Planning the Intermediate City, or How to Do Better with Little: The Case of the City of Nueve de Julio, Argentina

With 92% of its population living in urban areas, Argentina is one of the most urbanized countries on the planet. Like in many South Countries, the populations of the small and medium-sized cities, which serve as intermediate centers between the countryside and the urban network, are growing steadily. Such cities in Argentina offer services and infrastructures to both urban and rural populations, as well as a residential alternative to the Greater Buenos Aires metropolitan area. These cities, however, are facing specific problems that require appropriate responses. In this respect, Nueve de Julio is emblematic of the challenges facing these intermediate cities. As one of the hundred cities created in the 19th century by the Argentinian government, Nueve de Julio is today a city whose population is increasing, and territory is expanding, but that lacks any foresight to anticipate the next 20 or 30 years. Our purpose is to analyze the reasons of this stagnation, explain the serious development problems the city confronts, with disparities in the organization of its territory and 20% of population living in poverty, and foresee an open system of urban planning, capable to guide the urban authorities and its partners in the identification of priorities and investments in favor of all the inhabitants. The government seems helpless in dealing with this. Political ac-tivism prevails over planning and varies from one election to the next depending on the party in power. Means are lacking, both financially and in terms of technical skills. Establishing an open system of urban planning is imperative. Based on the collaboration of citizen, the goals of the planning should include social, economic and spatial integration,

At the national level, it is interesting to consider experts' analyses of historical trends in Argentina's urbanization process.
enos Aires metropolitan area, as we can see on the Photo 1) and subsequent levels like La Plata (the capital of the Buenos Aires Province) and the other agglomerations. These areas have highly dense road and rail networks, active medium-sized towns and numerous small, generally well-equipped regional urban centers. As illustrated on the photo, the Buenos Aires metropolitan area (the Gran Buenos Aires, in Spanish) is the most densely populated region of Argentina, consisting of the national capital and 24 suburban municipalities. With a population of more than 12.8 million inhabitants and 4.08 million households on an area of 3.833 km 2 , this urban region hosts 31.9% of the national population 5 . Photo 1. Greater Buenos Aires metropolitan area (Source: satellite photo, Spotlight, 2009 6 ). This population dynamic of medium-sized cities in Argentina brings new challenges in terms of development and investment in infrastructure and amenities. Since the 1990s, the infrastructure and public service supply is no longer consistent with urban growth, due to the neo-liberal economic policies of successive governments. The state of the roads is deteriorating, as are the drinking water and wastewater evacuation networks. This is particularly true in the outskirts of large cities and the municipalities that comprise Greater Buenos Aires , Dubois Maury, 1990. Until the 1990s, no national planning law or building code existed; everything depended on the provinces, with numerous delegations at the municipal level (Dubois Maury, 1990). Concretely, this superposition of local and provincial regulations gives rise to numerous derogations. The often random nature of urban development projects, regardless of the sector, entails the risk of a lack of a broader, more comprehensive vision, and thus deviates from longer-term planning goals.
In 2004 try's objective was to establish public policies that do not focus on large metropolitan areas only, but medium-sized cities as well. In terms of risks and opportunities, we effectively lack information on this type of city, though we know that medium-sized cities' populations are growing the fastest.
Following this blueprint, each small or medium-sized city is now better placed in a web of communications with other cities, while maintaining a functional relationship with the surrounding rural environment. In reality, their future is increasingly dependent on decisions made by a multitude of actors at different scales (local, provincial and national). As such, their regional and national integration largely depends on the link between existing and future infrastructures (roads, transportation systems, telecommunications/computer networks, etc.).
This must also be considered in a context of urban-rural and interurban interplay characterized by increasing geographical mobility, along with complex residential and professional situations (e.g. working in Buenos Aires and regularly commuting to cities outside the metropolitan area, or working remotely via ICT for companies in the capital, but making periodic face-to-face visits). Such compromises help make "provincial quality of life" and urban economic integration compatible.
Given the emergence and establishment of new business sectors such as tourism and high-tech enterprises, these small and medium-sized Argentinian cities are being pulled into dynamics that are sometimes quite integrative at the re-J. C. Bolay DOI: 10.4236/cus.2018.63020 372 Current Urban Studies gional and national levels, but that also must deal with processes of social and/or economic exclusion. Lan, Adriani, & Savério Sposito (2018) remind us that intermediate cities' dynamics are also the result of the strategies of major industrial groups who tend set up their production units in intermediate cities, where land and labor costs are cheaper and profits are higher.
Coming back to Argentinian urban dynamics and the changes taking place in the small and medium-sized cities that serve as intermediaries between rural hinterlands and urban networks (Bolay & Kern, 2018), it appears that Argentina's recent urbanization resembles that of Western industrialized countries. This is largely due to the fact that residential choices are no longer made based exclusively on job location. Communication and transportation networks have also greatly facilitated commuting. It is in this way, and based on the example of Nueve de Julio and other Latin American cities, that we can observe how regional urban centers-though somewhat modest at the national level-nonetheless serve as intermediate centers for their hinterlands and provinces . Such cities emphasize the quality of life and safety, and offer a lower cost of living. This also applies to the Buenos Aires Province, one of the most densely populated regions of one of the most urbanized countries in the world, and a world leader in terms of advanced agricultural techniques and exportation (Gorenstein et al., 2007).

The Province of Buenos Aires: A Dense Territory under Influence
The Buenos Aires Province is an immense territory of some 300,000 sq.km, the equivalent of 11% of the national territory-the surface area of Italy! This largely endless plain, which encompasses most of the Argentinian pampas 7 (Pesoa Marcilla, 2016), is the country's most populated region. Province is translated on Figure 2.
The Province's colonization has its roots in the quest to conquer the national territory in the early 19 th century, with the aim of making Argentina a "truly" developed, exploited country, as shown in Figure 3. In keeping with Pesoa Marcilla's analysis (2016), this strategy was based on a variety of initiatives in the field, ranging from the enactment of land ownership laws to regional immigration regulation, wars and peace treaties with indigenous populations, the founding of villages and cities, and even the creation of a national mapping institute. For the leaders at that time, the objective was to "civilize" the country by incorporating fertile lands (then occupied by indigenous peoples) into the national production system, thus enabling an increase in the production of cattle and grains (Ratto, 2003).
What emerged as a result are the more than hundred new cities-mostly built between 1850 and 1916-founded in the Buenos Aires Province, which makes it unique at the global level, for such a short historical period and so vast a territory.
In keeping with an agrarian economy largely comprised of livestock and cereal crops, each new agglomeration's urban center was bordered by concentric growing areas (Pesoa Marcilla, 2014) 11 . Each urban plan was geometrically and rationally organized around a town square (local government buildings, church, school, bank, theater, etc.) and its purlieu into "manzanas" (Pesoa Marcilla, 2012). The precise organization of these new cities concretely conveys the priorities of these new settlements, which were gradually linked to one another and 10 https://www.lanacion.com.ar/1936345-exportaciones-poco-federales-las-companias-de-tres-provi ncias-explican-el-71-del-comercio-exterior 11 These production areas consisted of chacras and quintas (small suburban vegetable farms).  the national capital by rail and road. The Province's proactive urbanization policy clearly reflects the will of a landowning oligarchy that was not affected by regional conflicts in a country emerging as a major exporter of raw materials of rural origin on the world market. The goal, therefore, was to be an actor in the construction of modern Argentina and its institutions in a larger process of conquering exploitable lands (Segura, 2009 (Aliandri, 2015).
Closer to home historically, it appears that since the 1960s, the suburban municipalities of Greater Buenos Aires now represent the majority of the Province's population and is increasing. It accounted for 55.8% of the provincial population in 1960, and 63.5% in 2010, or two-thirds of the total population. Outside of this metropolitan area, medium-sized cities of more than 10,000 inhabitants have the fastest growing populations. There were 69 such cities in 1991. In 2000, this figure rose to 76, including 21 cities of more than 50,000 inhabitants. According to the nomenclature developed by the MPF (2011b), the urban agglomerations of the regions and provinces are defined according to three categories that characterize the major economic trends of each city: a production function, an intermediation function and a reproduction function. Differences in terms of infrastructure and services also set the cities of the Buenos Aires Province apart, as does public transportation. According to the 2001 census (MPF, 2011a), it appears that cities in the lower strata of the urban hierarchy do not have public transportation services, whereas sub-regional urban nodes and agglomerations of more than 50,000 inhabitants all do.
The medium-sized cities of the province of Buenos Aires's pampas region undoubtedly serve an intermediate function at the regional level as businesses and services centers directly related to the rural population and the province's agro-industrial production. They are also logistic hubs administratively and governmentally, as well as investment places for certain agricultural incomes (real estate, land, commercial, etc.), bearing in mind that it is the province's main job market. Linking the Buenos Aires Province's territorial organization to its economic development, Gorenstein et al. (2007) put forward the concept of neo-rurality, which is useful in going beyond the rural/urban dichotomy, especially through the multifunctional nature of jobs held by rural dwellers and based on the increasingly intermediary role the province's urban centers play relative to the surrounding countryside, as in most South countries ).

Nueve de Julio: What Intermediate City for the Region?
Let us recall that, in our analysis, intermediate cities are characterized as much by their functions as by their dimensions, be they territorial or demographic (Bolay & Kern, 2018). In order to refine our analysis of Nueve de Julio and its roughly 50,000 inhabitants, we will evaluate its development potential based on the interactions between the city and its environment.
With a dual problem of size and resources, Nueve de Julio lacks human and financial means, as well as the institutional capacity to anticipate its rapidly growing population and manage its impact on the occupation and organization of the territory.  According to the municipal authorities (but with no official source of reference), the 2017 estimate was roughly 52,000 (the demographic evolution is shown in

Nueve de Julio: An Ordinary Modern City in the Argentinian Pampas
J. Robinson's work on South cities teaches us that, rather than compare urban realities based on clearly identified criteria, theoretical assumptions have ordered and locked cities into models that do not fit them: rich cities versus poor cities (but where are the boundaries?) and South cities versus North cities (but where are Argentinian cities in this binary vision of urban development?) (Robinson, 2011). This is all the more true in a globalized world that, as the author aptly puts it, faces "… growing assertions of convergence and connections across ur-13 A city neighborhood recently renamed Barrios Unidos.  (Robinson, 2011: p. 5). Therefore it is less a question of urban modernity versus urban development promotion, to use the words of Kern (2017), which underpin our analysis, than of constitutive elements of urban identity. In many parts of the global South, urban economies are dominated by the informal sector.
The example of Nueve de Julio puts us face to face with a completely different Argentinian reality, through planned cities built based on formal and legally-recognized systems of economic production, whose prosperity largely depends on international connections of supply and the distribution of goods and raw materials. In this respect, urban sprawl in Argentina-which is recent for much of the Buenos Aires Province-relates more to the analysis of new cities created in the 19th century following a European model and implemented in Latin American. Understood in terms of their similarities and differences, these South cities cannot be excluded from the analysis, as they are but one manifestation of the global urbanization process among others (Robinson, 2006;Schuermans, 2009). Understanding the role of an intermediate city like Nueve de Julio brings us back to Fraser's observations. For him, the concept of ordinary city "...
provides readers with an invigorated call to develop a post-colonial urbanism that is cosmopolitan in the sense of conceiving all cities as sites of modernity.
This does not diminish the stark differences between places that are differentially connected to networks across the globe, and it does not ignore the differential challenges cities face as a result of uneven development patterns and unequal resources" (Fraser, 2006: p. 196). While it is certain that Nueve de Julio is not a global city by Sassen's (2001Sassen's ( , 2002 definition, with functions of monitoring and control over the internationalized economy, it is a mixture of modernity and tradition, and is likewise a part of this globalized market economy (Robinson, 2002). Nueve de Julio is but one piece on an international chessboard of flows of raw materials and services, in service to Argentinian agro-export.
In light of this, and with the goal of better understanding Nueve de Julio's current situation, certain elements of "modernity" and "development" set this city apart while, at the same time, harmonizing its trajectory with that of the Buenos Aires Province's pampas region.
For the 150 years of its existence, Nueve de Julio has been highly representative of modernity in dealing with the world, the fruit of the technological and social advances that have shaped both Europe and Latin America: human migration from Europe to Argentina, accelerated industrialization of primary and secondary production, and financial gain from an export economy. Velásquez

Nueve de Julio: Fragmented Modernity between Territorial Expansion and Social Inclusion
In recent history, Nueve de Julio has faced problems similar to those found in most of the Province's medium-sized cities, but with undeniable prosperity that is reflected in territorial planning ( Though unable to prove it for lack of access to information, but based on the comments from the field, an unusual competition exists between the two institutions, with the CEyS generally seen as an historically-rooted organization that manages large swathes of urban development and that works both collectively and privately for all of the municipality's residents. It is recognized for its administrative and financial rigor, as well as its efficiency in the production of goods and services, but is criticized by some for its monopolistic tendency to manage all profitable utilities. Municipal services, on the other hand, are criticized first and foremost for the instability of the political changes, the poor management of civil servants, and their material and logistical shortcomings.
What characterizes municipal action above all is its ideological slant and its political impact from one election to another, having neither the means to fulfill its ambitions nor a long-term vision of the city's and region's future.
One must see this association as historically being somewhere between the municipality and the Cooperative, bearing in mind that cooperatives have had a strong presence in Argentina since the 19th century, and that the province of Buenos Aires is, by far, the region with the greatest number of them: according to Montes & Ressel (2003)

Daily Disturbances: Nueve de Julio and Its Planning Issues
During our interviews with the mayor and Nueve de Julio's director of urban planning, the big question-which subsequently became the subject of a collaborative agreement between the Municipality and the EPFL's Center for Cooperation and Development 21 (CODEV)-was urban planning or, more specifically, the lack thereof. What notably was missing was data that would allow for a "status report", making it possible to trace the city's evolution in its various territorial and societal dimensions in order to develop a realistic, tangible master plan. The question may seem surprising coming from the authorities of a medium-sized town that, at first glance, seems relatively well-organized and esteemed by its inhabitants. But facts have confirmed these shortcomings of the planning, leading us to make an initial diagnosis with regard to urban planning, 19 http://www.centrocultural.coop/blogs/cooperativismo/2017/07/08/cooperativismo-argentino-inci dencia-economica-y-social. Consulted April 26, 2018. Current Urban Studies and to define the various stages of a procedure to collect, archive and process useful data in an organized way in order to establish a basis for planning based on credible, transparent figures using a Geographic Information System (GIS).
The first observation was that existing data is not shared between the CEyS Cooperative and the Municipality, even less so as the cooperative subcontracts the harvesting and processing of data to a private company that archives the information and produces summaries. Secondly, the Buenos Aires Province's administration, like the competent national departments, also manages statistical data relating to the city of Nueve de Julio as it does for all of the province's other municipalities. However, this data may not be accessed by the public. Moreover, the many requests made by the Municipality have remained unanswered! Here one can clearly appreciate the importance and utility of collaborative efforts to be made by the Municipality and the Cooperative. The Cooperative indeed has a great deal of data pertaining to its customers. Moreover, its customer base, whose electricity, natural gas and other utilities it supplies, is close to that of the municipal population. If made available to the City, this information could provide a solid, reliable basis for sound and dependable planning.
This does not mean that communal departments have no data, but rather that there is no coherent, organized way of sharing information internally among the different departments, or between the State administration and its outside partners, which are mainly cooperatives.
What has been acquired and is managed by Nueve de Julio's Secretariat of Housing and Urbanism is the city code and the resulting zoning, which integrates parcels of land, thus sketching the lines of growth for the city and priority actions according to the zone, including the services and infrastructures the city wants to bring to the various districts. Based on these official documents, it appears that the number one priority for the local authorities is the historical center (referenced as residential (R1)) and the more recently-built concentric residential areas (R2). The second priority in terms of public intervention is the residential growth areas located southeast and northeast of the city (R3 and R4). In third position comes the rehabilitation of the "Barrios Unidos" neighborhood (formerly Ciudad Nueva) (R5), the poorest part of the city as mentioned earlier, and the less densely populated outlying areas (R6). These subdivisions appear on Figure 5. Concretely, this means that solving the problems of the poorest 25% of the Municipality's population is not a priority in the physical layout of the city.
Yet, this clearly contradicts the statements of high-level local administration officials. An upgrade in either the official discourse or in the plans is long overdue.
The cadastral plan and special works department, which is part of the Secretariat of Urbanism, also has vital information regarding existing parcels of land, public properties, buildings and building permits. The problem is that this data still only exists in paper version. Much more data exists and would be highly useful for establishing a geo-referenced information system (clinics, hospitals, schools, public spaces, green areas, industrial zones, etc.). This data is collected and managed by various municipal administration departments, and is rarely updated. Other data regarding water networks, drainage, wastewater, gas and electricity simply does not exist. Moreover, there is no replication of the data managed by the CEyS Cooperative in the municipal departments.
The information is scattered and completely disconnected from each other.
Due to a lack of time and human and financial resources, the Municipality, though aware of its obligation at both the national and provincial levels to look more closely into the plight of the poor, manages urban problems on a day to day basis, more in the reaction to events and to satisfy pressing social demands than to prevent and plan.

Ciudad Nueva, a Low-Income Area: Socio-Spatial Segregation?
It is astonishing to think that, in 1996, in anticipation of the World Habitat Conference in Istanbul, we published a comparative book to recap the traveling seminars we had organized with our Latin American colleagues, with the support of the Leopold Foundation Mayer for Human Progress (Bolay et al., 1996). In this book, in which David Kullock and his colleagues at the Faculty of Architecture and Urban Design (FADU) of the University of Buenos Aires reported on the training that Nueve de Julio had provided its urban actor two years prior . Of the three Argentinian cities investigated at that time-Resistencia, San Juan and Nueve de Julio-the latter had 30,000 inhabitants, and the study area, "Ciudad Nueva", was comprised of 371 acres in the southeastern part of the city, between the historic Sarmiento railway line and the national road No. 5 (see the urban zone of "Ciudad Nueva" in 2017 on Photo 5 and as it was in 1994 on Photo 6).
Railway workers had originally settled on the site. The population increased, building on plots of available land along the urban-rural boundaries. One characteristic of the urban planning is that land use is disparate and sparse, mixes housing and production units and creates spatial as well as social isolation from the historic city center due to the train tracks. In 1994, infrastructures and public facilities included water and electricity networks, natural gas in one of the zone's four areas, and a public school. The streets were unpaved and without sidewalks. The Some 25 years later, a diagnosis of the same area of Ciudad Nueva allows us to compare the nature of the problems and the solutions envisaged. Now more commonly referred to as "Barrios Unidos", this area still lingers in the outskirts of the historic city, without the city having taken any real urban planning or management measures to reduce the physical breach created the railroad, which is still used for transporting goods (see the neighborhood on Photo 7 and map on Figure 6).
Surveys done in two of the area's neighborhoods in 2017 and interviews with public officials reveal two crucial points socially speaking: as in 1994, the people interviewed complained about unemployment and the difficulty of finding a job. Many work sporadically, and usually undeclared. In terms of health, Nueve de Julio's existing services no longer sufficiently respond to social demands. The  area lacks a health center as well as a 24-hour, on-call pharmacy. In terms of education, the dropout rate had increased; children could be seen wandering the streets, although the area's only school functions normally (one public school for 10,000 inhabitants!). With regard to infrastructure and urban planning, respondents criticized the flooding and lack of wastewater drainage, the cause of the former. At the residential level, respondents made mention of the makeshift nature of many houses in terms of their construction. In addition to all of this, there was a feeling of insecurity, as the area is notorious for the traffic and consumption of narcotics.
This finding explains why the Community Development Secretariat has implemented a distribution plan for building materials for at-risk families. However, the demand is high, and the procedures long and complex.
More specifically, we conducted a building census in two blocks of houses, one a social housing estate with 28 family houses built in the 1990s, and the oth- The changes in the other block were more substantial. In 20 years, the number of houses had increased from five to 50. The constructions were more heterogeneous, though several makeshift homes (made of low-quality materials and with minimal implementation) were observed. The walls were made of bare brick, the roofs of polystyrene and cardboard boxes, and unprotected electrical wires were seen in the bathrooms. The differences from one dwelling to another reflect the financial capacities of each family over the years, bearing in mind that, according to their statements, none had received building materials from the municipality (2 types of housing rehabilitation can be seen on Photo 8 and Photo 9). In addition to these self-built plots, several vacant plots remained, along with a few plots with houses of significantly higher quality that were in excellent condition and supplied by the public gas network.
In most cases, the work done on the houses was done by the occupants themselves, without official authorization, which is formally granted by the public authorities after verification and application of norms.
The "Ciudad Nueva/Barrios Unidos" area has evolved in a very heterogeneous 23 Each house has a kitchen that opens onto a living room, a bathroom and two bedrooms, all facing an outdoor patio. 24 The natural gas connection is seldom used by the owners of the houses due to the out-of-pocket installation costs, which amount to roughly $2000 US, and thus prefer to use bottles of gas. way over the years, according to the district and the occupants' means. In terms of housing, the changes that have taken place are the result of individual, private means, as few are eligible for loans. The municipal authorities' only action, it seems, is its construction materials allocation program whose scale, beneficiaries, selection criteria, funding and debt collection processes are impossible to know.
The situation is better handled at the infrastructures level, as basic needs (water, electricity and gas) are covered by collective networks and, in part, by public facilities (school). "Ciudad Nueva" is still a stigmatized area whose standards as well as the reputation of the neighborhoods and its inhabitants are well below those of Nueve de Julio. The changes in the past 25 years are imperceptible.
Generally speaking, it is those most in need who suffer the most from Nueve de Julio's lack of a public transportation system.
The issue remains one of understanding how a city, its population, its authorities, its pressure groups and its professionals can be aware of this situation of true urban poverty, recognize that nearly 20% of the city's population live in conditions of material instability and decide the measures to be taken... without it becoming a reality. There is no clear policy, strategy or master plan for the entire urban agglomeration. Nor is there an inclusive vision of the city-from a socio-economical or planning perspective-that focuses on the most disadvantaged populations and neighborhoods. This brings us to a final thought which concerns the uniqueness of Nueve de Julio as both exemplary of a contemporary intermediate Argentinian city and "ordinary" in its reproduction of a 19 th -century model of urban modernism. Its challenge today is in overcoming its inability to acquire the right urban management tools for understanding the urban reality of today and projecting itself in a medium-and long-term future in order to decide on the priority actions to take, in dialogue with urban actors.

Discussion: What Direction for Nueve de Julio's Urban Planning? Which Will Be More Suitable?
Beyond Nueve de Julio's specific characteristics, its historical roots in contemporary Argentina and the practical management of its territory and population, an issue raised in other research works reemerges: that of urban planning and related institutional/social practices.
In two earlier urban investigations in Burkina Faso and Brazil, we had questioned the shortcomings in the implementation of planning processes (Bolay, 2016;Bolay, 2015). Nueve de Julio raises a more original question: does urban planning make sense for an "ordinary" 19 th -century, intermediate city that is 1) more or less representative of the settlements of the pampas region, 2) whose development was based on agro-industrial and beef export production for exportation, and 3) that acts as a regional service and business center for rural and urban populations?

Considering the question this way opens a range of possibilities based on what
exists and what is lacking or does not meet the needs of a population that has been growing steadily for several decades. It also gives us the freedom to think beyond terminologies to decipher whether or not decision-makers and service operators actually share joint approaches, methods and actions for common objectives in a concerted way.
Taking a quick look back at the city's history, two things appear to be at odds.
To begin with, Nueve de Julio, like the hundred other medium-sized towns in the Buenos Aires Province, is a pure product of urban planning as conceived and executed at the highest levels of Argentinian power in the 19 th century, as part of the strategy to conquer the national territory (or at least the pampas region) and turn to it into agrarian growing areas. To do so, it was necessary to eliminate the indigenous populations and create cities able to accommodate an immigrant population, mainly of European origin. These new cities, which were organized around a central square lined with emblematic buildings, were reproduced at a calculated distance to serve as hubs between rural and urban areas for neighboring regions, and to establish communication between the national capital and major urban centers (like La Plata, the provincial capital) via modern transportation modes (road and rail). This allowed for the exportation of agricultural products and importation of manufactured goods, making Argentina the country so-called "the breadbasket of the world" (Pesoa & Sabaté, 2016).
Secondly, and much more recently, this "top down" territorial development strategy and its materialization in terms of urban planning seem to have disappeared. Urban planning has given way to local activism, partisan struggles and the domination of economic forces. That is why the failure of urban planning in Nueve de Julio was as easily recognized by successive municipal governments and professionals in 1994 as it is today. Faced with this lack of a future vision, the aimlessness of the medium-and long-term programming of works has had an adverse effect on control over the urban and regional territory (environmental degradation, sprawl and increased cost of infrastructure, among others). Attempts to organize urban and peri-urban areas in a more coherent way are occasionally initiated but without bringing about any real change in the way of things are perceived or undertaken.
That is why, as early as 1995, after an initial training seminar on participatory habitat planning for professionals working in the urban sector in Nueve de Julio 25 , the Faculty of Architecture and Urban Design of the University of Buenos Aires was mandated by the city's mayor to develop a master plan with the local authorities and their partners that ultimately had no real impact. In 2015, during a field visit to Nueve de Julio, the then mayor proposed a collaborative agreement between the Municipality of the City and the EPFL's Center for Cooperation and Development. In 2018, with a new city government majority, the agreement is still in effect and an exchange seminar between medium-sized cities of the Buenos Aires' Province's pampas region was organized. Although an initial diagnosis was made and practical problems were detected, the procedure for establishing an ad hoc geographical information system for urban planning is still pending within the local administration.
How to explain this decline in action, this discrepancy between "good" intentions and their actual implementation? To answer in a systematical way and draw all possible lessons, we will again try to take some of the questions raised in the introduction of this article and, using the example of Nueve de Julio, underline that which is its own in its historical trajectory and current dynamics and that which is a result of more global phenomena.
The reference to Robinson's (2006) concept of using the ordinary city to discuss South cities without comparing them to Western city models allows us to 25 The training workshop included representatives of the local administration, private enterprises, banks, architectural studios, NGOs etc. question things in a context totally different from that of southern Africa (Robinson's privileged study field for explaining this concept). Indeed, Argentina more than any other Latin American country is emblematic of a "tradition of modernity" strongly linked to the Western city as conceived in the 19 th century, in the light of changes in society, now resolutely industrial and increasingly urban. This school of thought considers that the occupation of space is for the common good, and that it is up to the State to organize and monitor "realistic applied urbanism" that considers the constraints of a resolutely industrial, capitalist society (Chaline, 1985). The idea of cities in the countryside and a checkerboard layout (Menetrey, 2013) were undoubtedly sources of inspiration specific to Europe at that time that we see reproduced simultaneously across the "new continent". However, what makes the organized settlement of Argentina's pampas region so unique and exceptional is the combination of an extremely orderly urban planning doctrine for the new city and the desire to conquer new territory, to extend the boundaries of "(Western) civilization" and to control them (Cacopardo, 2007).
In the case of Argentinian urbanization, we are not opening up the urban concept to "other" realities forged on economic informality and illegal land use, as we have done on other occasions (Bolay, 2012). Rather, we are simply retracing the process of global Westernization (to not say Europeanization) that, in the 19 th and early 20 th century, made Argentina one of the world's economic powers.
A city like Nueve de Julio, a modernist artifact of urbanity transposed to South America, is one of hundreds of cogs in this vast machinery that served to create a country and an international power.
The "harsh reality of the South city" is much more recent. According to the information collected orally, the "Ciudad Nueva" neighborhoods date back to the late 1980s and early 1990s, and are symptomatic of this deviation from the historical planning by unregulated, largely individualistic, unplanned social practices in the city's least valued habitable areas. The urban model that has been in place for more than a century no longer works for three reasons: 1) the major economic recession of a country competing in terms of agro-industrial exports, 2) a sharp rise in poverty, and 3) migration from Buenos Aires and other major cities to regional urban centers like Nueve de Julio that are less affected by the crisis. The lack of a coherent response from the local government to this deteriorating situation raises questions about the city's governance. Mariano Barroso, the current Intendente 26 , took the helm after his predecessor's 10-year reign. His main goal is making this new political majority-which is in power in the city for the first time-popular. Urban planning, as such, is not sufficiently convincing to enthuse the electorate, as it is a lengthy process, all the more so as it is a question of building from scratch. Which brings us to the second issue; the local government is still poorly equipped in terms of human resources (both in number of personnel and their skills in urban fields). Only recently did the Planning Secretariat's staff increase and declare urban planning and the development of a GIS its priorities, and everything remains to be achieved. Another obstacle to participatory urban governance (Devas et al., 2004) is the fact that relations between the current municipality and its main partner, the Cooperativa de Electricidad y Servicios (CEyS), the community's main service provider, remain distant, and are built more on mistrust and competition than on complementarity and collaboration. Even if things were to change with the new political direction of the cooperative's leaders, the competition between two major forces in the local urban dynamic is counterproductive.
Their collaboration in active urban governance would provide balance between spatial planning and consideration of the population's expectations, and hence create a foundation for effective, rational planning (Brown, 2015).
These shortcomings in terms of open urban governance have an impact on the capacity for the urban integration and inclusion of the poor. As is obvious from the analysis in the article, the "Ciudad Nueva/Barrios Unidos" area is emblematic of the government's inability to grasp the meaning of an inclusive city, the benefits of identifying the problems and of making their resolution the priority of public action.
In the conclusion of From Unstainable to Inclusive Cities, Westendorff (2004) rightly states that inclusion is both economic (through work, sociability and participation in community life) and urbanistic (through access to basic networks such as water and electricity). It is also political, in a more subtle way, and thus links urban governance and the inclusive city. It is true that the term "inclusive city" is a catch-all concept that was widely used by international organizations in the late-20 th century (UN-Habitat, 2001), but that remains intelligible as exclusion's virtuous counterpart (Clément & Valegeas, 2017). It aims to deal with various but universally-recognized problems such as poverty, unemployment, the segmenting of labor markets, gender inequalities, the democratization of public life and social participation. When applied to a city, it is public policy with an ethic.
Translated into urban programs and actions, the inclusive city concept allows us to analyze Nueve de Julio differently, given that the concept aims to "incorporate inhabitants in the public sphere, where collective decisions are made to 26 In Argentina, intendente is the title held by the mayor. ensure that all preferences and interests are taken into account, and that public services are accessible to all" (Van der Wusten, 2016). Accessibility (and thus the "right to the city") and participation-gives rise to the need for methods and tools that foster this social and political integration. And that's the rub, because nothing substantial has really been done to improve the development of the famous "Ciudad Nueva" area, almost as though any excuse were a good excuse to not do things seriously… for 25 years. The only initiative the government can claim (allocating building materials to families in need) was not even known of in the neighborhoods we recently visited, which is amazing considering the glaring needs that emerged from our investigations. But the situation is even more serious and, in this regard, denotes a lack of strategy on the part of past and present municipal authorities.
Again and again we come back to the founding principles of participatory planning (Bolay et al., 1996). Not diagnosing the reality that existed in the early 1990s, much like that which prevails today, thus frees the political authorities from any liability, be it in Nueve de Julio or any other medium-sized Argentinian city. Nearly 20% of Nueve de Julio's population lives below the norms adopted by the city itself. Sporadic popular demonstrations remind us that improving development in these neighborhoods is a necessity. Faced with this pressure, the occasional actions the City undertakes do not take into account the full scope of the problems. The main excuse for this is physical and material; this largely informal residential area has expanded in a completely illegal way, and is cut off from the historic center by the train tracks. As though it were the only city in the world with train tracks running through it and development were technically unfeasible! More fundamentally, there is a denial of the reality in Nueve de Julio, as in many cities around the globe facing similar issues of poverty and informality . For many local governments, it is easier to neglect urban instability, or even deny it, than to face it because of the complexity of its causes and multi-faceted consequences, which require a long-term approach, substantial investments and technical, social and economic skills. All this for short-term, random political gain.
It is likely that Nueve de Julio's municipal authorities are of this persuasion.
Yet, they forget that the fight against poverty and slum upgrading have integrative effects on neighborhoods and families, as well as a unifying effect on the entire community, as the Cities Alliance recalls 27 through its City Alliance program. For people-who, let us not forget, are citizens-living in unstable conditions, expecting to live in decent conditions is first and foremost a question of dignity, because the extension of slums is conducive to environmental contamination, the spread of disease and increased violence and insecurity. Slum upgrading is more affordable, because it costs less and is more effective than relocation to public housing. Developing land with basic services costs even less. 27 Cities Alliance. Cities without slums. http://www.citiesalliance.org/About-slum-upgrading. Current Urban Studies At a more global level, it is also an advantage economically and fiscally. Reintegration through jobs allows people to invest in their land and homes, among other things. It is also recognized that the more secure the habitat is, the more families will integrate in their neighborhood and city, and the more they will invest. Studies show that the poor can and are willing to pay for improved services and homes. This increases safety and security for the community as well as tax revenues for the city.
Nueve de Julio is therefore facing a major challenge, like many medium-sized cities in Argentina and Latin America with increasing populations, expanding peripheries and growing social disparities. Understanding it and other medium-sized cities that act as intermediary cities, affords us the opportunity to rethink the city and its dynamics at different scales, and to integrate urban and regional planning that takes into account its strengths and weaknesses in order to increase the city's attractiveness and combat social inequalities and territorial The micro-regional scale should be the priority reference for planning guidelines. However, taking into account the national and international scales remains important. Given its geographical location and population size, Nueve de Julio has a strong influence on the territory, maintaining trade relations with comparable or smaller urban hubs but in obvious connection with the upper echelons of the urban framework, which we think of as being in La Plata, the province's capital, and Buenos Aires, the national capital (roughly four hours away by public transportation). Again, taking up the nomenclature of the priority indicators we have established, we will be able to concretely evaluate the actual forms of intermediation, like the demographic dimension, not only to verify strong population growth but also to know its origins and better understand the nature and forms of migration flows. This will lead us to consider the territorial variable differently.
We know that planning, within municipal boundaries, aims for better control of land use and the human activity that takes place there. However, urban planning cannot ignore the exchanges that exist at the regional level in terms of collaboration and/or competition economically, socially and environmentally. Nueve de Julio is intermediary in its role as a regional center, residentially and commercially. The same political majority that currently governs the country also is in power at the local, provincial and national levels, thus facilitating communication with the larger network both near and far. The city's economy depends on international trade, either directly or indirectly. Notably, however, what makes Nuevo de Julio stand out is having allowed its territory to become fragmented over 20 years, by building houses increasingly far from the center and allowing a spatially marginalized, socially stigmatized habitat to spread. All of this has taken place without the capacity to implement an appropriate system of territorial planning to solve these problems in partnership with local stakeholders, and namely cooperatives.
The questions raised by the total absence of territorial and societal planning tools and regulations shows that this planning issue is not so much a technical question as a political and social challenge, in the wake of power struggles and local democracy

Conclusion: Planning Sustainable Urban Development; Lessons Learned from Nueve de Julio
Nueve de Julio, a medium-sized city in the Argentinian pampas, is an interesting case study as it is emblematic of tens or even hundreds of intermediate cities in Argentina and Latin America in general. These cities play a key role in the provision of services and amenities for regional rural and urban populations.
However, these cities face specific challenges due to their distinctive character as intermediate cities.
Because of their size and number of population (about 50,000 in Nueve de Julio's case), problems have accumulated over the years without the authorities having established the means, professional skills or budgets required to solve them, which is neither rational nor forward-thinking.
At the same time, the relationship between the city and the surrounding populations is increasing and diversifying in terms of communication, networks and services to the community. It is in this context that Nueve de Julio must confront three fundamental issues, which would ultimately restore its spatial, environmental and social balance. The first is the constant growth of its population without any analysis of the consequences of this increase in terms of equipment and services. For example, the question of public transportation (which is simply non-existent) is a question that has been raised for many years, but without any real strategy. This increase in population is reflected more generally in the physical extension of the city, which is poorly controlled and whose development costs are high due to the spreading out of habitat areas. Finally, the third symptom is the lack of urban and regional planning in the "Ciudad Nueva" area, which is home to nearly 10,000 people living in conditions greatly inferior to those of the rest of the city. This means, in other words, that 20% of the communal population is living in poverty and great uncertainty about its future, be it in terms of housing, economic integration or social integration. This problem was identified more than 25 years ago, yet successive governments have failed to address it head on.
As a result, we are moving further and further away from a sustainable, inclusive city model. However, the situation is not irremediable; things can improve in Nueve de Julio, like in many of the other medium-sized cities that link the rural to the urban. To begin, we must do away with the idea that medium-sized cities only deal with small problems. On the contrary, the problems they deal with are major, as they cast doubt on a harmonious urban development. The next step is devoting the necessary human and financial resources, and translating this into priorities in terms of planning and transforming the city. Finally, these cities must overcome political and electoral cycles in order to develop groups of projects and initiatives that target urban and regional planning in the medium and long terms over several decades. The stakes are high in Nueve de Julio and the thousands of other small and medium towns in many South countries whose intermediary role is so important for the urban-rural balance.