The world’s southernmost megacity is among the best places to live in Latin America.
With nearly 17 million people, it’s one of those rare metropolises that can feel like the center of
the universe. But there's also a sense that this city once came close to achieving true greatness,
but has fallen well short. This is Buenos Aires, the remote megacity.
Standing at the mouth of a wide estuary, the capital of Argentina rises on the vast
pampas plains that meet the foothills of the Andes. In 1580 several dozen pioneers from
Asuncion navigated 1,000 kilometers of South American rivers
and established the first permanent settlement at what their leader - the
conquistador Juan de Garay - named Buenos Aires for the “fair winds” that greeted mariners there.
De Garay immediately set about planning a grid emanating from
the Plaza de Mayo–which remains the spiritual center of Argentina.
Today, Buenos Aires - or BA for short - is the most prominent and expansive urban grid in the
world. Not even Manhattan adheres to this design principle over as large of an area.
But for its first 200 years, Buenos Aires was a sleepy colony of Spain, considered too
far away to justify much attention. The Spanish compounded this remoteness by decreeing that it
could only trade with one other port–its colony at Callao on the other side of the continent.
This, and the problem of pirates that stole from any vessel without a military escort,
drove up both the price of goods and the length of time they took to arrive.
With frustration mounting against the faraway Spanish crown at the turn of the 19th century,
the British saw an opening to invade. But the people of Buenos Aires,
who call themselves Porteños, used guerilla tactics to expel them twice,
in 1806 and 1807, with little direct help from Spain–victories that convinced the Porteños to
push for independence. Within three years they had expelled the Spanish viceroy.
Over the next century, all trade into and out of the surrounding provinces was funneled
through Buenos Aires, which turbocharged its growth. In the 1850s crops from far and wide
flowed into its factories and warehouses on newly built railroads, creating the need to
build South America’s first wholesale market, stock exchange, and railway station. With the
advent of refrigerated ships, the international export of Argentina’s high-quality beef took off.
With foreign investment pouring in, word spread that it was becoming a world-class metropolis.
Between 1870 and 1895 BA’s population exploded from
90,000 to 670,000, as an influx of immigrants arrived from Italy and Spain.
This mix of striving people packed into a new, densely-populated place was the perfect recipe
for the birth of tango, a passionate dance that embodies the heart and soul of Buenos Aires.
The city’s leaders fully embraced the fusion of South American and European styles.
Today, its architecture is eclectic but distinctly Parisian,
as are its wide boulevards, especially 9th of July Avenue, the widest street in the world,
which required the demolition of dozens of blocks and took half a century to complete.
Another impressive build was the metro,
known locally as Subte–the oldest underground transit system in the Southern Hemisphere.
When Argentina‘s provinces were unified in 1860, Buenos Aires led the new country to one of the
most spectacular increases in prosperity in world history. Within 60 years it had become
the seventh-wealthiest nation on earth, with a per capita GDP bigger than France and Germany.
Then, the party ended as quickly as it began.
World War I forced European investors to move their money back home to help win the
bloody conflict at their doorstep–which meant less money crossing the ocean into Argentina.
The stock market crash of 1929 was the final blow to the export-dependent economy of Buenos Aires.
With little public trust left in the government,
the military seized control--the first of 10 revolts or coups that have taken place over
the last century–abrupt changes in leadership that have resulted in chronic instability.
The constant interruption of government administrations,
combined with the crush of people that arrived throughout the 1800s,
severely challenged the ability of Porteños to plan and construct adequate housing.
During WWII, Buenos Aires again struggled mightily to find buyers for its exports,
which forced millions in Argentina’s rural areas into poverty. Many people had no choice
but to migrate to the capital in search of work, nearly tripling the city’s population.
This swelling urban poor was the perfect audience for populist
Lieutenant-general Juan Peron, who won the presidency in 1946.
New technology like microphones and speakers, allowed Peron to stage massive rallies in the
Plaza de Mayo that were broadcast by radio to the entire country. This gave him the
power to nationalize large industries and create Argentina’s first welfare state.
But it was Peron’s glamorous wife, Eva Duarte, who truly captured the hearts of the people by
championing the rights of laborers, women, and the poor. Like many who reach cultural immortality,
Evita died young in 1952 from cancer. Three million Portenos attended her state funeral,
but Peron’s political power never reached the same heights without her by his side.
Since then, for more than the last half-century, Bueno Aires has developed at a pace well behind
the top-tier global cities it once rivaled 100 years ago. Leaders have tried various schemes to
reignite economic growth and establish political stability since the 1980s, but none have succeeded.
Currently, the capital is gripped by runaway inflation and has had to take IMF loans worth tens
of billions of dollars. To repay them, painful cuts to the Argentinian budget seem likely.
Still, there’s a lot to feel good about if you’re a Porteño.
The port is still one of the largest and busiest on the continent.
And experts think the specter of military intervention that
has haunted the capital’s politics for decades is likely a thing of the past
thanks to years of spending less than 1 percent of GNP on its armed forces.
Some of these savings have instead gone to improving life in the capital’s slums,
as most streets have been paved, which importantly allows buses in so residents can get around more conveniently.
Cables have been laid to connect them to the electricity grid, and new public schools and banks have opened.
The University of Buenos Aires is one of the best in South America. It has produced four
Nobel Prize winners and provides taxpayer-funded education to students from all over the world.
Argentina also has nearly 20 million tons of identified lithium reserves in the Andean
plains. This metal is a central component in the batteries of EVs and mobile devices,
a resource worth more than $1 trillion to Argentina in the next two decades alone.
However, mining it in a way that delivers economic benefits to
the whole country - without ruining the environment - will be a major challenge.
Culturally, Buenos Aires remains influential on the world stage. In fact,
the beloved Pope Francis is a born and bred Porteño.
The city’s other religion is futból. With at least 24 clubs,
Buenos Aires has the highest concentration of pro teams in the world and is home to the
2022 world cup champions, the third time the Argentina national team has lifted the trophy.
BA is also considered the “city of books” with more bookstores per person than anywhere else
on the planet, including one that’s been named the most beautiful in the world.
Clearly, it's a city of thinkers–in fact,
it has more psychologists per inhabitant than anywhere else.
This pro-intellectual and open-minded culture features the largest number of
theaters in the world, including one of the best opera houses and a spectacular national
cultural center that is the largest in Latin America. Among the many performance spaces
in this repurposed grand old post office is the spectacular auditorium known as the blue whale.
To dampen noise and vibration from the metro that runs right below,
the theater is suspended in the center of the building without touching any floors or walls.
Porteños are also champions of individual freedom. The World Health Organization has
praised Argentina for its laws protecting transgender rights. This followed the 1994
change to the national constitution that made Buenos Aires an autonomous city, instead of being
ruled by the federal government as it had been for more than a century. This allowed Porteños
to elect their own mayor, instead of having the president decide who runs their city.
Today, with the footprint of the metropolis largely built out, its economic focus has shifted from manufacturing
to services like finance and real estate. It's already fairly easy to traverse using public
transport, bike, or on foot, so improvements to the quality of life could focus on increasing
the number of parks, as BA’s greenspace per person is well below the UN recommendation.
These areas can also help with flood control during heavy rains as the concrete jungle has
expanded into low-lying areas and even out into the river estuary.
Last January a heatwave took out parts of the electricity grid, cutting power to almost a
million people. Covering the city’s many rooftops with solar panels seems like a sensible solution.
But these are just some of the most obvious improvements to an outsider like me.
The fundamental question facing Buenos Aires is how to continually improve the standard of
living in a megacity that’s so far away from the rest of the developed world.
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Last time I profiled Tehran, Iran’s megacity, and I’ll explore Chengdu, China next.