The city already has a new urban planning law

Hands raised for changes at El COU/Nicolas Braimovich

The new regional planning plan, which at this stage constitutes a reform of the Urban Planning Code (COU) and mainly regulates the heights and dimensions of buildings, was approved by the local deliberative council, by a majority of 22 votes in favor and one against.

The Julio Alak project, which received the opinion of the Planning Commission last Wednesday, was voted on by the ten members of the Union Council (UP); The three are from PRO-JxC, the two are from PRO-Vecinal; The four are from UCR; The monoblock of Asap and two of La Libertad Avanza (LLA). While liberal activist Florencia Barcia was absent from the session, councilor Belén Muñoz, also from the purple bloc, was the only one who voted against the new rule.

The file was the first point of the session, and the last normal one in the current composition of the body, as the legislative change will take place next week, according to the results of the elections of last September 7. After voting on the plan, which reveals the conceptual aspect of urban planning, and the 48 articles of the Unit of Understanding and its annexes, the discussion began with a presentation by the head of the Planning Commission, Peronist Cynthia Mansilla, who thanked “the joint work to plan the city and stop its deterioration.” “Uncontrolled growth,” he highlighted the incorporation of modifications that the project had been subjected to, although most of them were in form. At the same time, his colleague Juan Granillo Fernández warned that “without clear regulations, we cannot stop the disaster of a city that has become the capital of the settlements.”

The president of the PRO-JxC bloc, Juan Manuel Martínez Garmendia, warned that the discussion “must remain open because there are voices that have noticed many things,” so “it should not remain a second step in the city law, there could be a third or fourth step, improving this law based on how it affects reality and we can make a round-trip.”

Although the UCR voted in favour, Javier Mor Roig questioned that the time to discuss the file “was not sufficient” and that “technical observations from institutions of the Regional Urban Planning Council (COUT), such as professional associations and colleges, which questioned various aspects of the plan, were not heeded.”

The radical consultant noted that the new standard “does not take into account the prior presence of high-rise buildings in some areas where a new height limit has been set, causing disharmony in the urban form.” “There was a lot of discussion, and we were able to tweak some things and we were hoping to tweak more,” he said, though he appreciated that “a more compact city would stop the process in which we currently have more than half of La Plata’s population without sewers or drinking water”:

Controversy

The only chancellor to vote against was libertarian Belén Muñoz, referred to as chancellor-elect Juan Pablo Alan, thus distinguishing herself from the rest of her bloc. He said at the beginning of his speech: “My opposition is purely artistic.” He concluded that “this law amends structural issues and changes the city in multiple dimensions ranging from legal, social and environmental.”

Muñoz criticized that the time for technical analysis of the file “was not what it deserved”, insisting that “there is no coherence between the current law and the new law because the pre-existence” of buildings and form in the neighborhoods is not taken into account. He said: “This regulation has an interventionist, almost Soviet tinge. The municipality intends to regulate the real estate market from 12th Street. I do not think that planning replaces urban and community dynamics, because state regulation, more often than not, is what it does is create obstacles.”

He specified: “Every time the state determines more, it advances more, and the citizen chooses less. Modern law should reduce discretion, not expand it, which generates more inequality before the law.” Along these lines, he complained about the amendments introduced by other blocs, noting that “neither schools, universities, companies, nor neighborhood groups are satisfied.”

Before leaving the place, he ended his speech by saying, “In 2027 we will win and we will rank City.”

With Muñoz already absent, Granillo Fernández refuted that “this law is not Soviet, but a regulatory instrument like those used by all cities in the world, and that the 22 members of the council thought it was an appropriate measure.”

Planning Chair, Cynthia Mansilla, concluded the debate by responding to her counterpart from the LLA: “I demand that the state have a voice in urban planning. We have already seen the consequences of lack of state intervention and uncontrolled urban growth. The city has already been left to chance and other interests and we have already seen what happened.”