Country Context

Argentina represents an interesting case of a middle-income developing country recovering from a recent economic crisis. The 2001 crisis was the culmination of a long period of neo-liberal policies and social impoverishment. During this period, almost all public services were privatized and had weak regulation systems. The voice of civil society was absent in that process and is still out of the picture. Throughout this structural crisis, however, cultural expression remained strong and increased, particularly in the city of Buenos Aires. The political situation in Argentina remains very complicated, and the project in La Matanza is no exception to those complications. In fact, it is at the center of many political debates in the country.

 

 

Objectives

The Matanza-Riachuelo clean-up project has been given new life through the approval of a multi-year investment and rehabilitation program by the national government in 2009 and the approval of a multi-million dollar loan to Argentina from the World Bank to support this program. This program is the single largest urban environmental project undertaken by the international community within an individual city in any developing country. Its breadth, ambition, difficulty, and substantial financial resources make it an important experiment in development cooperation as well as urban environmental rehabilitation. The objective of the Buenos Aires IFP  is to build upon the existing framework of monitoring and evaluation of the efforts of national, provincial, and local governments and other institutional and civil society actors to remedy and develop the highly polluted area of the La Matanza-Riachuelo basin in metropolitan Buenos Aires inhabited by 5 million people in many jurisdictions. This student project was started in 2010.

Within this context, the objective of the Buenos Aires IFP is to continue student-run monitoring of this initiative to:

 

• Contribute to an understanding of the process of urban environmental improvement in a comparative international context

• Contribute to knowledge of international cooperation to address these problems in Argentina

• Provide an environment for in-the-field, practical learning for New School graduate students, to develop skills in framing and analyzing problems, assessing efforts to address them, and contributing to individual sectoral efforts within this larger program of initiatives

• Provide an environment for experimentation by students in developing initiatives contributing to this overall understanding and improvement of the well-being of inhabitants of the area

• Understanding the challenges facing enterprises trying to shift to less-polluting industrial processes, including avoiding reducing employment in a time of economic recession

• Assessing the different impacts of the project in the diverse municipalities of the area, including how conversion to less-polluting processes might affect production, tax revenues, and the landscape

• Assessing the impacts on low-income communities, known as villas miserias

• Examining the issues around the proposed relocation of part of the La Salada informal market which is on the bank of the river

• Understanding the structure and flow of financial resources for the project

• Developing a visual picture of the river basin area, its populations, communities, and environmental problems

• Documenting the presentation of the area in the media and the movements in public opinion

 

Interested in being part of the IFP? Program Info and Requirements

Language Requirement: Spanish (Conversational competency). Students are encouraged to audit Fall and Spring Spanish Classes.  Proficiency tests will be given in April.

Concentrations: Cities and Social Justice, Development, Media and Culture; EPSM: Environmental Management and Policy; Media Studies. 

Required course: TBD (New School Students Only)

 

Find out more about eligibility requirements and the application process!