Transformaciones económicas y organización urbana en Argentina

Abstract

This thesis presents a study of the urban organization of Argentina. The concept refers to the configuration of the system of cities as a cumulative result of the actions of social actors and the opportunities provided by the institutional context, in the framework of historically specific processes. The working hypothesis is that the functioning of the global economy has different impacts in the territories according to paths dependence which in the past structured the economic-spatial conditions. It is argued that contemporary economic processes are deployed on inherited urban organization that determines the way in which globalization impacts on urban systems and cities.Thus, among the impacts on urban organization is expected a strengthening of the previous trajectories, where the existing hierarchies and the economic role of the different areas tend to take hold, leading to greater relative importance of the major cities of system, expand under innovative processes dispersed and polycentric growth. To achieve this general objective, four specific objectives related to historical, demographic, productive and functional aspects are considered. Different secondary data sources and also a variety of analysis techniques are used with the aim of achieve the objectives proposed in each chapter. First, an historical approach is developed about socioeconomic processes, circumstances and institutional factors that have shaped the urban organization of Argentina, giving their special features and different trajectory. After that, an analytical and quantitative description is presented in order to study the changes in the position of the cities in the urban hierarchy putting into question the relevance of population size in the processes of urban reorganization and, also, the influence of a set of variables in the unequal growth among cities under consideration. Then, productive aspects are addressed, in order to remark the changes and continuities that have experienced the economic foundations of urban agglomerations, pointing out their paths and specialization processes. Finally the reorganization process of the Buenos Aires metropolitan, the greater population of the country, is discussed in the context of the new growth dynamics from a functional perspective. The obtained results provide strong empirical evidence that, among other things, suggest that the previous urban organization continues setting the course of demographic and productive trajectories of cities in the context of globalization. The previous hierarchies seem to persist and the specialization and differentiation of spaces is reinforced; while the importance of the better positioned city, the metropolis of Buenos Aires, seems to increase. There, the current trends in the metropolitan reorganization clearly show the existence of dispersed and polycentric patterns in different parts of the metropolis, where the effects of the global economy are reflected in significant functional changes