Greater Neuquén Area

A good part of the cities of northern Patagonia is organized regionally under the influence of the conurbation around the city of Neuquén, the area with the greatest development, density, and quantity of population in the entire Argentine Patagonia. Located at the confluence of the Limay and Neuquén rivers in a border area between the provinces of Río Negro and Neuquén, it stands out for its urban primacy, demographic concentration and diversification of functions, and economic activities. This great dynamism, however, brought with it some drawbacks such as the loss of agricultural land, growing real-estate speculation, the settlement of people in risk areas, environmental problems, and, of course, a great heterogeneity in the quality of life between various sectors. The conurbation area is consistent with 512 census tracts for the year 2010, which were analyzed to determine essential aspects of quality of life. In the spatiality of the results, the predominance of the center-periphery logic is notable, identified in many of the variables. The areas of recent expansion are more relegated in terms of infrastructure and socioeconomic aspects in general. The mitigating factor for this predominant logic is peripheral neighborhoods with high purchasing power, which have a high quality of life comparable to the central areas of the main cities. On the other hand, we find low-income neighborhoods close to the centers of the towns that make up islands of poverty in the vicinity of neighborhoods with a population with high purchasing power.