Cities
See also: List of cities in Argentina by populationArgentina is highly urbanized, with the ten largest metropolitan areas accounting for half of the population, and fewer than one in ten living in rural areas. About 3 million people live in Buenos Aires proper, and the Greater Buenos Aires metropolitan area totals around 13 million, making it one of the largest urban areas in the world. The metropolitan areas of Córdoba and Rosario have around 1.3 million inhabitants each, and six other cities (Mendoza, Tucumán, La Plata, Mar del Plata, Salta and Santa Fe) have at least half a million people each.
The population is unequally distributed amongst the provinces, with about 60% living in the Pampa region (21% of the total area), including 15 million people in Buenos Aires Province, and 3 million each in Córdoba Province, Santa Fe Province and the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires. Seven other provinces each have about one million people: Mendoza, Tucumán, Entre Ríos, Salta, Chaco, Corrientes and Misiones. Tucumán is the most densely populated (with 60 inhabitants/km², the only Argentine province more densely populated than the world average), while the southern province of Santa Cruz has less than 1 inhabitant/km².
Most European immigrants settled in the cities which offered jobs, education and other opportunities enabling them to enter the middle class. Many also settled in the growing small towns along the expanding railway system and since the 1930s many rural workers have moved to the big cities. Urban areas reflect the influence of European immigration, and most of the larger ones feature boulevards and diagonal avenues inspired by the redevelopment of Paris. Argentine cities were originally built in a colonial Spanish grid style, centered around a plaza overlooked by a cathedral and important government buildings. Many still retain this general layout, known as a damero, meaning checkerboard, since it is based on a pattern of square blocks. The city of La Plata, designed at the end of the 19th century by Pedro Benoit, combines the checkerboard layout with added diagonal avenues at fixed intervals, and was the first in South America with electric street illumination.
Read more about this topic: Demographics Of Argentina
Famous quotes containing the word cities:
“London, thou art of townes A per se.
Soveraign of cities, semeliest in sight,
Of high renoun, riches, and royaltie;
Of lordis, barons, and many goodly knyght;
Of most delectable lusty ladies bright;
Of famous prelatis in habitis clericall;
Of merchauntis full of substaunce and myght:
London, thou art the flour of Cities all”
—William Dunbar (c. 1465–c. 1530)
“This is not only a war of soldiers in uniform. It is a war of the people, of all the people, and it must be fought not only on the battlefield but in the cities and the villages, in the factories and on the farms, in the home and in the heart of every man, woman and child who loves freedom.”
—Arthur Wimperis (1874–1953)
“Over the tree-tops I float thee a song,
Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the
prairies wide,
Over the dense-packed cities all and the teeming wharves and ways,
I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee, O death,”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)