Development in Buenos Aires!

Buenos Aires is a happening city, with huge, rapid development.

Juxtaposed to what's happening in Ottawa, there don't seem to be many barriers to arriving at the finished product, and in record time. Case in point, Puerto Madero an entirely new neighbourhood in what was a long forgotten, abandoned industrial port area. It is touted as one of the most successful recent waterfront renewal projects in the world. Numerous new residential high-rises of up to 50 stories have been built facing the Rio de la Plata since 2000. (Link to wiki if this is your cuppa tea, it's interesting to me: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Madero#New_high-rise_construction. Article somewhat outdated but impressive nonetheless).

Where warehouses once stood are now high-priced, condos with pricey shops and shiny cliquish new ground floor restaurants along the river. As a catalyst for development, the Hilton Hotel chain built the pedestrian bridge across the old harbour to kickstart facilitation of pedestrian accessibility and development. The swing bridge, Puente de la Mujer or Women's Bridge was designed by a major architect, to resemble the curve of a tango dancer's back and is quite spectacular.

Of course we visited the mandatory futból clubs for the now obligatory photo op. One of which was CABJ or Club Atlética  Boca Juniors, who had just smoked their cross town rivals 5 - 0 in a major championship final so spirits were high all over the city. More  futból mania to follow. Of course Rainer took every opportunity to drag it into conversation....kidding, it's always a great groundbreaker.