Renewal of Buenos Aires city waterfront

Abstract

This paper reports an analysis of the main phases and factors relevant to the renovation of the coastal area of the city of Buenos Aires. Since the early 1980s, and especially with the country's comeback of democratic life, that area developed along two different paths. The renovation of the docks followed a top–down process carried out by private–public enterprises; it was a successful and lucrative real-state transformation in which contemporary design and aesthetics had precedence. The ecological restructuring of the river front was, however, the outcome of a bottom–up process that involved many actors with conflicting interests quarrelling during two decades. Thanks to the non-government organisation ‘Ciudad’, who enabled the involvement of otherwise excluded social groups and had ample communitarian support behind its initiatives; the renovation of the coastal strip was successful. The ideologies and policies that have shaped this effort over the years are also discussed in this report.