gigantic, sprawling city space, characteristic of many of the urban systems in Latin America. It is the undisputed social, cultural, economic, and governmental heart of the country and was home to an astonishing 36.1% of Argentina’s entire population in 1970, also composing 45.5% of Argentina’s entire urban population at that time (Cerruti). While some of this primacy has begun to decrease since the 1970s, decreasing from the 1970 level of 45.5% of Argentina’s total population to 37.1% in 2000, Buenos Aires still represents a massive portion of the nation’s overall population and remains the nations most important city (Cerruti). This primacy has important marked effects not only on the social and cultural makeup of the nation, but also on the environment, as the concentration of such a large
population
within
a
single
city
can
have
major
environmental effects, as we will see later in this essay. Today’s migration patterns within Argentina and other nations already characterized by high levels of urbanization are now represented more by urban to urban migrations rather than the rural to urban movements that marked previous decades. While these types of migrations can be more difficult to express and measure—and are marked by significantly less socio-economic and demographic change than rural to urban migration—they play an important role in the internal migrations within Argentina. A large percentage of this urban to urban migration tends to
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