The Plan de Emergencia (1956): Housing Shortage in Buenos Aires Then and Now

This article will examine the first Argentine urban plan addressed to tackle informal settlements in order to explore the origins of some early conceptions about these settlements that would persist throughout the rest of the twentieth century. It will be argued, in fact, that this plan functioned as a foundational initiative in regard to the settlements, not only in terms of its influence on later proposals but also for setting up a particular approach towards the informal city that is still present in contemporary debate about it. The plan is composed of two documents, the Plan de Emergencia and the Plan Integral (literally ´Emergency Plan´ and ´Integral Plan´ respectively), which are complementary to each other and will therefore be analysed as a whole. To this aim, two central questions will be studied: how was the PE/PI conceived? And why it is important to analyse its ideas today