18. Buenos Aires
“Buenos Aires was booming. On the eve of the take-off in the 1870s, when the population was around 200,000, the city seemed to teeter on the edge of civilization. Argentina was an estuary, and the pampa a palatinate. Every view was limitless, along the sea-wide river, across the ocean-wide sea into the apparently endless plain. A ride away lived people the citizens called savages. In the 1880s the Indians of the pampa were gunned into submission and the conversion of the wilderness into ranchland and farmland began. From being a net importer of grain, Argentina exported a hundred million bushels by 1899. Refrigeration made possible a similar take-off in beef exports. Argentina's trade almost trebled in the last three decades of the century. Rates of increase in population and production were scarcely equalled anywhere else in the world. By 1914, there were 2.5 million people in Buenos Aires… It was a city of immigrants. Nearly half were Italian, nearly a third Spanish… (Many) were subjects of the Russian Empire. (Many) came from Europe east of the Rhine. A louche image seemed inescapable in a frontier town suddenly transformed into a gimcrack metropolis… According to the oath to the flag introduced in 1909, the Argentine Republic was simply ‘the finest country on earth’. (However, during the subsequent decades) Buenos Aires never fully emerged from the disappointments that followed.” *
On the western shore of the Rio de La Plata, near the confluence of the Uruguay and Parana Rivers, European migrants reached their destination, Buenos Aires, with ‘fair winds’, and settled in the country.
With surrounding rich land this was to afford agricultural production of wheat and beef that was far in excess of their own requirements.
Supplemented by cotton & tobacco, soybean & vines, a whole agro-processing industry developed that required its own supporting infrastructure.
From the heart of the city, railways were built, Puerto Madero with its contiguous docks was constructed, but these facilities soon needed further expansion with the enlarged Puerto Nuevo on reclaimed land with its more accessible docks next to Estacion Retiro San Martin.
Life centred around the port – its citizens are referred to as ‘Porteños’ – and was originally a walking city.
Once four new railroad lines were built out from the city into the interior. However, this sealed its position as the country's main commercial centre.
Urban transport developed from early omni-buses, and horse-car lines followed by trolley lines.
It evolved as a mono-centric city as it fanned out along major Avenida from its central street grid plan and plazas.
As the reach of the streetcars extended with their electrification, the city continued to expand westward into the suburban municipalities as new ‘alrededores’ were developed.
Hence, the reliance of most of the working population was on radial transportation lines into the city. The Federal Capital District was created with a street plan proposed for the whole district in 1898.
The ‘Subterráneo’ (subté) was opened in 1913, the oldest underground system in South America.
As industries grew and transport routes improved, they began to relocate in the 1930’s from the centre to the periphery.
This has resulted in general decrease in density from the centre and over time the creation of poly-nodal centres around the perimeter of the city as is typically evident today.**
*Felipe Fernández-Armesto – Buenos Aires – Great Cities in History – Thames & Hudson, 2009.
**Shlomo Angel – Planet of Cities – Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2012.
