The Impact of Immigration on the Urbanization Process of the Global City Buenos Aires (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2018 in the subject Geography / Earth Science - Demographics, Urban Management, Planning, grade: 2,0, Austral University of Chile, language: English, abstract: When thinking about diverse melting pots on the American continent, people tend to think about diverse global cities such as New York and Toronto. However, in terms of cultural diversity, Buenos Aires is equally strong. The city's diversity can be seen when looking at the population and what the city has to offer. Not only are urban buildings, the food, the music and the tango influenced by immigrants who entered the country. Also many events the city of Buenos Aires hosts acknowledges the many immigrants who have shaped this city and the entire country until today.

One of these events is the "Buenos Aires celebra ..." program which was founded in 2009 to support the celebration of foreign countries whose people have immigrated to Argentina. Communities as diverse as Austria, Basque, Croatia, Poland, Paraguay and Peru take part, offering a bit of their culture on Avenida de Mayo, in the historic center of this intercultural South American capital. How diverse the city is can be derived from the numbers: 4 out of 10 inhabitants of the City of Buenos Aires were born outside of the capital and even 12, 8% were born outside of the country of Argentina. Needless to say, that a population as high as 13.000.000 in agglomerations and a high degree of diverse brings opportunity as well as it creates challenges.

This essay will examine the impact immigration had on the urbanization process of Buenos Aires into becoming a diverse megacity. One of the first factors was the sharp increase of the population due to the European immigration wave of the 19th century, so the reasons and effects of European immigration will be outlined. As in the 20th century the immigrants' origins shifted from Europe to South American countries, this second major immigration wave will be discussed. Based on these two phenomena, the conditions, chances, challenges of the European and South American immigration wave will be compared. Due to the majority of immigrants settling down within the urban area of Buenos Aires, urbanization with its positive and negative effects will introduce the second major part of this essay, which deals especially with Villas, unemployment, poverty and insecurity as a results of the urbanization process of Buenos Aires. Afterwards, possible improvements of living conditions will be suggested to create a more sustainable city of Buenos Aires.