Las urbanizaciones privadas en Buenos Aires y su significación

Abstract

In this article we examine the processes of urban transformation that have been taking place since the nineties in the outskirts of Buenos Aires, beginning in the boom of private urbanizing. In the first part the analysis is focused on the urban forms, social relations and urban imagery that might account for a dual relationship between an “open city” and a “closed city”. In the second part, our interest goes to the social representations and practices of the inhabitants and other actors involved in the urbanizations, with respect to the multiple and contradictory senses on which the
“open” and the “closed” are based. Our final considerations intend to define on one hand, the extreme to which it is possible to talk about two coexisting cities, the way in which the “closed” acts as a material and symbolic resource, the place of public space and “urban crisis”, and, on the other hand, how much do those “enclaves” intensify new processes of social-urban segregation.