Greater San Miguel de Tucumán

Greater San Miguel de Tucumán is an agglomeration located in the center of the Argentine Northwest (NOA, in Spanish). Its origin dates back to the first urban settlements during the Spanish colonization, when it was a crossroads town. Eventually, however, throughout a slow but continuous growth process, it became a regional main location, coupled with an intense, disordered, and conflictive process of expansion that corresponds to the logics of inequal urban development that is proper of Latin American cities. Its accelerated growth coincides and is explained by the dismantlement of the sugar production apparatus, which contributed to the depeasantization of the provincial territory and the propagation of informal settlements that are still present in the absence of structural solutions. This reflects the extreme poverty of urban inequality, an inequality that determines the fragmented condition of its current social-spatial structure. The San Javier Range, located to the west, and the Salí River to the east are the natural landmarks that constitute an inescapable reference to these poles of inequality. The overflow area, which has high environmental, landscape, and symbolic value, is mainly urbanized by real estate developments and is destined for population sectors of high purchasing power. In contrast, the river area, where extreme pollution prevails, is where the poorest social sectors are mainly located. These conditions can be verified through the quality of life indexes that are explained in this essay.