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Argentina is divided into 23 provinces, and 1 autonomous city (commonly known as capital federal), 1. Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires Buenos Aires has been the capital of Argentina since its unification, but there have been projects to move the administrative centre elsewhere. During the presidency of Raúl Alfonsín a law was passed ordering the transfer of the federal capital to Viedma, a city in the Patagonic province of Río Negro. Studies were underway when hyperinflation, in 1989, killed off the project. Though the law was never formally repealed, it has become a mere historical relic, and the project has been forgotten. Urbanization Most European immigrants to Argentina (coming in great waves especially around World War I and II) settled in the cities, which offered jobs, education, and other opportunities that enabled newcomers to enter the middle class. Since the 1930s, many rural workers have moved to the big cities. The 1990s saw many rural towns become ghost towns when train services were abandoned and local products manufactured on a small scale were replaced by massive amounts of cheap imported goods, in part because of the monetary policy which kept the U.S. dollar exchange rate fixed and low. Many slums (villas miseria) sprouted in the outskirts of the largest cities, inhabited by empoverished low-class urban dwellers, migrants from smaller towns in the interior of the country, and also a great number of immigrants from neighbouring countries that came during the time of the convertibility and did not leave after the 2001 crisis. Argentina's urban areas have a European look, reflecting the influence of their European settlers. Many towns and cities are built like Spanish cities around a main square called a plaza. A cathedral and important government buildings often face the plaza. The general layout of the cities is called a damero, or checkerboard, since it is based on a pattern of square blocks, though modern developments sometimes depart from it (for example, the city of La Plata, built at the end of the 19th century, is organized as a checkerboard plus diagonal avenues at fixed intervals). In descending order by number of inhabitants, the major cities in Argentina are Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Rosario, Mendoza, La Plata, Tucumán, Mar del Plata, Salta, Santa Fe, and Bahía Blanca |
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