IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ijurrs/v30y2006i2p308-327.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Planning à la Carte: The Location Patterns of Gated Communities around Buenos Aires in a Decentralized Planning Context

Author

Listed:
  • NORA LIBERTUN DE DUREN

Abstract

The spectacular growth of gated communities around Latin America’s largest cities has been widely noted. In Buenos Aires, after the upgrade of the northern highway in the 1990s, the number of gated communities along the road more than tripled, reaching 500 by the year 2001. Yet, the geographic distribution of these communities was uneven, with the majority concentrated in municipalities with the highest percentage of poor households. Why, given similar land prices, land availability, access to infrastructure and distance to the city’s core, did developers build gated communities in the poorest municipalities? This article argues that the decentralization of planning controls contributed to these patterns of distribution. While wealthier municipalities used this prerogative to enforce tighter controls on land use, the less affluent ones relied on their capacity to modify planning codes to lure real estate developers. Unlike well‐serviced municipalities, who perceived the gated communities’ privatization of services as a potential danger to their fiscal tax base, the municipalities that lacked urban services in most of their territory saw gated communities as a fast and inexpensive way of increasing local economic activities in less productive lands. As a consequence, after decentralization of planning capacities, the development of gated communities clustered in less affluent municipalities, hence deepening the social polarization in these jurisdictions.

Suggested Citation

  • Nora Libertun De Duren, 2006. "Planning à la Carte: The Location Patterns of Gated Communities around Buenos Aires in a Decentralized Planning Context," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(2), pages 308-327, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:ijurrs:v:30:y:2006:i:2:p:308-327
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2427.2006.00667.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2006.00667.x
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2006.00667.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Libertun de Duren, Nora Ruth, 2017. "¿Por qué allí?: Los motivos por los que promotores privados de vivienda social construyen en las periferias de las ciudades de América Latina," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 8705, Inter-American Development Bank.
    2. Guerra, Erick & Caudillo, Camilo & Goytia, Cynthia & Quiros, Tatiana Peralta & Rodriguez, Camila, 2018. "Residential location, urban form, and household transportation spending in Greater Buenos Aires," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 76-85.
    3. Baird-Zars, Bernadette, 2023. "Making the ropes: How daily practices in a booming periurban municipality become durable 'gray' institutions shaping land use," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    4. Goytia, Cynthia & Heikkila, Eric J. & Pasquini, Ricardo A., 2023. "Do land use regulations help give rise to informal settlements? Evidence from Buenos Aires," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    5. Andra CONDOR, 2015. "Buenos Aires And Jakarta. Failings And Achievements In Improving Physical Environments," Theoretical and Empirical Researches in Urban Management, Research Centre in Public Administration and Public Services, Bucharest, Romania, vol. 10(3), pages 5-13, August.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ijurrs:v:30:y:2006:i:2:p:308-327. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0309-1317 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.