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New urban planning code for CABA? - Reporte Inmobiliario
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Nuevo código urbanístico para CABA?, noticias sobre MARCO LEGAL en Reporte Inmobiliario
Otro nuevo proyecto de cambio de código urbanístico para CABA genera gran incertidumbre. Qué cambiaría concretamente con la nueva propuesta de modificación?. Por Magdalena Eggers
www.reporteinmobiliario.com
August 7, 2024
Another new project to change the urban planning code for CABA generates great uncertainty. What would specifically change with the new proposed modification? By Magdalena Eggers
Since the Urban Planning Code was approved at the end of 2018, two modifications have already been made. And a third one is coming, more profound than the previous ones. At the time, they removed the loopholes, then they reversed course and came back, added an extra floor to encourage green terraces, changed the zoning of a couple of neighborhoods due to complaints from neighbors, increased some heights at the request of developers, etc.
Now the change promises to be more important, at least in some neighbourhoods . It is proposed to reduce the footprint in the USAB districts (low-density sectors), which instead of reaching the thirds of the block (leaving an absorbing lung of 11.1%) will be limited to occupying the quarters, so that the free centre of each block will be more generous (25%). But in part due to the numerous neighbourhood associations that over the years have been requesting to stop this type of construction, the Building and Uses plan is modified, changing the colour of some areas not always in correspondence with the real city, like patches without an urban vision of the whole.
The Executive Branch's project submitted to the Buenos Aires Legislature also proposes, among other things, adding a floor to the USAB1 zoning (ground floor + 3 floors), inventing USAB0 with the characteristics of what is currently USAB1 (ground floor + 2 floors), and allowing the front to be reached with the 4th floor in USAB2. Translated, some levels are raised but in compensation the zoning is changed to lower heights. The restrictions for the screeds in USAB would be eliminated (which were not an acceptable solution either), and the famous Transferable Construction Capacity that comes from the Urban Planning Code and was never applied, would serve to increase the height in some avenues. The latter is a crazy proposal, which sounds like exceptions and protections by contravening the morphological code stipulated by the Urban Environmental Plan, which has supremacy over the former.
I had already warned in another article in February 2020 that the Morphological Code was destroying the identity of residential neighbourhoods; it was obvious that if there was no limit, the projects would exhaust the construction capacity.
The lots are sold for the amount of m2 that can be built, nobody can close the accounts if you want to be generous with urban space. In some sectors you can build up to 8 times more than with the previous code . Then 17 m high walls began to proliferate that reach almost to the very center of the block, and the neighbors only then realized that they were suffocating them. The damage is irreversible. And now we also find out about a new change, and we all run to prevent the lot we bought from losing value. Added to the unpredictability is a very understandable supposed decree to prevent further construction in the free space of the block in the USAB, but which harms many investors with projects that do not intend to advance on what this project proposes, but who will have to wait with their arms crossed for the new code to be sanctioned to begin the work, as if there were work to spare.
Another note of mine from March 2021 noted how ephemeral the regulations for building in this city are. And it is not by chance, since the proposals come from people sitting at a desk or from neighbors who know very well what they want but have no idea how it should be done. You do not see the faces of long-standing urban planners with the agreement of all the actors involved, as in other times. The CoPUA, a commission created to enforce and update the Urban Environmental Plan, is now limited to signing files (in addition to not moving forward with the update of the Urban Environmental Plan, which should be the first step). If it functioned as a consultation and readjustment body of the Urban Planning Code with representation from specialists, institutions, developers and neighborhood associations, the modifications would not be so drastic, and they would bring the consensus of the parties before presenting them to the Legislature, making this city a more predictable and legally safer place for developers and ordinary citizens.
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