Centros comerciales a cielo abierto en las centralidades tradicionales del conurbano bonaerense

Abstract

With different names and accents in certain urban policies, the Centros Comerciales a Cielo Abierto (CCCA) have served as model of intervention in numerous cities in USA and Europe since the 1970s to the present. In Latin America, the proposals for revitalization and heritage preservation of historic centers during the ' 90s have not ignored these experiences, but it is not until this decade that it settled the discussion of issues related to its financing and impact on economic activity and the land market and also the management and promotion of trade in street facing competition from superstores – as well as illegal trade-. Within this framework and in a program financed by the IDB, since the beginning of the 2000 there has been made a series of agreements between the Argentina Chamber of the SME and various municipalities in greater Buenos Aires in order to promote the transformation of their traditional core areas under the model of CCCA. The present paper proposes a comparative analysis about these urban actions: its pattern of distribution territorial, size and type of operations, grade of realization, actors involved and articulation with others local public policies, in order to think about the urban "image", commercial profile and social practices that they promote, as well as their reaches and limitations facing the different forms and processes of metropolitan centrality, and the capacity to link them with other urban policies of territorial scale.