Territorial abandonment and legal loophole as strategies for urbanisation

The expansion of Santa Fe city (Argentina) in the XX Century

Abstract

The urban sprawl in Santa Fe city (Argentina) along the East side, in the Paraná river´s flooding valley, it is an interesting analysis case among a wide range of bibliography which, in the last decades, has been dedicated to suburban problematic. It was about a process which principally took place since the state of neglect (physical and political) in which the area stayed for a great part of XX century; and which finally was empower, in 1959, by the urban legal regime repealing. That was a transition (which started at the endings of XIX century) from a conception of periphery as the production place, or extractive exploitation place, to another one related to the urban inhabitant´s confort. Both processes were the hinge which leaded to an exponential consumption of periurban space, by an intense residential occupation; process by which the periphery, paradoxically, acquired centrality. By that way, because of the legal exception, it would be urbanized a hydric critical zone whose principal natural function is to control the river´s regime, and whose capacity for supporting urban dynamics, because of its typical characteristics, is considerably limited.