Sustainable urban strategies for the social inclusion and environmental recovery of the Matanza Riachuelo river basin

Published in the proceedings of the Green Urbanism conference held in Rome, 2019.

The Matanza Riachuelo River Basin is Argentina’s densest region, housing over 6 million people. It is also the country’s most environmentally degraded area, due to heavy water and air contamination that has taken place for the past 150 years. Furthermore, the basin’s territorial domain is shared by 15 different jurisdictions, including the City of Buenos Aires, thus facing great legal-administrative difficulties preventing its sanitation and urban development. For these reasons, it has become a very devalued area with most of its population living in informal settlements and suffering from serious environmental health issues, which resulted in a court trial to the National and Provincial Governments by a group of inhabitants.

This paper describes Planning and Urban Design measures that were incorporated in the first draft of a Government-lead ‘Territorial strategic development plan’ for the recovery of the basin’s most developed area, serving as an example for the rest of the territory, promoting better microclimatic and environmental conditions, and aiming, most importantly, to improve living conditions. 

The existing urban configuration is analysed, as well as the economic context, legal framework and the basin’s environmental requirements. In addition, strategic guidelines for the river’s recovery are developed, following replicable, sustainable and inclusive urbanization patterns and by implementing UN-Habitat’s New Urban Agenda as a strategic tool to organize and revitalise such a complicated territory.

This work was led by the Matanza Riachuelo River Basin Authority, accompanied by a technical team of members of the National Housing Secretariat, the National Planning Secretariat and the Government of the City of Buenos Aires.

Full article here.