Evaluación de la sostenibilidad territorial en ciudades intermedias. Estudio aplicado a la ciudad de Río Cuarto (Prov. de Córdoba- Argentina)

As of 1980, a high consumption of land on the periphery and an increase in the area built in height in the traditional core area began to be evident in the city of Rio Cuarto, resulting in an increase in the demand for land to urbanize, which results in a type of diffuse and fragmented growth, concomitant to the emergence and deepening of territorial imbalances. Given this situation, there is a need to contribute with some tool that helps to identify problems, potentials and limitations presented by the current urban dynamics, as a contribution to planning and management within the framework of Sustainable Territorial Development. Thus, the present work has as a general objective to identify a set of indicators that allow evaluating the territorial sustainability of the scenarios derived from the processes of urban growth, taking as a case study the city of Rio Cuarto. In order to achieve the objective, it is based on the explanation of the procedure performed for the definition of the objectives, the analysis variables and selected indicators, for the subsequent construction and calculation of the Territorial Sustainability Index (IST) by census radius and the interpretation of the results obtained.