construction of shopping malls, warehouse centers, and other mega-scale retail infrastructure, with negative social and economic consequences to local communities. In Latin America particularly, small-scale neighborhood retail activity, at both the formal and informal level, remains a key element of urban economic and social cohesion.
Argentina's Framework for Change
It is not axiomatic that cities are shaped by global economic change simply because they exist. Although most urban areas across the planet exhibit evidence of global influence, even if it is nothing more complex than fast food outlets, satellite television, or imported consumer goods, only selected cities, especially in the developing world, have experienced very radical changes in their built landscapes over the past decade as a consequence of neoliberal reforms. National governments typically must develop specific policies to engage their country with the global economy and to participate in the neoliberal reform process. A classic example of this process is China, where the government has designated certain city-regions as "special economic zones" to link with the global economy and has adopted Western urban planning models to reshape cities such as Beijing or Shanghai (Gaubatz 1995). In Argentina, President Carlos Saul Menem announced in 1990 that his government would abandon progressive reforms of the country's protected national economy in favor of neoliberal free-market strategies based on privatization, deregulation, and state disengagement from the domestic economy. Buenos Aires would play a key role in Argentina's new global strategies as a world city, a global gateway, and a key financial center in the Southern Cone of South America (Gills and Rocamora 1992; Keeling 1996). The doors of both city and nation were thrown open to multinational corporations, foreign investors, and the country's economic exiles who together, believed Menem could change the face of Argentina's economy and society for the better. President Menem's logic for embracing the ideologies of neoliberal reform seemed simple: only by opening the national economy to global competition and by reducing the role of the public sector could Argentina rectify its past mistakes, restructure its society and economy, and occupy a more forceful position in the global community of nations (New York Times 1992). Menem's goal was to modernize Argentina and reinsert the country into the global economy.
Argentina's adoption of neoliberal economic restructuring policies in the early 1990s was a dramatic reversal from previous strategies and was driven by the realities of the emerging world economy. However, Menem's approach to redirecting the Argentine economy was not shaped simply by domestic socioeconomic distress. Throughout the 1980s, during the country's transition to democracy, the World Bank, the United States, and indeed, the neighboring countries of Chile and, to a lesser extent, Brazil had exerted pressure on the Alfonsín government to disengage the government from the national economy, to end decades of geopolitical wandering, and to undertake serious [end p. 18] macroeconomic restructuring. Prevailing ideologies propound that the private sector is the engine of growth in the world economy and competitiveness the fuel that drives the engine. Michael Porter (1990) has argued, for example, that industrial competition no longer depended primarily on the three pillars of labor, capital, and location, but increasingly on the ability of industries to innovate, restructure, and adapt to changing conditions. Although Argentina's industrial sector had been experiencing serious transformation since the late 1970s, when Finance Minister José Martínez de Hoz introduced a series of trade liberalization policies, industrial competitiveness at the end of the 1980s remained elusive (Hayes 1998). Menem's restructuring plans, therefore, dovetailed nicely with prevailing globalization ideologies, external geopolitical pressures for change, domestic calls for solutions to hyperinflation, and a desire to modernize the country.
How did the adoption of these new policies drive the restructuring of Buenos Aires and are there some obvious cause and effect relationships between policy change and landscape change? First, establishing stability in the financial sector by pegging the Argentine peso to the U. S. dollar has encouraged a freer and more rapid circulation of domestic and international capital. Previous governments were plagued by rampant inflation, currency fluctuations, and domestic capital flight that limited the impact of global capital on the built landscape. Second, the government has disengaged from the state economy and loosened the regulatory constraints to economic entrepreneurialism. Urban governments particularly are transitioning from a purely managerial philosophy, whereby resources are redistributed for social purposes and essential services are publicly provided, to a more entrepreneurial philosophy, whereby resources are used to lure capital and public-private sector partnerships are established for the market provision of services (see Hall 1998). Third, the domestic economy is shifting from a monolithic, uncompetitive, production-based system to one that is service-sector based and highly competitive. Emphasized are flexible production methods, economies of scope, regional and global market connections, consumption, and telematics. Finally, planners and policy makers are becoming more concerned with facilitating the provision of spectacular developments (mega-malls, conference centers, international-quality sports facilities), eclectic and aesthetic structures that help reinforce the image of a world city, and greater opportunities for international investment,
Planning policies that previously shaped urban space for social purposes have now turned toward manipulating specific fragments of urban space for insertion into the global economy rather than for broader social ends. Privatization policies, for example, have essentially transferred all of the city's public services to private control without any thought as to the long-term planning implications of such actions. Neither the city government of Buenos Aires nor the federal government of Argentina have formulated any long-term plans that address the ideological and practical aspects of capital investment strategies, performance monitoring, regulatory control, spatial inequities in service provision, competition, and pricing policies for basic public services such as transportation, water, sewer, garbage collection, and telephone. A significant part of the planning problem is the political fragmentation of Greater Buenos Aires and the inability of over 20 local, city, and federal administrative units to coordinate planning and policies across the metropolitan region. Buenos Aires is a classic example of the tensions created between the non-desirable spatial effects of neoliberal globalization in weaker economies and the need to plan a megacity physically and economically.
Previously, I have analyzed the macro-level impact of these policy changes on both Buenos Aires and Argentina (Keeling 1994; 1996; 1997). Preliminary results suggested a widening of the gap between rich and poor (social polarization) and the ongoing marginalization of certain segments of society. Neoliberal reforms do not have neutral spatial impacts; their outcomes frequently are geographically and sectorally concentrated. The next step in the analytical process is to focus in on the meso- and micro-scale impacts of economic reform, particularly in terms of how these reforms are manifested visually on the urban landscape. This, then, is the purpose of this paper. In the following section, I examine the type and complexity of landscape change in Buenos Aires over the past decade and I attempt to interpret the implications of these changes for future development and planning. [end p. 19]
Landscape change in Buenos Aires
LNDSCAPE CHANGE IN BUENOS AIRES
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Analyses of landscape morphology or anatomy have a long tradition in urban geography. Research approaches have included interpretations of "sense of place" (Relph 1976, 1981), "reading" the landscape as a cultural repository (Clay 1980; Lewis 1979), classical ecological and neoclassical economic perspectives such as those developed by the Chicago School in the 1920s and 1930s (Park et al. 1925), political economy theories (Harvey 1985; Smith 1980), humanism and iconography (Cosgrove 1984; Cosgrove and Daniels 1988; Ley 1983), and, more recently, post-modernist/post-structuralist critiques of urban change (Soja 1997). In this section, I combine elements of landscape anatomy and political economy to identify and interpret changes in the urban environment of Buenos Aires. Five specific types of landscape change that appear to be driven by the forces of globalization have manifested themselves in the city since 1990: retail, housing, [end p. 20]service, industry, and transportation. The important elements of each type are discussed and interpreted based on their contribution to reshaping the urban environment and their implications for the future of the city.
The spatial focus of the analysis primarily is on the urban core, an area known as the microcentro centered around the seven barrios of Palermo, Recoleta, Retiro, San Nicolás, Monserrat, Constitución, and San Telmo (Figure 1). However, reference is also made to landscape changes in the entire Greater Buenos Aires region. Measuring approximately 30 square kilometers, the core area of Buenos Aires historically has contained the major transportation terminals, the most important commercial-bureaucratic (federal and city government) and financial activities, the wealthiest residential zones, and major retail, entertainment, and recreational infrastructure. The built landscape reflects the history, ambitions, dreams, and visions of myriad generations, yet the lack of a strong urban planning tradition in the city has created an environment that makes identification and categorization of change difficult. Downtown Buenos Aires has always been a hodgepodge of building styles and functions, with broad, diagonal avenues intersecting the original narrow grid-pattern streets, thus creating complex patterns of land use and ownership. Nonetheless, street-level observations and analyses of the built environment can provide a general indication of influences and trends.
Retail Facilities
Buenos Aires long has been influenced by international retailing forces. Throughout much of the late colonial and early independence periods, a sizeable proportion of the city's consumer goods were imported from Spain or Britain. Then in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, both Europe and North America played a dominant role in city and national retail activities. Import substitution policies (ISI) introduced during the first half of the twentieth century spurred the development of local industries that produced a wide range of basic consumer goods, encouraging a more diversified retailing structure in Argentina's cities and towns. Neighborhood retailing, particularly family operations, became the backbone of Buenos Aires' retail structure. With the exception of large European-influenced department stores such as Harrods on Avenida Florida in the downtown core that were geared to the wealthy, few shopping center clusters existed.
Beginning in the late 1970s, international retailing companies began to penetrate the Buenos Aires market. Most of these operations involved fast-food franchises (McDonald's, Burger King, etc.) and outlet stores for the products of international companies. However, as the development of a truly global economy quickened in the 1980s, the North American-style shopping center came to Argentina in full force. Today there are over 30 shopping centers around the country (most in the Greater Buenos Aires area), and at least ten new projects are under construction. Early shopping malls in Buenos Aires were decidedly upscale, designed to cater for the wealthier segments of porteño (residents of the Buenos Aires) society. Alto Palermo on Avenida Santa Fé in the northern barrios is a classic example of this type. With two cinemas, restaurants, cafes, myriad retail outlets purveying the finest goods from London, Paris, Tokyo, and New York, and a large covered parking garage, Alto Palermo has become an important economic landmark attracting thousands of people from all over the city. Security guards patrol the entrances, lending an air of exclusivity to the property. Close to the Retiro transportation center and within walking distance of many new international hotels is the Bullrich Center. Bullrich also is located in a wealthy neighborhood and clearly caters to the above-average income group. A third important center, the Galería Jardín, is located along the pedestrians-only Avenida Florida in the downtown core and it caters to the many tourists and mid-level office workers and bureaucrats that frequent this area. Newer centers, such as one under construction in the northern suburb of Tigre, are geared toward weekend visitors, tourists, and residents of the upper-income north-shore suburbs.
Liberalization of the domestic economy has encouraged a new breed of retailer who is clearly focused on the urban mass market. Exemplifying this type of international retail activity is Walmart. Just beyond the boundary of the Federal District, in the poorer, southern, working-class neighborhood of Avellaneda, a new shopping center called Alto Avellaneda opened in 1995, with Walmart as its [end p. 21] anchor property. Over US$100 million in domestic and international capital have gone into this project (Economista 1995), and Walmart planned on building at least another six major stores in the Greater Buenos Aires metropolitan region after its 1996 opening of a store inside the Federal District. In the neighboring barrio of Quilmes, another US$50 million are being invested in a similar shopping center targeted at the city's middle and working classes. Retail operations such as these have altered dramatically not only the landscapes of working-class barrios but also the shopping patterns of the average urbanite. Family businesses particularly are facing new challenges as competition encouraged by liberalization restructures the way people shop. The arrival of large supermarket chains also has changed the way that products are marketed in the city, as supermarkets can control prices by selling shelf space (Hayes 1998). For example, the owner of a family underwear store in the northern suburb of San Martin complains that foreign competition has cut his profits in half (Wright 1997). He now has to pamper potential clients and offer a level of service previously unheard of in the city's traditional, more relaxed-pace, and less-competitive business culture.
Another impact of changes in the city's retail structure relates to store accessibility. The newest shopping centers are automobile rather than pedestrian oriented, and large amounts of real estate have been devoted to sprawling parking lots. Moreover, the lower prices and greater product diversity offered by operations such as Walmart and Carrefour have devastated many smaller, family-run, neighborhood stores. In recent surveys conducted in the city, Margaret Hayes (l998) found evidence that suggests 5,000 "mom and pop" operations disappear every time a supermarket opens in Argentina. This, in turn, has changed people's circulation patterns in many barrios and has threatened the cohesiveness and distinctiveness of neighborhood life. These changes are expected to accelerate in the coming years as increasing numbers of international retailers move into Latin American cities, drawn by the perception (not always supported by statistical facts) of a burgeoning and dynamic urban consumer market. The U. S. entertainment company Tower Records has constructed its first South American outlet in Buenos Aires and is set to open a second site in the city (Billboard 1997). Carrefour, the French grocery conglomerate, has four supermarkets in the Greater Buenos Aires region and is expected to open several more properties in the near future (La Nación 1997a). McDonald's, which already operates over 100 outlets in Argentina generating over US$200 million annually in revenues, is building nine new restaurants in Buenos Aires (La Nación 1997b).
Critics especially bemoan the impact of North American popular and retail culture on the urban social fabric and the changes they have wrought on the city's built landscape (Randle 1991). For example, the appearance of "golden arches" and other international food and entertainment outlets on the premier pedestrian and shopping street of Buenos Aires, Avenida Florida, has spurred the occasional doyen of society to call for some type of zoning regulations to control the proliferation of these types of retail activities. However, in reality, these types of retail activities cater to the urban middle class, a group that has significant economic and political power in Buenos Aires and that seems to support the globalization of the domestic economy. In Buenos Aires, morphology seems to be following process and, therefore, process should reshape morphology. During times of high inflation in Argentina, vacant land served as a long-term financial hedge but in a low-inflation, stable economy, vacant land is not useful and must be built on. As Griffin (1999) argues, there emerges a more economically rational investment in urban space during a stable economic period. Central Business Districts deteriorate as key shopping elements are removed to elite areas (such as Darsena, Palermo, Recoleta, and Belgrano in Buenos Aires) and a greater separation of the social classes develops. The upper income areas grow more rapidly and spatially, but circulation of the elite within the core is slowly replaced by the middle and lower classes. In recent years, Buenos Aires certainly has experienced commercial deterioration along Lavalle, Florida, and Mayo, the core's major retail and entertainment streets.
Changes in the Housing Market
Restructuring of the housing market in Buenos Aires has been more subtle than retail change but nonetheless important. As the local economy opens up to global market forces, increased land rent values and property speculation are forcing a reappraisal of [end p. 22] land-use practices and housing provision. Property in and around the traditional downtown core of Buenos Aires has become the prime target for redevelopment and urban renewal projects, necessitating the expulsion of the poor and the working class from inner city neighborhoods. Economic globalization also has created a situation in the urban housing market whereby several conflicting forces have come into play. In the Federal District, increased property speculation, rising rents, restrictions on illegal building occupation, and a lack of low-income housing are forcing the economically disadvantaged out to the suburbs. However, inefficiencies in public transport, loss of suburban industrial employment, and a renewed concentration of financial and service activities in the downtown core are forcing many people from the low-income sectors of suburbia to seek out employment in the Federal District.
Since 1990, available capital for the housing sector has been directed toward the upper-income group, exemplified by the frenzied construction of high-rise apartments, condominiums, and luxury towers in the northern barrios of Buenos Aires. Between April 1993 and May 1994, for example, the majority of all major construction activity in the city focused on apartment construction. The apartment tower illustrated in Figure 2 was constructed on Avenida Cerviño in Palermo, behind the U.S. Embassy compound. Claimed to be the tallest residential tower in Latin America, the building houses ninety luxury, 700 square-meter apartments and is clearly geared toward upper income residents. In the inner-city barrio of Villa Crespo, a real estate firm recently purchased a block of land for US$7.8 million with plans to invest nearly US$15 million in the construction of two tower blocks that will contain upscale condominiums (La Nación 1996). Apartment tower construction projects can be found changing the skyline of just about every major barrio of the downtown core, with the exception of the poorer southern area.
Within the Federal District, apartment dwelling continues to dominate the housing market. According to the 1991 Census, 75 percent of all housing units in the District were apartments and they contained 70 percent of the total population, while 21 percent were single-family homes (República Argentina 1993a). In contrast, 75 percent of the housing stock in suburban municipalities is considered single-family homes, with only 12.5 percent of the suburban population living in apartments. This focus on the construction of upper-income sector housing also has implications for the provision of basic household services. In the middle- and upper-income neighborhoods of the Federal District, almost 100 percent of households have water and sewer connections to their properties. In comparison, according to the 1991 Census, only 28 percent of households in the 19 inner-ring municipalities of Greater Buenos Aires had connections to both running water and sewer. Privatization of the water and sewer companies in the early 1990s has helped to address these serious spatial inequities, although the new companies have made only a small dent in the problem to date. [end p. 23]
Exacerbating the housing problem is the fact that Buenos Aires has been ranked as the most expensive city in Latin America in which to live, second only to New York in the hemisphere (Latin American Weekly Report 1995). Moreover, in 1999 the Argentine peso was overvalued by at least 40 percent against the U.S. dollar and this continues to depress investment in the middle- and lower-income housing markets.
Service Infrastructure
One of the more visible examples of landscape change in the downtown core of Buenos Aires is the rehabilitation of the former docks area of Puerto Madero, which stretches several kilometers south from near the Retiro transportation complex. All the old red-brick warehouses are undergoing restoration as part of the City Port Project (Figures 5 and 6). The Project's long-term goal is to turn the former docks area between the Río de la Plata ecological reserve and the commercial-bureaucratic zone into a dynamic financial and retail center. In addition to the rehabilitated warehouses, construction is [end p. 25] underway on six major office buildings, each to have about 4,500 meters of rentable floor space (Cronista 1998). A new yacht club, several restaurants (including a Planet Hollywood franchise), a night club complex (the Divine Buenos Aires), and convention facilities also are in the planning or construction stage. Nearly US$50 million have been earmarked for a 44,000-square meter convention complex in Puerto Madero that would accommodate 9,000 people and international-scale exhibitions (La Nación 1997c). This type of infrastructure points to the desire by local property owners, city planners, and government bureaucrats to rehabilitate and modernize such areas in order to make the urban environment more attractive to globally oriented business and capital.
Office towers also are sprouting up across the downtown landscape of Buenos Aires as more and more foreign capital and international business activities are attracted to Argentina. Over fifteen [end p. 26] major high-rise office complexes have been constructed since 1991, mostly within the downtown core. Electronic Data Systems of Texas, for example, is constructing a new 8,000-square meter corporate headquarters for Argentina near the Retiro transportation complex. Other projects totaling over 100,000 square meters, including the American Express tower, Torreblanca, Nuevo Centro, the Galería Jardín annex, and the Societé General de Surveillance (SGS) tower, have altered the downtown skyline in recent years. Although there is a general concentration of business-oriented high-rises in the microcentro, an area stretching from Retiro to the Plaza de Mayo, a distinct financial zone similar to Wall Street (New York), the City (London), or La Défense (Paris) has yet to emerge in Buenos Aires. However, the impact of financial activities on the landscape is becoming more and more visible each year as companies, architects, and planners compete to erect the latest post-modern structure symbolic of global connectivity. The difference between what has been termed "modern" urban landscapes (functional architecture with a mass production of styles) and the post-modem can often be visually stunning. Some of the hallmarks of post-modernism's impact on the urban land-scape are a proclivity towards a collage of architectural styles, spectacular designs and colors, and the construction of infrastructure for specialized markets (international-quality hotels, conference centers, corporate headquarters, etc.) (Hall 1998).
Industrial Facilities
Much of the capital that has fueled the privatization of Argentina's industry and public services has come from European and North American companies. Shell, for example, is investing US$36 million in the construction of a new refinery complex in Dock Sud, just beyond the Federal District boundary in the barrio of Avellaneda, and it plans to invest US$100 million annually in Argentina over the next five years (La Nación 1997d). Alenco International, a U.S. company, is designing and building an industrial waste treatment plant in southern Buenos Aires (Squitieri 1997), General Electric is involved in the construction of a US$235 million, 769 megawatt power plant south of the downtown core (Diario 1997), and Eastman Chemical is building a polyethlene bottle plant in the city's northern suburbs (Wall Street Journal 1997). Moreover, most of the automobile companies, such as Mercedes, Volkswagen, General Motors, and Ford, have invested substantial capital since 1990 in additional capacity to serve the increasing demand for private cars and trucks in the Southern Cone. All of this investment, however, has only reinforced the dominance of Buenos Aires in the national economy. Despite decades of decentralization and growth pole strategies, the majority of Argentina's industrial and manufacturing capacity remains ensconced in the Greater Buenos Aires region, particularly in the northern suburbs, and along the Paraná corridor. This level of concentration could severely inhibit the ability of new efficiencies and entrepreneurial capital generated by neoliberal reforms to have any profound impact on the urban and rural landscapes of the interior provinces.
Transportation Infrastructure
Private capital has begun to transform the city's transit system, long deprived of new investment and infrastructure. For example, an abandoned suburban rail line has been converted into the new light rail "Tren de la Costa" system running through the city's wealthier north-shore barrios to the popular Tigre delta area (Figure 7). All of the stations along this route have been rehabilitated and a major shopping center has opened at the Tigre Delta terminal. Privatization of the subway and suburban networks has also spurred the renovation of passenger support infrastructure. Many of the subway stations in the Federal District have undergone a complete facelift and new rolling stock is slowly coming online. On the suburban rail network, new physical plant, renovated or completely new stations, and increased levels of service have rejuvenated a system known previously for its level of inefficiency and discomfort. Argentina's government is also encouraging public-private partnerships in the transportation arena and it recently won a US$200 million loan from the World Bank to improve mass transit in Buenos Aires (World Bank 1997). For example, modernization bids for Line A of the Federal District's subway system that runs westward from the Plaza de Mayo to the northwest corner of barrio Caballito were announced in April 1999, and other lines are scheduled for rehabilitation.
Port facilities in Buenos Aires are being restructured to cope with increases in global container traffic. The major port facility in the city is located adjacent to the Retiro transportation complex just north of the downtown core and is undergoing a $350 million expansion (Elliott 1999). Construction of a [end p. 28] container freight station of 6,500 square meters, along with access road improvements, will enable the port to compete more effectively in the regional container market. The city already handles about 1,500 ships annually, with over 1.2 million TEUs (20 ft. container units) moving through the port facility. However, access routes to the port are totally inadequate and the growing traffic volume continues to place great environmental stress on the surrounding barrios. Part of the port expansion strategy is to redevelop the access routes to facilitate connection to a future north-south freeway, to improve rail access, and to expand significantly truck parking and intermodal facilities. Port redevelopment is part of a larger scheme to rehabilitate the entire Retiro transportation complex, which includes the container port, international and national bus terminals, and suburban railroad terminals. Argentina's government has argued that the efficient, rapid, and cost-competitive movement of people, goods, and information is central to the achievement of a more dynamic role for Buenos Aires and Argentina in the new global economy (República Argentina, 1993 b). Redevelopment projects, however, will cause major disruption to adjacent neighborhoods and will change the built landscape profoundly.
Grander schemes are on the drawing board that could reshape the city in a manner not seen since the end of the nineteenth century. Over thirty international consortiums are bidding for the right to construct a 43-kilometer bridge across the Río de la Plata from downtown Buenos Aires to Colonia in Uruguay. Costing over US$1 billion, the bridge would carry over 5,500 vehicles each day across the wide estuary and would prove to be a vital link in the São Paulo-Montevideo-Buenos Aires-Santiago Atlantic-Pacific corridor (Industry Week 1997). Privatization of Argentina's airports also could spur the construction of a new floating international airport in the Río de la Plata estuary facing Buenos Aires. Currently, all international traffic must use Ezeiza which is 35 kilometers from the city center, while domestic flights use Aeroparque Jorge Newbery located along the north shore of the Río de la Plata. Improved connections to the world's market places and key financial centers are seen by planners and bureaucrats as critical to the long-term insertion of city and nation more forcefully into the world economy.
CONCLUSIONS AND CONSEQUENCES
Neoliberal reforms have shaped the way people interact with the built environment in Buenos Aires in profound and often controversial ways. Accessibility and mobility patterns have been altered for many of the city's residents, the fabric of daily life is changing, the core area's built landscape reflects perhaps more division between the elite and the disadvantaged than at any time in the past, and the lower-income sectors of society have become increasingly more disadvantaged as the city pursues it global ambitions. Indeed, Buenos Aires is evolving into a more chaotic, multi-nodal urban landscape that is reinforcing the fragmentation of social groups based on their patterns of consumption. Yet it would be unwise to suggest that neoliberal policies in Argentina are the sole cause of landscape change in recent years. Certainly the climate for capital circulation and investment in infrastructure has been more conducive for landscape change than at any time in recent history and there is a greater sense among planners, policy makers, bureaucrats, and business people that Argentina is, and should be, part of a much larger regional and global economy. Many of the more subtle landscape changes that are occurring, however, simply are part of a naturally maturing and evolving economy and society. Nonetheless, throughout the past century Buenos Aires has developed into an exclusive domain of privileged business interests, with urban planning and management focused on industrial profits and a stable, predictable economic environment. Since 1990, neoliberal ideologies have focused on the goal of reshaping both city and nation into a competitive, free-market environment for the conduct of global commerce, and in the process they have reinforced the privileged position of the socioeconomic elite.
This brief survey of landscape changes in Buenos Aires suggests that there are similarities between the globally induced urban restructuring evident in the more prominent "world cities" and in Argentina's capital. A somewhat homogenized environment of corporate office towers, luxury hotels, U. S. -style supermarkets, mega-malls, and conference centers is clearly discernible in the urban core, which suggests a higher level of global influence on the built landscape than experienced in previous economic cycles. Not since the heady days of the "Parisian" movement in the late-nineteenth [end p. 29] century has Buenos Aires been so overtly shaped by external capital, ideologies, and infrastructural styles. However, it would be a mistake to elevate the impact of globalization on Buenos Aires to social scientific fact and to declare that the city is responding to restructuring in like manner to New York, London, or Tokyo. Local politics, ideologies, conflicts, and social structures are mediating the global-local nexus in important ways in Buenos Aires, and much more research is needed on the policies and motivations that are driving landscape change in the city.
Certainly, neoliberal reform within an open, global economy has changed the operational milieu for cities, citizens, and city managers. As cities such as Buenos Aires emerge from a commercial-bureaucratic background to become more entrepreneurial within the network of world cities and interconnected national and supra-regional economies, they must formulate new strategies to manage themselves more efficiently. Good planning, zoning, and development policies need to be developed that recognize the realities of the so-called "fair and equitable" hand of the free-market system. In Argentina, unfortunately, old planning problems have been simply repackaged in new globalization ideologies without any serious attempt to address the root cause of the problem.
It may be trite to suggest that better long-term planning could help address some of the more serious problems created by neoliberal reforms, but some social goal-oriented planning would be better than none at all. Certainly the urban management problems faced by the world's megacities cannot be solved simply by better planning, more long-term policies, or greater levels of citizen involvement. The structural components of these problems lie embedded in centuries of political, social, cultural, and economic development. Moreover, it would be naive to suggest that the appearance of new buildings or infrastructure on the landscape alone is symbolic of positive (or negative) global economic influences. We need to understand the linkages embedded in these landscape changes and to place the context of these linkages more squarely in national, regional, and global frameworks of development. We also need a clearer sense of how citizens and institutions are reacting to landscape change, either through better measurement of income distributions, mobility patterns, and economic impacts or through sociologically based studies of communities and their members. Finally, we need to monitor urban landscapes more carefully, to (re)search out patterns of development and change, to predict what these changes suggest for future urban growth, and to work more closely with planners, government agencies, and private companies in shaping future urban policies.
Acknowledgements
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Resumen
Perhaps the most visible impact of neoliberal reforms on the landscape of Buenos Aires has come from the development of financial and service infrastructure. If we accept the premise that the world economy is helping to create world cities that function as concentration points for global capital, [end p. 24] corporate headquarters, financial centers, and advanced producer services, then the appearance on the urban landscape of these types of infrastructure should be indicative of global influence. World cities are also striving to bolster their image by attracting international sporting events (the Olympics, the Soccer World Cup, etc.) and hosting major conferences. Buenos Aires' bids for the 2004 and 2008 Olympic Games have merit because the city already has three-quarters of the stadia and arenas needed to host the world's most prestigious sporting event (Faiola, 1997). International hotels, upscale restaurants, convention centers, and other important social infrastructure are crucial to the growth and development of urban identity and sense of place, and are demanded by transnational corporate elites, international financiers, tourists, and the global "jet-set" (Ios elegantes). Luxury hotels managed or owned by transnational companies have proliferated on the Buenos Aires landscape in recent years. Hyatt became the first international hotel chain in over twenty years to develop a luxury property in Buenos Aires when it opened its US$40 million Hyatt Park hotel in Recoleta during April, 1992 (Figure 4). Hyatt was followed quickly by the Marriott, Caesar Park, and Intercontinental properties, with a total investment exceeding US$300 million (Luxner 1995). The already well-established Sheraton that faces the Retiro railroad complex, has just finished construction of a luxury tower section and is now the largest hotel in Latin America with 962 rooms. Buenos Aires in 1998 boasted over 1,700 five-star hotel rooms. Another 220-room luxury hotel is under construction in the renovated Puerto Madero docks area by the Four Seasons hotel chain. The company is investing US$100 million in this property and plans construction of several more hotels in cities around the country (La Nación 1997a). These properties are indicative of Buenos Aires' growing role in the international business arena.
Figure 4. The new luxury Hyatt Park hotel in downtown Buenos Aires. Source: Photo by the author, 1997.
Figure 5 Warehouse renovation in Puerto Madero for luxury boutiques, upscale restaurants and nightclubs. Source: photo by the author, 1996.
Figure 6. Completed renovation project in Puerto Madero with luxury condominia and restaurants. Source: photo by author, 1997.
Neoliberal reforms also have encouraged significant changes in the industrial sector of Buenos Aires' economy since 1990. However, change has come primarily in the form of restructured ownership and management of industrial activities rather than any profound adjustments to the industrial landscape. Privatization policies, for example, have transferred ownership of public service companies (water, gas, sewer, telephone, and transportation) to the private sector. Although new industrial infrastructure is beginning to appear on the landscape, its impact is more subtle and less visible than luxury hotels, highhrise apartments, or office towers.
The final, and perhaps key, element in the restructuring of Buenos Aires in the 1990s is the provision of transport infrastructure and services. No other component of landscape change is as visible to the majority of urban residents as transportation, particularly in a city where over fifteen million daily trips are taken, primarily on public transport. As part of the Argentine government's neoliberal reform strategies, direct operation and management of subway, suburban railroad, light rail, and bus services have been transferred to the private sector. In addition, the government has completed two major freeway projects in the downtown core that had languished unfinished for years because of the country's fiscal crisis. The extension of the Avenida 9 de Julio freeway across Libertador toward the [end p. 27] northeastern shore of the Río de la Plata and the completion of the Autopista 25 de Mayo across Puerto Madero to the southern freeway have improved traffic conditions in the downtown area marginally. Ownership of an automobile is seen as a metaphor for success by many Argentinos aspiring to middle-class status, and the government promotes automobile-based policies through a bewildering variety of supports, tax preferences, and advertising campaigns. However, promotion of an automobile-based transportation strategy in Buenos Aires has long-term negative implications for the city, specifically in terms of environmental degradation, increasing noise and traffic gridlock, and the exclusion of the poorer segments of urban society from increased accessibility and mobility.
Figure 7. The new light-rail system in the northern suburbs, constructed with Spanish capital and using Spanish carriages. Source: photo by author, 1997.
A version of this paper was presented at the 1998 annual conference of the Association of American Geographers. I thank Tom Klak, the CLAG editor, and the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments and suggestions for improving the paper.
Billboard (1997) Tower targets South America. January 18, Vol. 109(3), p. 43.
Este artículo examina la experiencia reciente de Buenos Aires, Argentina, en adaptarse a los procesos de la reorganización económica regional y global. Dentro del contexto más amplio de la reorganización urbana, la que está empujado de la globalización, enfoco específcamente al cambio del paisaje urbano como un indicador de las fuerzas ambos nacionales y globales. ¿Dónde han occurrido estos cambios en Buenos Aires, que forma han tomado estos cambios, y indiquen estos cambios de las influencias globales? Fundamental a estas preguntas generales de investigaciones es una preocupación más profunda con los impactos de la polarización social en la ciudad y con el futuro a la larga de Buenos Aires de la perspectiva de planificación y política. Termina este artículo por sostener que un fracaso de tomar en cuenta las implicaciones de la comodificación del espacio urbano, junto con un fracaso de la planificación integrada, precipite unos futuros conflictos socio-económicos en la ciudad.
Palabras clave: América Latina, Buenos Aires, cambio urbano, paisaje. [end p. 32]