Buenos Aires: road-building as a factor for urban integration and Port-City co-existence

Flavio Galanis, Assistant Planning Manager, Infrastructure and Planning Department, Buenos Aires Port. General Port Administration (State Enterprise) Waterfronts are highly coveted areas by all stakeholders in port cities. For port authorities and companies they are a necessary space for their function, for the real estate market it is a very attractive area for new housing developments and for the inhabitants they are ideal areas for new public spaces. Responding to all these ambitions is complex, therefore, for an innovative port-city governance, it is necessary to develop a balanced territorial policy between urban uses and active port, especially on the waterfront. In this article, Flavio Galanis of the Port of Buenos Aires explains how this is being achieved in the Argentine case. Puerto Buenos Aires is a member of AIVP Introduction With the deregulation of Argentinean ports in the 1990s, private ports started to appear and operation of the Buenos Aires terminals was let out on concession. The transfer of the bulk terminal further up-river, closer to production centres, allowed Buenos Aires Port to clean up its operations and reduce its negative impact on the city, avoiding the dust, spills and noise inevitable in bulk cargo operations. The Port meanwhile specialised in containerised cargo and passengers, the latter being an industry that was insignificant 25 years ago. Not only is the presence of big cruise ships attractive for the city's inhabitants, but it is also compatible with the tourism offer of any big city. Furthermore, the conversion of the old Puerto Madero, south of the current port perimeter, modified the dynamic of this part of the city, requiring more of the Port Authority's attention. In this context, one of the great barriers to connecting citizens with the port environment and the waterfront, and the one which perhaps raises the greatest apprehensions, is the movement of heavy goods traffic on urban arteries, due to the congestion and the sound, visual and air pollution that it causes. In the case of Buenos Aires, this is especially significant due to the city's extensive terrestrial links with its hinterland. The city was originally Argentina's principal point of contact with Europe, so every road and railway that was built during the development of the country's transport infrastructure converged on its port. Road connections, Buenos Aires Port ©Puerto Buenos Aires In recent years, the construction of the final section of the city's ring-road, Paseo del Bajo (for which the Port had…