Pedal harder, mum, it’s the plebs!
RESIDENTS of the Mayling Country Club, a gated community on the outskirts of Buenos Aires that boasts tennis courts, a polo field and a private restaurant, often carp about the Pinazo river, which runs through four holes of their verdant 18-hole golf course. If one doesn’t aim carefully, the river, which is flanked by weeping willows and navigated by ducks, swallows all the balls launched its way.
A few miles downstream, residents of Pinazo, an informal settlement that has sprung up along the riverbank, have very different complaints. During heavy rains the river overflows, inundating their makeshift aluminium-and-brick homes with sewage. Its gangs are so tough that even police fear to go in, says Pablo Atchabahian, the local health-secretary.
Such inequality is the norm in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, where a quarter of Argentina’s 40m citizens live. For the majority, life is hard. Less than half of homes have sewerage and a quarter lack access to piped water. A third have no gas; almost as many stand on unpaved streets. But amid this poverty, islands of luxury are popping up. A report by the provincial tax office in 2012 suggested that there were more than 400 gated developments around the capital, containing 90,000 homes. Most manage their own utilities and security, with CCTV and guards patrolling at all hours. Some are small towns in their own right: Nordelta, a secure mega-complex on the capital’s northern edge, is home to more than 17,000 people and has its own schools, hospitals and hotels.
A new law proposes to prise open the gates. The Law of Just Access to Habitat, promulgated on October 7th, allows the provincial government to tax new gated communities a tenth of their land, or the equivalent in cash, to pay for social housing. It also raises by 50% the tax levied on vacant lots in gated neighbourhoods, and allows the government to expropriate lots that have lain undeveloped for five years, after a three-year grace period. “The idea is to give the government more power to intervene in the regulation of land, and therefore decrease the unbelievable inequality,” argues Eduardo Reese, an urban-management professor at the National University of General Sarmiento, who lobbied for the new law.
Francisco de Narváez, an opposition congressman from Buenos Aires, has lodged a complaint that the law is unconstitutional. It “violates the right to private property and opens a dangerous door”, he says. Eduardo Constantini, the developer behind Nordelta, worries about the crackdown on empty lots. Because mortgages barely exist in Argentina, many families have to hold on to land for years before they can afford to build, he says. “The government should focus less on excessively taxing closed neighbourhoods, and instead decrease the need for them by investing more in infrastructure and security.” Whatever the impact of the new law, the rich and poor of Buenos Aires will continue to live jammed close together but worlds apart.
RESIDENTS of the Mayling Country Club, a gated community on the outskirts of Buenos Aires that boasts tennis courts, a polo field and a private restaurant, often carp about the Pinazo river, which runs through four holes of their verdant 18-hole golf course. If one doesn’t aim carefully, the river, which is flanked by weeping willows and navigated by ducks, swallows all the balls launched its way.
A few miles downstream, residents of Pinazo, an informal settlement that has sprung up along the riverbank, have very different complaints. During heavy rains the river overflows, inundating their makeshift aluminium-and-brick homes with sewage. Its gangs are so tough that even police fear to go in, says Pablo Atchabahian, the local health-secretary.
Such inequality is the norm in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, where a quarter of Argentina’s 40m citizens live. For the majority, life is hard. Less than half of homes have sewerage and a quarter lack access to piped water. A third have no gas; almost as many stand on unpaved streets. But amid this poverty, islands of luxury are popping up. A report by the provincial tax office in 2012 suggested that there were more than 400 gated developments around the capital, containing 90,000 homes. Most manage their own utilities and security, with CCTV and guards patrolling at all hours. Some are small towns in their own right: Nordelta, a secure mega-complex on the capital’s northern edge, is home to more than 17,000 people and has its own schools, hospitals and hotels.
A new law proposes to prise open the gates. The Law of Just Access to Habitat, promulgated on October 7th, allows the provincial government to tax new gated communities a tenth of their land, or the equivalent in cash, to pay for social housing. It also raises by 50% the tax levied on vacant lots in gated neighbourhoods, and allows the government to expropriate lots that have lain undeveloped for five years, after a three-year grace period. “The idea is to give the government more power to intervene in the regulation of land, and therefore decrease the unbelievable inequality,” argues Eduardo Reese, an urban-management professor at the National University of General Sarmiento, who lobbied for the new law.
Francisco de Narváez, an opposition congressman from Buenos Aires, has lodged a complaint that the law is unconstitutional. It “violates the right to private property and opens a dangerous door”, he says. Eduardo Constantini, the developer behind Nordelta, worries about the crackdown on empty lots. Because mortgages barely exist in Argentina, many families have to hold on to land for years before they can afford to build, he says. “The government should focus less on excessively taxing closed neighbourhoods, and instead decrease the need for them by investing more in infrastructure and security.” Whatever the impact of the new law, the rich and poor of Buenos Aires will continue to live jammed close together but worlds apart.
