Metamorphosis and territorial re-scaling: mega-region and urban expansion in southeastern of Buenos Aires province (2000-2020)

Abstract

The metropolitan metamorphosis processes and the formation of mega-regions are a new state of the process of space production that responds to contemporary capitalism’s dynamics and logics. As such, mega-regions are a leap of scale and one of the emerging territorial forms in space configuration. Within this framework, the State has modified its role in territorial development according to global interests creating the political, administrative, fiscal and economic conditions for the redeploying and advancement of corporate capital over the territory. The re-scaling of urban space production deepens the lack of territorial planning by allowing the pre-eminence of real estate-financial capital, fueling speculative processes in land use, appropriation and valorization. The Tuyú region, in the southeastern of Buenos Aires’ province, is a witness of these processes, and the leap of scale involved in the formation of a mega-region, centered at the porteña metropolis. The strength of corporate capital in all its forms, the ambivalence of the State in all its dimensions and technological and lifestyles changes converge on altering the shape, structure and function of different territorial scales and drive the expansion of the city’s private production over new territories, beyond the metropolitan crowns of Buenos Aires, where it proliferated since the 1990s.