TY - JOUR A1 - Hölzl, Corinna A1 - Verwiebe, Roland T1 - Middle-class struggles against high-rise construction in Buenos Aires BT - Urban democratization or enforcement of particular interests? JF - Urban Geography N2 - It is a relatively new phenomenon in the context of urban development in Buenos Aires that citizens from the middle class have been increasingly claiming empowerment in local decision making. In this paper, we analyze the spatial-political outcome of protests against high-rise construction and demolitions of the urban heritage in Buenos Aires. Based on a frame analysis, the results of the paper show that the citizens’ initiatives under study have been able to incorporate several key issues into the agenda of the public debate: the relevance of the urban heritage, the negative effects of market-oriented municipal politics, and deficient citizen participation. Moreover, the controversies surrounding high-rise constructions in the 2000s and early 2010s disclose a clear degree of politicization. A permanent struggle for primacy in municipal policy models has been sparked, in which victory and defeat alternate, and attention is drawn to more fundamental societal issues beyond urban development Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2019.1700072 SN - 1938-2847 SN - 0272-3638 VL - 41 IS - 5 PB - Steiner CY - Stuttgart ER -