The global and the local in sick cities in times of COVID-19

Captive and necropolitical bodies in the City of Buenos Aires

Abstract

Epidemics have always had an explosive and unpredictable impact. But these transformation processes do not occur in isolation, since entire spheres of culture can also carry out their own transformations or movements in the form of gradual changes, both coexisting at the same time and creating new synergies.

The current pandemic scenario in the City of Buenos Aires will be analyzed, in which neoliberal urban policies were reinforced on the basis of the violation of all types of rights, fundamentally, of vulnerable sectors. With the ASPO, DISPO and mediatization, urban poverty (which means inequities: in infrastructure services and public transport, in the quality of green spaces, in the accessibility and enjoyment of the city), became a symptom of processes of social and urban transformation crossed by the local and the global.