Informal Neighbourhoods in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area. Their evolution and growth during recent decades

Abstract

For the authors, structural change has altered the relations as between economy, society and
space. Real wage collapse and a new order in things having to do with city planning area factors
that, amongst others, make access to land diffi cult for the lower classes. In the wake of the
redirecting of building endeavour towards the satisfying of the calls on it of the medium to upper
income bracket population and given government incapacity to meet housing demands, a rise in
un-formalized building is only to be expected.
In the light of the foregoing, the paper attempts to describe the present day reality of the informal
neighbourhoods of the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area and analyse their evolution and in so doing
remedy the offi cial administrative short fall in this respect. That the full dimensions of the question
might be understood, all available offi cial data is taken into account as is a sifting of these on the
authors´ part so that that fuller inventory necessary for a proper visualizing those areas requiring
initiatives as within the present-day´s housing policy might be drawn up.
The paper aims to demonstrate that regional urban growth over the last decade is closely tied in
with that of this un-formalized mode of answering needs and that latter thus merits the attention
of all those charged with taking housing and city planning decisions.