The market as a city maker. Perceived and disputed neighborhood boundaries in the rental market of the City of Buenos Aires

This paper seeks to reflect on the symbolic productivity of the rental market in relation to the meanings given to the city and the neighborhoods of Buenos Aires, and against the perspectives of "hostile worlds" between the economic and the non-economic, we propose that the market is a space for the production of valuations that are central to the unders-- tanding of the urban. To contextualize the analysis, we provide a characterization of the Buenos Aires rental market in recent decades. Based on in-depth interviews, participant observations and unstructured data from rental advertisements, we investigate the ima-- ges of the city mobilized in commercial transactions and in the definition of prices. We conclude that the Buenos Aires rental market participates in the symbolic production of the city through prices, but in particular through the nominal "relocation" of properties, redefining boundaries and creating new homogeneities. This has a correlate in the practi-- ces of selection of suitable tenants by landlords and intermediaries and in the search for appropriate housing to their lifestyle done by tenants.