Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Transport Geography journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jtrangeo Socio-territorial inequality and differential mobility. Three key issues in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Region Jorge Blanco, Ricardo Apaolaza ⁎ Universidad de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Instituto de Geografía, 480 Puan, 4th Floor (1240), Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina. ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Transport Differential mobility Social inequality Territorial inequality Buenos Aires ABSTRACT One of the main challenges that geographers and urban planners face when thinking about mobility in Latin American cities is how to accurately assess the effect produced by severe social and territorial inequality. In an attempt to explore this question, this article analyses three key issues related to the inequality-mobility re- lationship: a) mobility as a facilitator in the access to goods, services and opportunities at different urban scales, and its direct effects on poverty and social exclusion; b) socially and territorially conditioned assets and com- petences among individuals when managing mobility needs and territorial control; and c) the uneven appro- priation and use of the city, both in terms of proximity and connection to metropolitan networks. Analysis is carried out on secondary information on transport and mobility at the metropolitan scale according to income level and territorial location of households. This is followed by examination of three specific cases in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Region that show the importance of territorial features when addressing mobility patterns of particular socioeconomically vulnerable groups, including: mobility of informal settlers in urban peripheries; mobility of domestic workers in gated communities; and mobility of residents at risk of displacement in gen- trifying neighborhoods. The key findings highlight how the particular territorial conditions can intensify or attenuate the pre-existing socioeconomic inequality. 1. Introduction Inequality is a key feature common to large Latin American cities, and the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Region (BAMR) is a prime example of this. It has been shown that inequality presents multiple dimensions that permeate socioeconomic and territorial domains, and that mobility bridges both these spheres playing a key role in the access to urban services and employment opportunities. Some studies have addressed dimensions of this inequality in rela- tion to mobility for different Latin American cities (e.g. Vasconcellos, 2010; CAF - Banco de Desarrollo de América Latina, 2011; Jaramillo et al., 2012; Motte-Baumvol and Nassi, 2012; Oviedo and Titheridge, 2015; Falavigna and Hernández, 2016), but information still seems to be quite scarce in comparison to Europe or North America (Keeling, 2013). Mobility has multiple expressions according to different groups and urban contexts and demonstrates a complex dynamic that does not allow a direct association with social and territorial conditions or vice versa. In other words, it is accepted that there is an interrelation be- tween mobility and inequality, but it is extremely difficult to isolate and address the main links between them. This paper aims at exploring this relationship between mobility and inequality within the context of the BAMR by identifying some sig- nificant mobility characteristics of different groups from different ter- ritorial and socioeconomic situations. It involves elicitation of how social or territorial differential features lead to differences in mobility and how these differences may also reinforce social and territorial in- equities. It is based on the hypothesis that mobility practices are con- ceived and shaped at the intersection of the social conditions of households and places of residence with their metropolitan connec- tions. This exploration is based on three fundamental factors: a) mobility as a facilitator of access to goods, services and opportunities at different urban scales, and its effects on poverty and social exclusion (Cass et al., 2005; Lucas, 2004, 2012); b) the assets and mobility competences among different social groups (Kaufmann et al., 2004; Rerat and Lees, 2011; Urry, 2012), decoded through the lens of specific urban contexts (Apaolaza et al., 2016); and c) the uneven use and appropriation of the city, which is associated both with proximity-based mobility and con- nections at a metropolitan scale (Ripoll, 2004; Veschambre, 2005, Jouffe, 2010; Blanco et al., 2014a, 2014b). This paper is divided into five parts: a) Discussion of the conceptual http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2017.07.008 Received 29 June 2016; Accepted 27 July 2017 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: ricardoapaolaza@yahoo.com.ar (R. Apaolaza). Journal of Transport Geography xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx 0966-6923/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Please cite this article as: Blanco, J., Journal of Transport Geography (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2017.07.008