- Urban Integration and Disintegration Forces: La Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina    1023 kb by    Discoli, Carlos & Rosenfeld, Elías & San Juan, Gustavo | discoli@rocketmail.com    Short Outline La Plata suffered of the impact of the neo-liberal agenda that started with the integration and disintegration forces in the 90s. On the basis of those processes we have developed cuali-quantitative evaluation tools, in particular of perception aspects. Abstract Our country and particularly the area of study of this model were submitted to socioeconomic politics of the neo-liberal agenda that polarized the economic, social and territorial integration and disintegration forces. For this particular situation, the planners had scarce tools that reflected scientifically its situation and its perception from the citizenship. To manage these problems we have decided: i. To study the quality of urban-environmental life (CVU) in a local and regional scale; ii. To integrate the knowledge of the urban systems and their environmental consequences, considering the energetic infrastructure, their coverings and the users opinion; iii. To elaborate indicators and indexes that facilitates the measurement of quality and social justness. Our research group has developed quality perception indicators of the regional urban services network in the framework of a quality of urban life model (CVU). An opinion of quality factor intervenes, that considers the aspects on “the access and the perception of urban services and infrastructure”; the environmental situation perception; and the social equipment of the neighbourhood. The opinion was analyzed through descriptive statistic and the results were mapped. The thematic maps of opinion arise from the localization of the interviewers and the valuation of their opinion, generating an influence area for each point, based on the concept of the Thiessen polygons, where the limits of each area reflect the equidistance of the different opinions generating homogeneous areas of opinion. The alphanumeric information and GIS with the results are presented. It can be appreciated that its quality makes it easier for the planners to respond to the social demands to improve the justness in the offer of quality of urban life. Keywords perception indicators- quality of life- evaluation tools Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2006: Cities between Integration and Disintegration   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper