Healing the Riachuelo
With 92% of Argentina’s population living in urban areas—many of them in low-lying zones and floodplains—increased rainfall significantly heightens the risk of disaster, particularly for the most vulnerable communities. As rainfall interacts with densely built environments, it amplifies existing precarities. Flooding degrades quality of life, increases the risk of mortality, and exposes residents to contaminated water from polluted surface runoff, groundwater, and rivers long burdened by the disposal of human and industrial waste. In this context, water reveals its darker nature—not as a life-giving resource, but as a dangerous force and carrier of catastrophe.
The proposal adopts a multi-scalar strategy to rehabilitate the Matanza-Riachuelo Basin, weaving together interventions at national, provincial, municipal, and neighborhood (barrio) levels. The approach is rooted in four key areas: ecological adaptations, community building, connectivity enhancement, and institutional mechanisms—each aimed at addressing the systemic causes of vulnerability.
At its core, the strategy offers a toolkit of hybrid infrastructures that restore both ecological balance and social resilience. These interventions are designed to reduce exposure to risk while enabling communities to adapt to living with increased water. The toolkit includes systems for capturing and purifying excess water and waste, as well as strategies that strengthen relationships—between people, neighborhoods, and the natural environment—promoting coexistence and mutual care in the face of climate uncertainty.
Scale of intervention: National
1. Pollution control and mitigation through controlling sources of pollution and industrial discharge.
2. Resilience education through restoration hubs along the Riachuelo creating educational and awareness opportunities for habitat recovery.
3. A continuous green link as a restored ecosystem and connectivity between upper basin and the lower basin.
4. Multisectoral collaboration between ministries horizontally as well as vertically.
Scale of intervention: Municipal
1. A permeable surface system absorbs excess water in addition and create green links between the neighborhoods.
2. Waste management and education by integrating the barrios into the city’s existing waste collection system as well as creating educational and training programs about waste management.
3. Extending service networks into the barrios to integrate formal connections of water, sewage and electricity
4. Introducing institutional mechanisms such as inclusionary zoning to increase affordability, and social tax on private development to be allocated to public amenities determined by a participatory budgeting process by each barrio.
Scale of Intervention: Barrio
1. Sustainable urban drainage systems for stormwater management, water cleaning and recycling for domestic use
2. Within community building, community participation is crucial for building trust and collective decision-making. The programs and amenities needed/determined could become points of affluence both for the community and for the visitors to come in.
3. Networks at 3 different levels include mobility access, open space/green and waste collection and separation.
4. Institutional mechanisms include community planning leadership as a link between the community and the municipality and risk management mechanisms adopting emergency response methods for flooding or other environmental disasters to minimize damage and negative impact
Scale of intervention: Block
1. Green infrastructures and nature-based solutions for environmental mitigations
2. At the community level, these solutions also serve as public amenities such as parks, and sports fields which could be paired with other permanent or temporary programs like community centers, markets, playgrounds, youth centers etc.
3. Connectivity enhancements include streetscape improvements to promote safe and walkable streets while services promote clean and healthy neighborhoods and integrate informal economies into formal systems such as waste collection
4. At the institutional level, a consortium for strengthening and endurance of private community spaces and community-led monitoring and maintenance mechanisms to restore and preserve physical and ecological spaces.
Scale of intervention: Street
The nature-based toolkit that includes native vegetation, bioswales, rain gardens, permeable surfaces, retention ponds, and constructed wetlands aims to maximize ecological and social impacts and endurance while minimizing costs.
