Popular neighborhoods in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires. Informal city and public policies in drinking water and sanitation services.

Abstract

The 21st century brings before us the great challenge of the universality of water and sanitation services in an increasingly urban world. The gap between the level of coverage of these services and the urbanized area is difficult to address given the disarticulation existing between the dynamics of infrastructure networks and accelerated urban settlement patterns.

In Latin America, the so-called villas, shantytowns, slums or favelas shape archipelagos of informality in access to drinking water and sanitation services, within a formal city that makes their exclusion invisible and tries out alternative mechanisms or intermediate solution policies in territories of inequity and urban inequality.

In this paper we will analyze the prevailing public policies in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires, and the impact they have had on access to water and sanitation services in its poor neighborhoods.

Key words: poor neighborhoods, access to water and sanitation, Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area, public policies.