Environmental conflicts and geographic imaginaries in urban fluvial territories

controversies around the management of flood disaster risk in Bahía Blanca city

Abstract

Floods, overflows and droughts have acquired a notorious visibility on public policies due to the adverse environmental consequences they generate for the communities that live in the vicinity of the courses/bodies of water and wetlands. Urban river territories have been characterized as areas of increasing environmental conflict, given a greater frequency and intensity of extreme hydrometeorological events attributed to climate change and the dynamics achieved by neoliberal urbanism.
The aim of this work is to identify and analyze the environmental conflicts and the geographical imaginaries in the fluvial territories of the Napostá Grande stream in Bahía Blanca, in order to rethink the risk management of flood disasters and the and the unequal and unfair distribution of the adverse environmental consequences generated. A qualitative methodological strategy is used, through the review of scientific, technical, journalistic, photographic and literary publications to analyze the meanings, knowledge and figurations
that guide the interventions of different social actors in the face of these extreme events and their implications in the territorial public policies in the study area.
The occurrence of extreme water events configures urban fluvial territories of growing inequality, injustice and uncertainty. Although the emergency in the face of disasters will have increasing notoriety on public policies, it is necessary that interventions on these issues
contain ideas and proposals from a wide range of social actors with interests in these territories, often conflicting.