ABSTRACT
Puerto Madero, an internationally inspired model of waterfront development in Buenos Aires, is redolent with transnational corporate authority. La Boca, only one kilometre away, is in contrast a quixotic artistic attraction layered onto a stinking harbour scene. While each has a different relation to the seriously degraded and simplifi ed riverine ecology in which it is embedded, both have played a signifi cant historical role in the development of Buenos Aires as a major nexus of Latin American global trade. Neither, however, is central to the current container shipping industry, which is located in Puerto Nuevo (“New Port”) just upstream from Puerto Madero (see Figure 10.1). While these two waterfront locales share aquatic views and histories, the stark contrast between their “culturally coded geographies” (Shields 1991, 265) shows how development and degradation emerge differentially on a local stage.
