Globalization and Dualization in Buenos Aires Metropolitan Region. Large Investments and Socioterritorial Restructuring in the Nineties

Abstract

Structural changes at the end of the century tend to concentrate particularly in large metropolitan spaces, turning them into the main scenes of the struggle between world-wide trends and of the revival of local identities. In the nineties, in the context of the processes of privatization, deregulation, and economic liberalization, the restructuring of those spaces constitute a phenomenon in which the factors situated in the outside of the metropolis and the country in which it is settled, tend to advance over domestic circumstances, that could cause a considerable loss of control over the economic, social and territorial processes that develop in these urban spaces. This paper analyses the main transformations induced by a decade of direct foreign investment increase in the Metropolitan Region of Buenos Aires. In the same way, it expects to contribute to the reflection and discussion about the duality and contradictions of such processes, with tendencies towards the modernization and globalization, on the one hand, and towards the worsening of social exclusion, on the other.

Í