From Country Club to Edge City? Gated Residential Communities and the Transformation of Pilar, Argentina

Abstract

At first glance the view from the Panamericana highway that goes to Pilar is much like that from any highway and could be taken as evidence of ‘edge city’ (Garreau, 1991) style development and indeed has, together with developments elsewhere in the municipality, been regarded in more general terms as the sort of fragmented urbanism said to characterize post-modern urbanization of the United States (US). However the story of Pilar and the process of suburbanization and any nascent post-suburbanization in Latin American cities is rather different from that occurring in the US. We concentrate on the role of one type of private sector actors and investors — gated communities — and their contribution to processes of post-suburbanization in Pilar — an outer suburb of Buenos Aires metropolitan area (Argentina).