| (Average for 1913-1915) | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rosario. | Buenos Aires. | Bahía Blanca. | San Nicolas. | La Plata. | Santa Fé. |
| 2,716 | 2,051 | 1,075 | 651 | 459 | 278 |
| Population in 1914. | |||||
| 245,000 | 1,575,000 | 62,000 | 19,000 | 137,000 | 64,000 |
Some centres, such as Campana, Zarate, San Pedro or San Nicolas, which load up meat or grain in great quantities, have nevertheless remained small towns. Neither the trade in meat nor that in cereals is enough of itself to sustain a busy urban life. In point of fact, the growth of the Pampa ports is mainly connected with their function as importing ports and markets of capital. The close dependence of Bahía Blanca upon Buenos Aires in both these respects seems to forbid it all hope of ever becoming the equal of Rosario. The prosperity of Rosario was founded during the time when Buenos Aires was isolated, between 1853 and 1860; this enabled them to organize an import trade there and to accumulate a nucleus of independent capital.[145]
The development of Buenos Aires must be studied separately. It does not merely reflect the success of the colonization of the Pampa; it is a phenomenon of a national order. The attraction of Buenos Aires has been felt throughout the whole land. In 1895, of a total population of Argentine birth of 318,000 souls, more than a half—167,000—were born in the provinces.[146] The way in which the prosperity of Buenos Aires is bound up, not only with that of the adjacent territory but with that of the whole country, is seen in the stability of the figure representing the number of the inhabitants who have come from foreign lands. While the proportion of foreigners in each of the provinces varies from one census to another, according to the displacements of the stream of colonization, it remains almost the same at Buenos Aires: 496 per 1,000 in 1869, 520 in 1895, 493 in 1914.
The population of the city of Buenos Aires was estimated by Helms in 1788 to be between 24,000 and 30,000. D'Azara put it at 40,000 in 1799. The Revolution did not interrupt its growth. According to the estimate of Woodbine Parish the city had 81,000 inhabitants in 1824. On the other hand, the Rosas Government involved a period of stagnation (90,000 inhabitants in 1855). But after 1855 Buenos Aires resumed its progress, even before the political unity of Argentina was re-established, and has never since relaxed. Its population has doubled almost regularly at intervals of fifteen years: 177,000 in 1869, 433,000 in 1887, 663,000 in 1895, and 1,575,000 in 1914. The latter figure, in fact, is inadequate. Greater Buenos Aires, including the outlying parts, has really 1,990,000 inhabitants.
The site on which the city is built is a regular plateau, sixty-five feet above sea level, cut by flat-bottomed, marshy valleys. The Riachuelo, at the mouth of one of these valleys, provided Buenos Aires with its first port. The low and badly drained lands of the valleys are occupied by the poorest quarters. Their sides, the barrancas, bear the aristocratic residences, and the gardeners have been able to use the sites to great advantage in their plans.
As a whole, the growth of Buenos Aires presents the same feature of regularity, on account of the uniformity of the soil, as the spread of colonization over the plain of the Pampas. The city is distributed in concentric zones, and it is thus a model on a small scale of the distribution of the various types of exploitation on the Pampa which surrounds it. The central nucleus, the business quarter, contains not only the offices, but the warehouses of imported goods. Round this centre, with a radius of one to three miles, are the residential quarters in which the density is greatest (250 to 350 to the hectare). Beyond this the density sinks to less than 200 per hectare and less than fifty on the outskirts. The central quarters developed the maximum density after 1900. Those of the first outer zone have gained greatly between 1904 and 1909. Since the latter date, the progress of these quarters has been arrested in turn, and the recent growth is mainly in the remote working-class suburbs in the south and on the bank of the Riachuelo.