Between the City and the Countryside: Amenity migration in Buenos Aires’ periphery

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to contribute with the comprehension of the transformations that the urban peripheries during the past decades. With that purpose in mind, I will analyze a case of residential mobility from the city and suburban centers towards an intermediate and peripheric location of Buenos Aires’ Metropolitan Region by middle-class individuals and families. The article is organized in two different parts. First, I will identify the characteristics of this spatial process in relation with others developed by the same social sectors since the 1980s: neoruralism, amenity migration and the relocalization in gated communities. Then, I will show the emergence of a particular paradox within the spatial experiences of these new inhabitants who experience living at the same time “in the countryside” and “in the city”. The data was collected by means of in-depth interviews in the context of an ethnographic research developed between 2014 and 2018.