Oil and City

OIL AND CITY

Or A Comparative Study of Three “Petro-polis”:

Baku, Comodoro Rivadavia, and Tampico

ABSTRACT

This thesis examines the complex relationship between oil-based industry and urban development through a comparative analysis of three cities: Baku (Azerbaijan), Comodoro Rivadavia (Argentina), and Tampico (Mexico).Thisstudychallengestheprevailingviewofthe “resource/oil curse” by exploring how oil urbanism is shaped by the intersection of industrial governance, geographic specificity, and cultural-political ideology. Rather than treating petro-cities as a single prototype, the research investigates the layered trajectories of each through five thematic lenses: pre-industrial urban form, geological constraints, industrial governance models, labor and housing strategies, and the role of migrationinshapingurbanidentity.

Baku emerges as both archetype and outlier—marked by its early industrialization, hyper-dense extraction zones,influentialoilbarons,andeventualtransformation intoaSoviettestinggroundforhousingexperimentation. Comodoro Rivadavia, by contrast, developed under conditionsofnationalistterritorialintegration,withYPF’s early state-led planning shaping both urban form and social policy from the outset. Tampico in contrast represents the volatility of speculative oil capitalism: rapidlyconstructedunderforeigncontrol,itexperienced infrastructural booms and busts that left lasting marks onitsurbanfabricandlaborhierarchy.

Through archival research, cartographic analysis, and spatial reading, this thesis offers a more nuanced understandingofhowoildoesnotmerelyfundcities,but produces them—shaping infrastructure, housing typologies,andsocialorganization.Ultimately,thestudy proposes oil urbanism not as a fixed model but as a condition—spatial, political, and cultural—whose consequences continue to resonate as cities face the post-oilfuture.

1. Pratt, Joseph A, Martin V Melosi, and Kathleen A Brosnan. Energy Capitals: Local Impact, Global Influence. Pittsburgh, Pa: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014.

2. Wiedmann, Florian. Building Migrant Cities in the Gulf : Urban Transformation in the Middle East, edited by Salama, Ashraf M. A., ProQuest (Firm). London: London : I. B. Tauris, 2019.

INTRODUCTION

Therelationshipbetweenindustryandurbanizationhas shaped the development of cities across the globe,with resource-based industries playing a central role in the formationofmodernurbanlandscapes.Citiesthathave grown up around industries such as coal mining, steel production, and more recently, oil extraction, represent uniquecasestudiesinhowindustrialprocessesdrivenot only economic growth but also profound transformations in the built environment. While coalbasedindustrieshavealwaysbeenhistoricallycentralto thestudyofindustrialurbanizationandtherearedozens of case studies throughout the globe, the rise of oilbased industries have generally been considered detrimental to the generation of urban centers.¹ Even though the oil industry has massive capital flows, global connections, and high energy returns, it is rarely consideredtohavespurredurbandensificationthrough its industry. While there are several modern cases that can be considered to have been built through oilbased-wealth(ie.modernGulfcities)²therearefewthat grew through means of industry in addition to that of wealth. This disconnect between industry and development is what many consider as part of the “resource curse," a term often used to describe the negative economic, political, and social outcomes associatedwithsuchresource-dependenteconomies.

3. Ross, Michael L. “Will Oil Drown the Arab Spring? Democracy and the Resource Curse.” Foreign Affairs 90, no. 5 (2011): 2–7.

Peck, Sarah, and Sarah Chayes. “The Oil Curse: A Remedial Role for the Oil Industry.” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2015.

4. Eve Blau, Baku: Oil and Urbanism. Zurich: Park Books, 2018, 24

The notion of a “resource” or “oil curse” suggests that countries and cities heavily reliant on oil extraction face a significantly higher risk of economic volatility, corruption, inequality, and environmental degradation.³ This narrative often assumes that oil wealth leads to underdevelopment in key areas such as governance, social welfare, and long-term economic sustainability. However, the implications of this reliance on oil are not straightforward, and the complex relationship between resource wealth and urbanization often reveals a more nuanced picture.4 While oil industrialization has undeniably led to the creation of infrastructure regarding the extraction, refining, and transportation of oil, lack of density regarding extraction combined with different geological and geographical considerations

regarding location of the industry has generally been considered counter-productive to the creation of an urban center. In addition, the extractive nature of the industry through foreign investment has also created disconnect between the creation of industry related infrastructureandthatrelatedtotheotherelementsofa holistic urban center. Such a “curse” suggests that an over reliance on oil wealth fosters economic instability, weak government structures due to foreign dependence and encouraged corruption, and an unsustainable development model that is inherently vulnerable to global oil price fluctuations and environmental degradation due to a lack of diversificationinindustry.

Yet much of this view overlooks the influence the presence of industry can have for other economic aspects of a city, as well as the possibility of local retentionofoilwealthforfurtherinvestmentinthecity.In many cases it also fails to properly examine the case studieswithinthelensofindustrynationalizationandthe reasons for such nationalization. In the Soviet model, it would be against Soviet ideology to focus on extraction without at least maintaining an image of caring for the living conditions of the proletariat, leading to the creation of housing estates to house the low level workersthathadpreviouslymainlylivedindeteriorating slums prior to nationalization with only a few exceptions5, even with the presence of local oil barons whoinvestedintheurbancity.

Additionally,theliteratureonoil-drivenurbanizationand economic case studies has a tendency to fall short of addressing the diversity of experiences across different global regions, especially outside of the Middle-Eastern field. Gulf cities such as Dubai, Riyadh, Doha, etc6, have received much of the scholarly attention due to their rapid urban growth fueled by locally retained oil money inthelastfewdecades.However,examplessuchasBaku or Latin American oil cities remain underrepresented in these discussions and rarely have much international attentionoutsideoftheirrespectivecountries.Moreover, the few studies that do examine oil cities outside the Middle East often treat them in isolation, without

5. Crawford, Christina E. “Part I. Oil City: Baku, 1920-1927” Spatial Revolution: Architecture and Planning in the Early Soviet Union. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2022.

6. Salama, Ashraf M. A. Demystifying Doha : On Architecture and Urbanism in an Emerging City, edited by Wiedmann, Florian, Ebooks Corporation. Farnham, Surrey: Farnham, Surrey : Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2013.

7. Eve Blau, Baku: Oil and Urbanism. Zurich: Park Books, 2018

8. Crawford, Christina E. “Part I. Oil City: Baku, 1920-1927” Spatial Revolution: Architecture and Planning in the Early Soviet Union

considering possible comparative dynamics between different urban centers and the roles each has in influencing the other. By examining several case studies through the same methodology there is an opportunity to bridge the gap by creating an intersection between different disciplines and geographical conditions in an effort to view how industry can affect the urban fabric, and the urban fabric thus affect the life and living conditionsofthepeoplelivingwithin.

Thisthesisthusexaminestheroleofoil-basedindustryin urban infrastructural development through a lens of intersectionality. Focusing on three cities: Baku (Azerbaijan), Comodoro Rivadavia (Argentina), and Tampico (Mexico); they were selected due to the shifted phasesindevelopmentaswellasthepresenceofapreand-post-nationalizedindustrialdevelopment.

Baku, as one of the oldest oil cities, provides a historical lens through which the early development of industry relatedinfrastructurecanbestudied,aswellasconsider the relation of oil wealth to urban generation through a comparison of both foreign vs. local and pre-and-post soviet nationalization. The initial development through foreign European and American companies in the midto-late 19th century came at the hand of early idealized urban planning practices emerging in Europe.7 In addition,some of the earliest examples of Soviet worker housing and housing blocks were developed in Baku as an effort to house the ethnically diverse and impoverishedindustrylabourers.8 Throughthiscase,one can study both idealized versions of how industry can shapethecityaswellastheimpactoflocalvoicesinthe creation of a holistic urban model which develops beyond its industrial constraints to provide the workings of not only a city of industry but a cosmopolitan metropolis.

Comodoro Rivadavia provides an interesting example that settles comfortably between the development of Baku and Tampico through how early into its industrial development the industry became nationalized. Unlike Tampico, which was heavily shaped by foreign investment pre-nationalization, Comodoro Rivadavia’s

oil industry was largely controlled by the Argentine government, especially after the establishment of the YacimientosPetroliferosFiscales(YPF)in19229,oneofthe world’s first state owned oil companies and the first outside the Soviet Union. This meant it had less private development than Baku and Tampico, and combined with its remote location (even less connected than Tampico,whichatleastisconnectedtothelargerregion of the Gulf of Mexico through its port) provides a more isolated example of nationalized industrial urban development.

Tampico held a pivotal role in the early to mid 20th century oil boom in Mexico, and retains much of its importance in the industry today. As the center of Mexico’s petroleum industry through the majority of the 20th century, Tampico attracted substantial foreign investment, particularly from British and American oil companies, which played a crucial role in shaping its urbanfabric.10 Thecity’srapidindustrialexpansionasthe nexusofindustryintheregion ledtothedevelopmentof port facilities, rail connections, and several administrative and industrial districts. A steep social hierarchy and abysmal worker housing played a part in the nationalization of the industry in 1938, and while the urban development of the city continued,the latter20th century saw a shift in the epicenterof the industry in the country towards an offshore model of extraction, leading to a local decline in production.11 The city, however, remains critical in the industry, maintaining the port and many means of fabrication. Tampico’s experience thus serves as a lens to examine a city that grew solely due to the oil industry, and can thus provide insight into how can such cities prepare for the loss of thatindustry.

Through these three cities, this thesis takes a comparative historical approach to examine the relationship between oil-based industry and urban development. By analyzing the urban fabrics and their respective histories, with each representing distinct geographical, economic, and political contexts, this study seeks to identify patterns and divergences in how the two are related through both their tangible

9. Gutiérrez, Ramón, Liliana Lolich, Liliana Carnevale, y Patricia Méndez. Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina: un siglo de vida petrolera. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Fundación YPF, 2007.

10. Hernández Elizondo, Roberto. Empresarios extranjeros, comercio y petroleo en Tampico y la Huasteca (1890-1930).

México D.F: Plaza y Valdés, S.A. de C.V., 2006.

11. Cardenas, Lazaro, “1938 Discurso con motivo de la Expropiacion Petrolera," 18 March 1938

environment and through the intangible aspects of economics and culture. The methodology combines archival research, geological considerations, architectural/urban analysis, and consideration of the different parties involved in order to reconstruct the development of these cities and assess the long-term impact of oil wealth (and who controls it) on their infrastructureandsocio-economicdiversity.

This study relies on a combination of primary and secondary sources, from archival documents and newspapers,fictionalliteratureandfirst-handaccounts, to spatial analysis through cartographical evidence such as historical maps and GIS analysis. All of this includes government reports, urban planning documents, chronological cartographical comparison, evidence of infrastructure development, housing projects, and newspaper reports of contemporary events to determine both the physical developments as wellastheasthelocalperception.

Toguidetheanalysisandprovideaframeworkforwhich each case study city can be compared, the research was structured around five key research considerations. Through this distillation of the different variables available into separate categories, the diverging experiencesofeachcitycanbestudiedinamoreholistic way.

The first set of research questions considers the preexisting urban context. What were the demographic, economic, and infrastructural characteristics of Baku, Tampico, and Comodoro Rivadavia prior to the discovery of oil? How connected were they to their surrounding regions? Was there a pre-existing urban fabric or population? How did these pre-existing conditionsinfluencethewaythatthecitiesdevelopedin responsetooilextraction?

The second reviews the geological and geographic contexts. Geographical context greatly influences the development of cities, seen in urban development and planning since ancient times. However, how did the physical characteristics of oil extraction shape the

spatial development of each city? How does industrial density affect the development of residential neighbourhoods? What areas were considered untouchableduetofutureextractionandthuscouldnot beused?

The third revolves around the industry itself. How did the different models of industry governance (foreigncontrolled, state-led, mixed, etc.) impact the development of urban infrastructure, labour policies, priorities, and architectural characteristics? Where was the wealth based or exported to? Was it purely local, semi-regional, foreign? How did broader political stability and geopolitics directly and indirectly affect developmentinthecityandregion?

The fourth set of questions looks at the relationship between labour, city, and industry. How did the past factorsinfluencethecreationofhousingdevelopments? What social stratification became prevalent in the city? Whatwerethelivingconditionsandhousingpoliciesfor oil workers? How did the difference between nationalizedvsprivatizedindustryaffecttheconditions? How did these all impact long-term urbanization throughinformalvs.formalsettlements?

The final cluster looks at the intersection between culture, migration, labour, and the built environment. What were the influences that generated the different ideas of urbanization in each city? How did migration of populations affect this? Were there cultural and ethnic stratificationsinadditiontotheeconomicones?Howdid immigrantvslocalpopulationsaffectdecisionstakenon the administrative and worker levels? How did these migration patterns influence the social composition and spatialorganization?

Byemployingthiscomparativeframeworkanattemptis made to draw broader conclusions about the relationship between industry and urban development. By integrating the element of pre-and-post nationalizationtothecomparativediscussion,thisthesis aims to contribute to the broader debate on resourcedriven development, studying how the influence of

View of a refinery on the Baku coastline, now under construction as part of the current White City urban renewal plan. c. 2017

Satellite

THE OUTLIER CITY

BakucanperhapsbebestdescribedasanOutlierCity.It serves as an exceptional case study within the broader examination of resource-driven urbanization, and paradoxically as the exemplary petro-city. While numerous cities globally have developed in response to the economic opportunities afforded by natural resource extraction, because of labour-based immigration, industrial investment, and local interests, many of these drivers are considered more indicative of extraction industries such as coal rather than that of oil. However, in Baku, all of them are present and more. Specifically, Baku stands apart from many oil-based urban centers due to four primary factors: the extraordinary density of its extractive areas, its notably early transition to industrial scale oil production, the significant presence and influence of local Azerbaijani oil barons, and its later role as a Soviet experimental ground for housing design and urban development strategies.

Baku’s urban fabric was profoundly influenced by the unprecedented density of its oil fields and industrial infrastructure. Unlike other oil regions characterized by massive and decentralized extraction areas (typically connected by sprawling networks of oil pipelines), Baku’s oil extraction, refining, and transportation infrastructure were concentrated in an exceptionally compact area of approximately 20 sq. kilometers (or 7.2 sq.miles).1 Thisconcentratedextractionfootprintnotonly facilitated a remarkably dense industrial landscape for

refining within the city limits. Additionally, the lack of overallopenareaavailableinBakuduetoitslocationon theAbsheronPeninsula(onlyabout2110sq.km,or810sq. miles) and the present terrain meant the city did not have much area available to contribute to sprawl for anypurpose.

Bakuishistoricallysignificantasoneof,ifnottheearliest global center to industrialize specifically around fuel oil, decades ahead of other major oil-producing regions. Whileotherplacesaroundtheworlddrilledoilmainlyfor theproductionofkerosene,Bakustartedproducing fuel oil about 30 years before its competitors (whose conversion from producing kerosene to fuel oil was mainly spurred by World War 1)2, mainly for use in powering Peter the Great’s Russia’s Caspian Fleet and the Transcaucasian Railway,3 thus giving Baku an immense advantage when focus started shifting towards fuel oil, setting the stage for its rapid growth, further integrating the city into the broader imperial economic and military networks, and thus introducing it tothegeneralEuropeansphereofinfluence.

Baku’s urban development is also uniquely marked by the significant involvement and influence of local Azerbaijani oil barons, who emerged alongside the influx of foreign capital. This local entrepreneurial class played a crucial role in the economic and cultural developmentofthecity.Enabledbytheeconomicboom knownlocallyasthe“GoldenBazaar”whichallowedthe local purchase of oil-producing lands, Azerbaijani barons invested heavily in urban infrastructure and monumental architecture, actively participating in shaping Baku’s built environment. Their ambitious developments, such as the expansive boulevard, ornate public buildings, and private palatial residences, paralleled the contemporary European urban and architectural models,earning Baku the title “Paris on the Caspian.” Thus, unlike other petro-cities dominated exclusively by foreign capital, Baku experienced significant reinvestment of oil profits into the local urban sphere, creating an enduring legacy of civic (and later national)prideandurbansophistication.

Finally, Baku’s urban narrative extends into the Soviet era, when the city became an experimental laboratory for Soviet urban planning and housing policies, prototyping the model of proletariat-focused architectureandcivicinfrastructure.Thecity’seconomic presence and the need for labourer housing developmentoutsideofthepre-existingdensemedieval urban fabric made it a key site for experimenting with socialist urban ideals and modernist architecture, inclusively producing some of the earliest models of the infamous Soviet housing block. Throughout the 20th century, Baku experienced rigorous Soviet-led urban interventions aimed at addressing housing shortages, improving living standards, and promoting ideological goalsofthenewSovietgovernment.Thisphaseofurban experimentation included extensive implementation of standardized housing typologies, the creation of large residential districts, and innovative communal living models designed to reflect socialist values. The Soviet interventions added a further distinctive layer to Baku's urban complexity, showcasing the city’s ability to continuously evolve and serve as a testing ground for evolvingurbanideologies.

Collectively, these four factors—density of oil infrastructure, early industrialization, presence of influential local barons, and the city's role as a Soviet experimental site—position Baku as an outlier within studies of oil-based urbanism, and a perfect starting pointforthiscomparativestudy.

BEGINNINGS

From the earliest mentions of Baku in classical and islamic texts, the city has been inextricably tied to the presence of oil—its scent, its fire, and its spirituality. Unlike many other resource-based cities whose industrialization emerged from colonial extraction and/or foreign investment, Baku’s relationship with hydrocarbons predates both the imperial conquest and thetechnologiesthatwouldlaterdefinethelaterperiod of its history. On the Absheron Peninsula, oil and gas were not just a commodity, it was the landscape’s condition.Theywerenothiddenwithintheearth,onlyto

be reached after discovery through drilling as happened in Comodoro Rivadavia or only visible if one knew where to look as was the case in Tampico. They quite literally bubbled from the earth,was soaked in the sand,andgasburnedinperpetualflamesinthehillsides outside of the city (such as in the Ateshgah of Baku and Yanar Dagh). This presence of oil would define the early pre-industrialized urban identity of Baku as much as its strategiclocationontheCaspianSea.

Archaeological traces in the Absheron region point to continuous habitation since the Paleolithic era, but it is

not until the early Islamic period that Baku emerges as an identifiable node in the written records. Arab geographers and writers in the 9th and 10th centuries such as Al-Muqaddasi, Ibn Hawqal refer to Baku as a site of flammable oil springs, describing an area with rudimentary oil use. By the 12th century, the fire worshipping temples that dotted the peninsula (most notably the Ateshgah in the outskirts of Baku) had become pilgrimage destinations for Zoroastrians, their flames sustained not by man-made intervention but by subterranean gas that seeped through cracks in the earth and spontaneously combusted. In this sense, the earliesturbanformofBakucanbereadnotonlythrough itsobviousconnectiontotradingroutesintheregionbut alsothroughitsrelationshipwithoil.

It would not be until the rise of the Shirvanshahs that Baku began to be formalized as a city. They ruled over much of what is now Azerbaijan from the 9th to 16th centuries, initially governed from the inland city of Shamakhi but later forced to move to Baku following a devastatingearthquake,Baku’sdefensivequalitieslayin its geography, a natural harbour surrounded by rocky hills on a contained peninsula. It was during this period that the first substantial urban fabric began to emerge, including the construction of the emblematic Maiden Tower and, later, the palatial complex of the ruling Shirvanshahs;allhousedwithinacontainedwalledcity.

Yet, even during this early industrial period, oil remained materially embedded in the city’s atmosphere rather than in its economy. Surrounding Baku were manually dug oil wells—some of them gushers—but extraction remained primarily for local use. Foreign travelers from the 14th century onwards described Baku as a city marked by fire and oil. Marco Polo is believed to have also visited Baku, with a passage from his Travels believed to have been referring to the city. “Near the Georgian border there is a spring from which gushes a stream of oil, in such abundance that a hundred ships may load there at once. This oil is not good to eat; but it is good for burning and as a salve for men and camels affected with itch or scab. Men come from a long distance to fetch this oil, and in all the neighbourhood

no other oil is burnt but this.”4 Thisconceptofaresource inthiscontextdidnotyetimplyrefinementbutwasonits waytobeingusedasanaccumulatedresource.

The Safavid conquest in the early 16th century integrated Baku more formally into the Persian imperial system, but it nevertheless remained a relatively minor coastaloutpost.Itsoilcontinuedtobecollectedforlocal andregionaluse,buttherewasnoinfrastructuralscaling of industry. What changed was not the scale of productionbutthegeopoliticalawarenessofthecity.By the 17th century, as maritime empires expanded their territorial ambitions into the Caspian inland sea, Baku’s resource landscape began to attract strategic interest. Peter the Great’s temporary conquest of Baku in 1723 as part of a broader campaign to assert Russian dominance in the Caspian basin as a response to Ottoman incursions in Persia, was less about the city’s urban form or trading abilities than it was about its mineral potential. The Russian commissioned accounts oftheregionandcityemphasizeitsresourcewealthand industrial capacity, and the ease from which oil can be extracted from the earth. While the city returned to Safavid control in 1735 with the Treaty of Ganja, its identity had already begun to crystallize into more than just a local town with commercial ties,the industrial age

was beginning to emerge and with it the interest in fuelbasedresources.

Following the death of Nader Shah in 1747 and the consequent fragmentation of Persian authority, Baku entered a period of semi-autonomous rule under the Baku Khanate. While the khanate lacked the technologicaloradministrativeresourcestoindustrialize extraction, it did oversee the larger scale commercialization of oil in the region. It was sold regionally, sent across the Caspian to Astrakhan or transported inland via caravan. The khans taxed the resource, built rudimentary infrastructure around it mainlybasedonkeroseneuse,andmaintainedthecity’s defensive capacities. The urban form of Baku remained little changed in this period from that of the Shirvanshahs or early Safavids, remaining primarily centeredaroundthewalledIcherisheher(Innercity),but did expand outwards for the purpose of a rudimentary industry.

What distinguished Baku from other regional oil sites was not simply the abundance of its resources, but also its spatial compression. Everything was within immediate proximity. When Russian forces finally captured Baku in 1806 and formalized control under the TreatyofGulistanin1813,theyinheritednotatabularasa butacityalreadyconditionedbyhydrocarbons.Yet,the

infrastructure remained modest with only an initial industrial scale infrastructure created by Peter the Great: oil was still extracted from manually dug shallow pits that relied on collected seepage, transported in skins, and mainly burned in household lamps as kerosene. It was not yet the petroleum capital it would become in the following century, but it was always unmistakablyacityofoil.

WhattheRussianEmpirewasabletodowithBakuinthe decades to come depended in part on the legacy that was inherited. Unlike oil centers in other regions such as the American continent that emerged overnight from speculative or even accidental drilling, Baku had centuries of interaction with oil. Its culture, religious history, and spatial contradictions were all shaped by the long presence of oil and gas—not as industry but as environment.

TRANSITION TO INDUSTRY

Peter the Great’s brief occupation of the city during his Persian campaign was not motivated solely by resources, but by a broader territorial vision to project Russian power into the Caspian Sea and carve a southernmaritimefrontieragainstPersianandOttoman influence. However, it was during this campaign that Baku’s worth as resource rich was officially recorded and recognized for its military utility. Russian commissioned engineers and surveyors would send backreportsoftheabundanceofoilthatcouldbefound in the area. In this moment of transition, Baku ceased to be a place of spiritual fire temples and primitive local extractiontooneofamilitaryoutpostfueledbyimperial ambition. Though the Russian military withdrew after 1735,theencounterwiththerichresourcelandscapehad left a lasting impression and the its usefulness was beginning to be viewed through the lens of imperial extraction.

The strategic presence of the Caspian fleet—especially after Baku returned to Russian hands in 1813—reinforced the military importance of Baku’s oil.5 As Russia consolidated its power in the region in the early to mid 19thcentury,Bakubecameacrucialhubandwouldlater

5. Eve Blau, Baku: Oil and Urbanism. Zurich: Park Books, 2018

6. McKay, John P. “Baku Oil and Transcaucasian Pipelines, 1883-1891: A Study in Tsarist Economic Policy.” Slavic Review 43, no. 4 (1984): 604–23. https://doi.org/ 10.2307/2499309.

house the headquarters of the fleet from 1867 onwards. The fleet required maintenance, fuel, and provisioning, and the proximity of oil wells—however primitive— providedararelogisticaladvantage.

At this stage, however, oil extraction remained limited. Manually dug pits and animal skin containers defined much of the material reality of production, and it would not be until the mid 19th century that the resource landscape was reshaped by emergent technologies. Nonetheless, the recognition of oil as a strategic fuel resource and economic boon meant that imperial engineers and industrialists began to imagine this Caspianfrontiernotjustasasitefordefense,butalsoas alaunchingpointforindustrialandeconomicexpansion.

Perhaps the single most transformative piece of infrastructure in Baku’s early industrialization was not the creation of oil drilling infrastructure, but that of its transportation in the Transcaucasian Railway, which was completed in stages during the mid to later 19th century, and which reached Baku in 1883.6 It connected BakutotheBlackSeaportofBatumi,therebylinkingthe oil fields to be transported to otherRussian cities via the Black Sea and from there to European markets. Prior to the railway, oil transport had been limited to coastal trade or caravan routes, neither of which could accommodate the scale needed for such industrial expansion. With the introduction of rail infrastructure, however, Baku’s oil could be exported in massive volumes, thus serving as a critical hinge from the transitionoflocalizedmarkettothecontinentalstage.

7. Mir-Babayev, Mir Yusif. "The Bibi-Heybat Oil Field." AAPG Explorer, August 2021.

While the railway only connected Baku to external markets from 1883, what distinguished Baku from other emergingoilfieldsinthesametimewasitschronological advantage. The first modern oil well in the world was drilled in Baku in 1848 in the Bibi Heybat Oil field— a decade before the Titusville well in Pennsylvania (1859) which is often miscredited as the first.7 While American fields would quickly scale to enormous volumes, Baku’s early head start allowed it to create a more developed infrastructure relating to extraction, refining, and transportbeforeothercitieshadevenbeguntodevelop

theirs. By the 1880s, Baku was producing over half of the world’soil.

ThisearlytransitiontoindustrialoilgaveBakuaposition of dominance that shaped not only its own urban development but the global architecture of petroleum extraction. The city became a laboratory for the spatial organization of industry: pipelines, derricks, and refineries were laid out according to new European principles of urban design, and grafted onto a city whosehistoricallayerswerealreadycomplex.Itwasthis interaction of resource abundance, imperial interest, and industrial experimentation that allowed Baku to emergeasthefirsttrueoilmetropolis.

DISTINCT CITIES

Therapidityofthistransformationcannotbeoverstated. Inthespanof25years,thepopulationofthecitygrewby morethan700%,outpacingalmosteveryothercityinthe Russian Empire.8 This extraordinary pace and density of industrial growth in the city during the mid to late 19th century produced not a unified urban fabric, but rather a fabric divided into a bifurcated industrial landscape. As foreign investment, imperial planning, and private speculation converged, the city’s spatial logic fractured into two distinct zones: the Black city and the newer White city. While both were products of the oil boom,

8. Audrey Altstadt Mirhadi and Michael Hamm. The City in Late Imperial Russia. (Baku: Transformation of a Muslim Town). 1st ed. 1986.

Blau, Baku: Oil and Urbanism. Zurich: Park Books, 2018

they represented divergent responses to the problem of industrialized growth. The Black City embodied the first wave: a tight, spatial grid which lacked the dimensional flexibilityneededforrefining.TheWhiteCitycameafter, more flexible and spatially expansive, and which grew from need rather than from measured planning. Together they offer a uniquely early example of industrialzoningandpetro-urbanism.

Just as oil itself was being transformed into a strategic commodity—extracted, refined, and exported—so too wasthecitybeingreshapedintodiscretezonesoflabor, capital,andcontrol.Thecity’sfirstencounterwithzoning was thus not in a cultural or civic context, but in one of extractive urgency. And while the grid of Black City and the irregularity of White City appear in opposition, they together represent the ideological contradictions of the industrialage:speedvsorder,andhygienevsdensity.

Baku’s geological geography—both above and below ground—amplifiedtheintensityofitsindustry.Thecitysits ontheeasternedgeoftheAbsheronPeninsula,atongue ofaridlandthatjutsintotheCaspianSea,hemmedinby saline flats and low hills. Its proximity to both shallow oil fieldsandmaritimeexportroutesmadeitanidealcenter for extraction. But this ideal was paradoxically also a constraint: everything—wells, refineries, housing, port facilities—had to be compressed into a tightly bounded area. Unlike American oil towns that sprawled outward across fields and plains, Baku’s oil economy developed vertically and concentrically, with each new layer of infrastructure built atop oradjacent to the previous one. The result was not only a highly densified industrial landscape, but also tensions between resource and residence,industrialgrimeandculturalrefinery.

This spatial compression heightened the urgency for urban planning. Fires broke out regularly. The air thickenedwithwastegases.Andasthecity’spopulation exploded basic services collapsed under pressure. Authorities, increasingly nervous about the emergent disorder and fire risk, saw in zoning a way to mitigate crisis without interrupting extraction. The Black City and the later White City were thus products not only of

ambition, but of necessity. They were industrial buffers, designed to shield the broader city from the consequencesofitsownsuccess.

The earliest of these industrial spatial experiments was the Black City, which was planned in 1876 using some of the farms and pastures in a neighboring village and followed imported European ideas on urban planification. This made Black City the first deliberately planned industrial zone in the Russian Empire, anticipating the functionalist zoning of the early 20th century. It was separated from the original residential and commercial zones by a two-kilometer buffer zone.9 It included a dense 80 sq. meter block grid would be created, designated for flexible factory-based use. It showedanattempttocombineideasofurbanplanning with an experiment of how to house a burgeoning industryintoapre-existingdensifiedurbanrealm.

and its

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9. Sh. S. FatullayevFigarov, Arkhitekturnaia Entsiklopediia Baku (The Architectural Encyclopedia of Baku), trans. Dimitry Doohovskoy (Baku/ Ankara: Mezhdunrodnaia Akademiia Arkhitektury stran Vostoka, 1998), 31. Retrieved from Eve Blau, Baku: Oil and Urbanism, 62

Tadeusz Swietochowski, Russian Azerbaijan, 1905-1920: The Shaping of National Identity in a Muslim Community, 1985, p.xiii

10. Fatullayev, Shamil. “Gradostroitel’stvo Baku XIX – Nachala XX Vekov” Urban Development of Baku in the 19th – Early 20th Centuries

By1880,thereweresome118businessesoperatingoutof the Black City, and the district also accommodated the administrative offices, workshops and housing for those working in both administrative and labor capacities.10 Living conditions were abysmal compared to those in the city proper, where industry was prohibited. The spatialregularityinthedistrictdidnottranslatetoorder. Air quality was toxic, and the ground contaminated. Observers described the soil as slick with residue, the skyline jagged with derricks and black smoke.The city, while gridded and functional, had no real infrastructure forhealthorhygiene.Asoilproductionincreased,sotoo didtherisks.Thegrid,ratherthanmitigatinghazard,had effectively intensified it—packing more refineries into tighter spaces without corresponding regulation.

11. Charles Marvin, The Region of Eternal Fire, Reprint, Hyperion Press, 1976, Originally Published 1883, 234-235

Charles Marvin, an English writer and traveler would describe the district in his 1883 Book The Region of Eternal Fire, “All day long dense clouds of smoke, possessing the well-known attributes of oil-smoke, rise from hundreds of sources… The buildings are black and greasy, the walls are black and greasy; the roads between consist of jutting rock and drifting sand, interspersed with huge pools or oil-refuse, and forming a vast morass of mud and oil.”11 It was this “blackness” that would give this industrial district its name: Baku’s BlackCity.

“All day long dense clouds of smoke, possessing the wellknown attributes of oilsmoke, rise from hundreds of sources… The buildings are black and greasy, the walls are black and greasy; the roads between consist of jutting rock and drifting sand, interspersed with huge pools or oil-refuse, and forming a vast morass of mud and oil.”

THE REGION OF ETERNAL FIRE

Charles Marvin, p.234-235

“There is a very marked difference between the appearance of the Black and White [cities]; in the second, no smoke, or hardly any, is seen to come out of the refinery chimneys, while in the former, with a few exceptions, volumes of black smoke are vomited forth.”

BAKU, AN EVENTFUL HISTORY

James Henry, p.14

12. Eve Blau, Baku: Oil and Urbanism. Zurich: Park Books, 2018, 67

TheWhiteCity’snamereflectedarelativecomparisonto the Black City, not an absolute. The newer technology present in the refineries it housed meant that there was less visible pollution than that present in the older Black City, and the lack of density distributed what was created. Its creation in the late 1880s was characterized by its lack of a block structure, instead opting to have larger blocks (about 500x300 meters on average), irregular in shape, which would accommodate to the shape taken by the factories rather than the other way aroundaswellasallowingforfutureexpansion.Itwasa more “organic” development, mainly focused around a main access street which connected to the Black City in the east and which the blocks expanded perpendicularly from. The White City grew to mainly house only select new refineries, which were cleaner thanthoseusedintheBlackCity,andwashometosome of the workers’ housing developments created by the ownersofthefactoriesandrefineries.12

13. Henry, James. Baku an Eventful History. London: London: Archibald Constable & Co. Ltd, 1905. p. 14

Yet this spatial reordering was as much about optics as it was about functionality. By the 1890s, Baku had become a global name in oil production. Foreign dignitaries, investors, and engineers visited the city regularly, and companies began to compete not only in production but in presentation. Some of the facilities in White City included manicured gardens, neoclassical office buildings, and worker quarters styled after European model towns. The Rothschilds and Nobels in particular used their compounds to stage a narrative of technological advancement and benevolent paternalism. Refineries were painted white. Public amenities were installed. And yet, the labor conditions remained deeply unequal. Only a few years after the development of the two cities in 1886, a British Colonel called James Henry would write, “There is a very marked difference between the appearance of the Black and White; in the second,no smoke,orhardly any, is seen to come out of the refinery chimneys,while in the former, with a few exceptions, volumes of black smoke are vomited forth.” 13

CAPITAL: FOREIGN AND LOCAL

While the Russian Empire provided the geopolitical framework for Baku’s industrialization, it was foreign capital—particularly Scandinavian and Western European—that provided the financial and technological backbone of its oil boom. Foremost among these were the Nobel Brothers, whose arrival in the 1870s marked a turning point in the scale and organization of the city’s petroleum economy. Founded by Ludwig and Robert Nobel, Branobel (The Petroleum ProductionCompanyNobelBrothers,Limited)pioneered techniques in refining, pipeline transport, and vertical integration that revolutionized oil extraction in the Caucasus.

The Nobels played a central role in the establishment of Black City, securing blocks of land within the newly gridded industrial district and building some of the most productive and advanced refineries in the region. Their operations pushed the need for zoning, as fire risk and fumes made proximity to the central city increasingly dangerous. At the same time, the Nobels recognized the instability caused by rapid labor migration and

inadequate housing. In response, they developed a model workers’ village known as Villa Petrolea in what would later become part of White City. The village included schools, hospitals, gardens, and worker housingbuiltataremovefromthenoxiousindustrialgrid. In form and ethos, Villa Petrolea bore striking similarities to contemporary English Garden City experiments— separated zones of labor and leisure, manicured green space, and a logic of moral and hygienic uplift. Though still hierarchically structured and closely surveilled, the development reflected a new corporate paternalism, one that used space as a means of labor control and socialprojection.14

Beyond the Nobels, Baku attracted a wide range of international investors—French (Rothschilds), Belgian, German, Swedish, and British capital flowed into the city’s oil fields during the last quarter of the 19th century. The Rothschilds, for instance, invested heavily in infrastructure and built company headquarters within Baku (now the General Prosecutor’s Office). As demand foroilgrewglobally,Bakubecamelessaremoteimperial outpost and more a node in a globalized energy economy.

The single most important event in creating Baku’s oil aristocracy was the 1873 land auction later nicknamed the “Golden Bazaar," when the Russian government openedlargetractsofoil-richlandforprivatepurchase. While much of this land was snapped up by foreign companies, a significant portion was acquired by local Azeris. This locally owned segment of the oil economy became a powerful counterweight to foreign dominance. Figures like Zeynalabdin Taghiyev, Murtuza Mukhtarov, Shamsi Asadullayev, Agha Musa Nagiyev, and others, not only grew immensely wealthy, but invested directly in the urban development of Baku beyond the industrial landscape, funding schools, theaters, and other cultural and civic landmarks as a formofphilanthropiccompetition.

These families often modeled themselves after their European counterparts. Their profits were poured into extravagantmansions,manyofwhichstilllinethestreets

ofcentralBakutoday(thoughwereinmostcasesturned intocivicadministrativebuildingsintheSovietera),most notably along what is now called Neftchilar (literally “oil worker”) Avenue. These structures reflected a hybrid architectural vocabulary: Beaux-Arts and Neo-Baroque facades coupled with local materials, traditional motifs, and environmental adaptations suited to the dry, windy climate. Stone sourced from local quarries was cut to mimic French styles, but windows were recessed, courtyards internalized, and rooflines adjusted for solar exposure.

They would model the urban area after the great European cities of the time, with wide canopied boulevards, a seaside esplanade, monumental civic buildings, and all the new technologies in communication and transportation.15 The oil barons competed with each other to donate the most lavish and monumental civic buildings, but the initial construction was spearheaded by Haji Zeynalabdin Taghiyev (1823?-1924), one of the most philanthropic of the industrialists.16 The first Azerbaijani National Theater was founded in 1873, as well as another theater built in 1882. Parks and educational centers such as vocational schools were given great importance during this time, including Baku's first school for Muslim girls in 1910,

15. Ibid. 82-83,

Pirouz Khanlou, “Baku’s Architecture: A Fusion of East and West” Azerbaijan International, Winter 1994

16. Blau, 80

plan

Red represents existing urban blocks, orange is proposed.

17. Pirouz Khanlou, “Baku’s Architecture: A Fusion of East and West” Azerbaijan International, Winter 1994

18. Eve Blau, Baku: Oil and Urbanism. Zurich: Park Books, 2018, 80-83

19. Ibid. 78-79

20. Charles Marvin, The Region of Eternal Fire, Reprint, Hyperion Press, 1976, Originally Published 1883, 155

designed by Josef Goslavsky, who was then the Chief Architect of Baku.17 Soon more of the wealthy industrialists followed and competed in a philanthropic battle of donating towards the development of the city, such as Musa Naghiyev and Shamsi Asadullaev.18 Many of the hallmarks of a thriving cosmopolitan city were constructed during this time. The Baku City Duma was built from 1900-1904, also designed by Goslavsky in an Italianate renaissance style on the northern edge of the medieval walled city.19 In the same 1883 book, Charles Marvin would write, “What was ten years ago a sleepy Persian town is today a thriving city. There is more building activity visible at Baku than in any other place in the Russian Empire.”20

21. Luigi Villari, Fire and Sword in the Caucasus, 181

22. Plan of Baku 18981900, Nikolaus Von Der Nonne

And yet, amid this architectural flourish and grandiosity which set Baku apart from other oil boomtowns, the city’s infrastructure was no outlier to the boomtown norm. Roads were often unpaved outside of elite neighborhoods; water systems failed to reach the labor districts; waste disposal was ad hoc at best. This would be commented on by an Italian diplomat in 1905 who wrote, “Baku, considering its wealth, is one of the worst managed cities in the world. The lighting is inadequate, the wretched horse-tram service is pitiable, the sanitaryarrangementsappalling;vastspacesareleftin the middle of the town, drinking water is only supplied by sea water distilled.”21 Suchlackinthedevelopmentof facilitiesneededinawell-functioningcityisindicativeof bothitsrapidgrowthandrapiddevelopmentwithalack of government oversight, both things indicative of its industrial character. This deficiency led to the urban proposalinthe1890sspearheadedbythelocaloilbaron Zeynalabdin Taghiyev and designed by the German engineer Nikolaus von Der Nonne.22 The plan itself is clearly derived from European models of city planning thathadbecomeprevalentinthepriordecades(vonDer Nonne was well versed in the Hobrecht Plan for Berlin from a few decades earlier and which also featured a similar expansion of urban layout and infrastructure which avoided full scale demolition such as in Haussmann’s plan of Paris) and thus clearly drew inspiration from these precedents. In it, it proposed a seriesofgridlayoutstobegraftedontotheemptybuffer

“What was ten years ago a sleepy Persian town is today a thriving city. There is more building activity visible at Baku than in any other place in the Russian Empire.”

THE REGION OF ETERNAL FIRE

Charles Marvin, p.155

“Baku, considering its wealth, is one of the worst managed cities in the world. The lighting is inadequate, the wretched horse-tram service is pitiable, the sanitary arrangements appalling; vast spaces are left in the middle of the town, drinking water is only supplied by sea water distilled.”

FIRE AND SWORD IN THE CAUCASUS

Luigi Villari, p.181

23. Eve Blau, Baku: Oil and Urbanism. Zurich: Park Books, 2018, 87

24. Ibid 94

25. Robert Tolf, Russian Rockefellers, p. 152-153

zones between the different districts, with clearly definedblocklayoutsthatwouldthenbesoldforprivate development. 23

The result would be a plan that aimed to connect the different fragments that constituted Baku’s urban and industrialcenters,creatingapatchworkquiltofdifferent stylesofurbanfabric—rangingfromthemedievalwalled Icherisheher to the tightly gridded Black City to the expansive blocks of the White City to the oil fields and informal settlements that currently surrounded it all. Between it all it had to deal with the existing railway lines, oil pipelines, and all the inherent issues that came with an industrialized petro-city. Grant linear parks would split certain areas, serving as organizational devices to separate different areas.This plan, however, would only partially be constructed, and some parts suchastheplannedseasideesplanadewouldnotcome into being until the Soviet period, when there was no more different private industrial ownership to contend withwhenexpropriatinglandsforcivicuse.24

1905: FIRES OF ANOTHER KIND

By the early 20th century, Baku stood as the most productiveoilcityintheworld,apatchworkofmedieval fabric,beaux-arts palaces,derricks,refineries,and both ad-hoc and planned labour housing that stretched acrosstheAbsheroncoast.Yetbeneaththespectacleof industrial modernity, deep social fissures were creating cracksinitsfabric.In1905,thesetensionswouldexplode.

A series of ethnic riots and class-based uprisings destabilizedthecity,revealingthefragilityoftheexisting societalstructurethathadproducedsuchacosmopolis. They had been brewing for several years prior to their explosion, with the appalling working and living conditions of the oil workers having already led to large scale strikes in 1903 and 1904, all of which were suppressed by force. The city had already been a hotbed of revolutionary thought, with pamphlets by Lenin, Trotsky, and Marx’s manifesto being disseminated through the same network as the Nobel’s industrial channels.25

While not limited to any one sector in particular, oil

companies (most of which employed mixed workforces of Azeris, Armenians, and Russians, among others) saw their production sites become targeted by the rioters. Out of the 200 derricks in the oil fields of Bibi Heybat,118 weredestroyedandmostofthebuiltsurroundingslayin ruins.Villari describes it in his accounts, “The whole area was covered with debris and wreckage, thick iron bars snapped asunder like sticks, or twisted by the fire into the shape of coiled up serpents and fantastic monsters; great sheets of iron torn to shreds as though they had

been paper, broken machinery, blackened beams, fragments of cogged wheels, pistons, burst boilers, miles of steel wire ropes, all piled up in the wildest confusion, workmen’s Baracks, offices, and engine houses razed to the ground. Everywhere streams of thick-oozing naphtha flowed down to channels, or formed slimy pools of dull greenish liquid; the whole atmosphere was charged with the smell of oil.”26 Among everything, one thing was clear: the dense concentration of the industry and living was proving counter-productive to efficiency as the hallmarks of metropolis—flowing thought, dissension, among other things—was interfering with the authoritarian control requiredforindustrialscaleproduction.

TheresponsefromtheRussianimperialgovernmentwas slow and contradictory, with the pleas of the local Azeri oilbaronsforgreaterhelpinsuppressingtheriotslargely ignored. The riots themselves also had an ethnic component, with mutual pogroms being instigated between the local Azeri and Armenian populations and often encouraged by the Russian officials who would rather see the two local groups fight between each other than united against themselves. The local economic dynamic which had created a vibrant cosmopolitan urban center was proving detrimental in the face of colonial imperial authorities. What resulted was not only violence, but a reconfiguration of trust in the city.Foreign investors,once excited about the city as a great investment began to reconsider the long-term stability of their ventures. Much of the cosmopolitan, industrial optimism of the final decades of the 19th centurybegantogivewaytoaseeminglycontradictory combination of defensive nationalism and socialist thought.

The immediate aftermath was that foreign investment stalled. The large-scale destruction of industry—both extractive and administrative— led to the rather correct perception of Baku as an unpredictable and unstable investment and which prompted a withdrawal or consolidation of foreign capital, including among those who had invested the most with the transnational companies of the Nobels, Rothschilds, and Royal Dutch/

“The whole area was covered with debris and wreckage, thick iron bars snapped asunder like sticks, or twisted by the fire into the shape of coiled up serpents and fantastic monsters; great sheets of iron torn to shreds as though they had been paper, broken machinery, blackened beams, fragments of cogged wheels, pistons, burst boilers, miles of steel wire ropes, all piled up in the wildest confusion, workmen’s Baracks, offices, and engine houses razed to the ground. Everywhere streams of thickoozing naphtha flowed down to channels, or formed slimy pools of dull greenish liquid; the whole atmosphere was charged with the smell of oil.”

FIRE AND SWORD IN THE CAUCASUS

Luigi Villari, p.205-206

27. Van der Leeuw, Oil and Gas, p. 72

28. Blau, p.95-97

29. Harry Luke, Cities and Men, An Autobiography, (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1953), p. 105

Shell.27 While the city was granted greater autonomy after 1905, unrest continued, with strikes happening againlessthanadecadelater.28

Nevertheless,thelocalcapitalistextensionofthecitydid resume, albeit at a slower pace than a few decades prior. One traveler to Baku would describe the city in 1920 as deeply cosmopolitan, though bearing the hallmarks of unplanned boomtown growth such as having lavish civic buildings existing side-by-side with shantytowns. He likened the local Azeri oil barons to the American millionaires who made their money from oil, andwouldpaintanimageoraratherEuropeancitywith aCaspianflavour. 29

The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the subsequent incorporation of Azerbaijan into the Soviet sphere in 1920 following a brief period of autonomy would fundamentallyrestructureBaku’soileconomy.Whathad once been a mosaic of private companies, foreign investors, and local elites was replaced with a state-run monopoly under what would become Azneft. The city’s industrial landscape was thus nationalized, with refineries, pipelines, and transportation infrastructure broughtundercentralplanning.

The period between 1905 and 1920 represented a transitional moment in Baku’s urban and industrial identity. Ethnic and class violence revealed the fragility of cosmopolitanism under capitalist extractive pressure, foreign capital retracted as volatility increased, and the Sovietstatesteppedintothevoidwithpromisesoforder and planned development. Yet, much of what was did not change, the city did not become something else. Many of the contradictions of the oil city remained, however, a change in investment—now focused on education, housing and other socialist programs created a new mode of urban life, one no longer oriented openly around private accumulation but around the socialist ideal. Oil remained central in the city’sworld—butnowasanemblemoftheproletariat,of theoilworkerratherthantheoilbaron.

HOUSING AND CONFLICT

As Baku’s oil economy expanded rapidly in the mid to late 19th century, its housing infrastructure remained persistentlyinadequate.Despitethecityproducingover half of the world’s oil alone, its urban landscape was marked by stark inequality: opulent mansions and villas for the oil elite on one hand, and overcrowded, unsanitary ad-hoc settlements for workers on the other. Unlikecitiesthatgrewundermunicipalregulation,Baku’s expansion was largely speculative, driven by local oil profits and/or foreign capital who generally had little interest in the local urban realm, both with little coordinated planning to accommodate the ever growinglabourforce.

Housing was one of the first—and most visible—domains where the contradictions of Baku’s “modernity” played out. Workers in Black City often lived within or adjacent to refinery compounds, in hastily constructed wooden barracks, sheds, or mud-brick hovels. These units were typically shared by multiple families, with no access to plumbing,sanitation,orevenconsistentelectricity.These conditions were not incidental but structural: oil companiesrarelyinvestedinlaborhousingbeyondwhat wasnecessaryforimmediateproductivity.Theproximity of housing to the refinery zone exposed workers to toxic fumes, noise, and industrial accidents, but also reduced transportation costs and facilitated surveillance. These living conditions, often compared to those of mining camps or factory towns in the American Midwest, were compounded by a chronic lack of water infrastructure, as Baku’s arid geography and overburdened municipal systems failed to meet the demands of a rapidly expanding population. Disease outbreaks were common, and housing-related grievances became a major source of labor unrest and ethnic tension, particularly as different ethnic groups were informally segregated into specific districts. Some efforts were madetotrytomitigatethis,namelytheoriginalmodelof garden city style worker’s housing in the Nobel’s Villa Petrolea,andthenthedesignationoflandtothenorthof the city for a “Charity Village” by the City Duma in 1897. However, the area that had been set aside lacked vital

30. Crawford, Christina E. “Part I. Oil City: Baku, 1920-1927” Spatial Revolution: Architecture and Planning in the Early Soviet Union. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2022.

infrastructure and became filled with small ad hoc settlements.

The Soviet seizure of power in Baku in 1920 brought with it new ideals—and new contradictions—around the question of housing. Guided by Marxist principles and earlyBolshevikpoliciesoncommunalproperty,thestate embarked on a campaign to reorganize domestic life along socialist lines. In theory, this meant the end of private real estate ownership, the redistribution of elite residences, and the construction of new proletarian housing that reflected the collective ethos of the socialist city. In practice, two major pieces of legislation in the new Soviet state would pave the way for this: the “Decree on the Nationalization of the Land” in February 1918andthe“DecreeontheAbolitionofPrivateProperty in Cities” in October 1918. After the introduction of Baku into the Soviet realm, both of these went into effect and thus led to the dismantling of the existing norm of capitalist land speculation in the city which divided the realmintoprivateandpublicspace.

Thereality,however,wasoneofoverlappingcrises.Early attempts to address the problem were mired by a multitude of problems such as lack of proper data, lack ofabaseinfrastructure,lackofmaterials,lackofproper budget, and perhaps most relating to oil itself were geological concerns themselves. The consideration of geological folds, which much like veins in mineral extraction are lines of oil concentration and results in an “anticline axis” which is essentially an untouchable line duetothepossibilityoffutureoildrilling.Thesesweeping areas unavailable for development coupled with the hyper-densification of the industry of extraction, refinery, transportation, and metropolitan life resulted in a territorial catch-22 when it came to worker’s housing. On the one hand, you want workers to be housed near the area of drilling for ease of transportation. On the other hand, having worker settlements near oil fields meansyouhavetodisplacethemassoonasyouwantto expand the drilling area, as well as the added problem of having to create separate infrastructure for worker settlementsfarfromtheindustrialzones.30

31. Crawford, Christina E. “Part I. Oil City: Baku, 1920-1927” Spatial Revolution: Architecture and Planning in the Early Soviet Union. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2022.

To address this shortfall, the new Soviet administration encouraged experimental interventions, attempting to create new models of socialist housing. Among one of the more unexpected links was the attempt to import American-style housing typologies—most famously the Sears catalog houses, pre-fabricated wooden homes shippedacrossoceansandrailwaysandassembledonsite. There are reports of a few of such homes arriving in Baku in the 1920s and early 30s, intended as experimental models for rational housing in a modern socialist city, bought through an accord in which Standard Oil in the US would serve as the sole creditor for the newly created Azneft.31 Whether or not these houses were widely adopted, they underscore the transnational circulation of housing ideas, even within the Soviet context which we now consider to be extremely insular. Through study of other international models and precedents of labour housing, Baku’s administratorsdecidedonamiddlegroundofdensityto quality of housing by settling on a general garden-city style grid for the new settlements, and initially constructingsingle-familyhousingtypologies.

One such settlement was Stepan Razin. The first phase constituted standardized single story housing prototypes which were economical and yet maintained the idea of the individual home. While these prototypes

were completed in the hundreds of units during this initial phase, they soon became troublesome. The low density of the resulting settlement proved costly and inadequate to house the sheer volume of families. Considered by some to be a “prime example of a nonsocialist housing type”32, the low density housing was soon abandoned in favor of denser multi unit housingblocks.33

The site for the new model of the soviet, constructivist housing block was actually the original plot of land set asideforthecharityvillagesomethirtyyearsearlier,and became the Armenikend settlement and illustrated the way in which housing functioned both as an architectural and political project, merging the two in order to envision a new purely socialist mode of designing (as opposed to the patron-artist mode of architectural design). Rather than considering single story stand-alone housing as a model, parti diagrams show variations of a living block instead. In these early experiments of what would become the famous Soviet housing super blocks, one can see the abstract considerationsoftheporosityoftheblockaswellasthe formation of densified living units inside the generated massing.Theresultingtestblockhad174totallivingunits and served 300 families, with some of the apartments designed to be co-living units.34 The aesthetic was not a priority, only the pure functionality and efficiency, a proper proletariat-oriented architecture, a constructivist rationality. The original courtyard typologies were expanded, unified, and scaled to accommodate hundreds. Units were standardized, elevations simplified, and access corridors rationalized. By the early 1930s,Armenikend had become a model for how the Soviet state could transform pre-revolutionary urban fragments into integrated infrastructures of socialism. This transformation was both symbolic and practical. It erased the ethnic branding of the original settlement and absorbed it into a universalist Soviet narrative of collective life. Yet in doing so, it preserved and scaled the very typology—the internal courtyard— that had been devised as a local response to the importedEuropeanbeauxartsaesthetic.

32. Ibid

33. Eve Blau, Baku: Oil and Urbanism. Zurich: Park Books, 2018, 114

34. Crawford, “Baku”

V.G. Davydovich, T.A. Chizhikova, “Aleksandr Ivanitskii”, 1973

Armenikend housing, panorama, Retrieved from http://electro.nekrasovka.ru/ books/3980/pages/12

CONCLUSION

Baku’s urban and industrial trajectory reveals a city as much by its contradictions as by its innovations. Its transformation from a windswept peninsula of flammable has vents and Zoroastrian fire temples into theworld’sfirstmodernoilmetropolisillustratesnotjusta chronological head start in global petroleum production, but also a deeper combination of factors: empire, capital, and ideology within a uniquely compressed geographical and geological environment. In every phase of its evolution—from medieval fortified capital to imperial outpost, from boomtown to urban experimental playground— the city demonstrated the capacity of oil to reshape space, society, and sovereignty in a way that is contradictory to the preconceived notion of a typical “resource cursed” region.

Few cities in the world so fully embody oil as condition, economy, symbol, and crisis. The city’s spatial dualities— Black and White City, industrial core and aristocratic boulevard, informal worker settlements and monumental civic architecture—mirror the deeper dualities of industrial modernity: between accumulation and exploitation, cosmopolitanism and ethnic tension, monumentalambitionandinfrastructuralneglect.

Baku’sroleinthehistoryofoilurbanismisthustwofold:it is both archetype and outlier. It anticipated many of the traits that would later define other oil cities—capital concentration, migrant labor surges, stratified housing, infrastructural contradictions—yet it did so earlier, and with far more dramatic spatial intensity. Unlike the sprawlinghorizontalgeographiesofAmericanoiltowns, Baku’s compact footprint necessitated density and greaterzoningexperimentation,producingacitywhere oil was not merely adjacent to urban life but deeply embeddedinitsspatiallogic.AndunlikeoilcapitalsLatin America such as Tampico and Comodoro Rivadavia, which were planned from the outset with industrial coherence in mind and had little to no urban centralization prior to industrial development, Baku developed through chaotic layering, accreted through

imperial and economic improvisation necessitated by the extreme density and compression inherent in the geographyofthepeninsula.

The four framing characteristics that mark Baku’s outlier status—its early industrialization, its unparalleled spatial density, its powerful class of local oil barons, and its role as a Soviet experimental ground—reverberate across the physical and political fabric of the city. Each contributes to a unique urban condition in which material extraction directly shaped urban form: roads paved to access derricks, housing dislocated to avoid anticlines, boulevards funded by extraction profits, neighborhoods created and architecturally developed in accordance to ideology. Whether as a space of speculative capitalism or as a site of socialist experimentation,Bakualwaysremainedacityofoil—not merelyanoiltown.

Yet, Baku’s contradictions also make it a powerful entry point for comparative study. In cities such as Tampico and Comodoro Rivadavia, we see echoes of Baku’s tensions—betweenforeigninvestmentandlocalagency, between industrial functionality and social precarity, between extractive logic and spatial design. But these cities, emerging later and within different administrative frameworks, responded to oil’s urban demands in markedly different ways. Baku, then, is not a blueprint but a historical fulcrum—a city whose lessons are not easilytransferable,butwhoselegacypersistsinhowwe understandtheurbanconsequencesofenergy.

In short, to study Baku is to study the city as resource: layered, combustible, extractive, and evolving. It is to confront the question of how oil doesn’t just fund cities, but produces them—through violence, labor, architecture, and ideology. And it is to begin thinking of oil urbanism not as a typology, but as a condition— unstable,transformative,andalwaysspatiallyinscribed.

“Modern apartments have been built to house oil workers in the suburbs of Baku. Though not modishly dressed by American standards the three women in the foreground look ‘clean, happy, and well-fed’” [Credit line, ACME]

Photo Service, ACME Newspapers, New York, 26 June 1942

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18. Plan of Baku 1898-1900, Nikolaus Von Der Nonne (Retrieved from Eve Blau, Baku: Oil and Urbanism, 87-90)

19. Sh. S. Fatullayev-Figarov, Arkhitekturnaia Entsiklopediia Baku (The Architectural Encyclopedia of Baku), trans. Dimitry Doohovskoy (Baku/ Ankara: Mezhdunrodnaia Akademiia Arkhitektury stran Vostoka, 1998), 31. Retrieved from Eve Blau, Baku: Oil and Urbanism, 62

20. V.G. Davydovich, T.A. Chizhikova, “Aleksandr Ivanitskii”, 1973

21. Villari, Luigi, 1876. Fire and Sword in the Caucasus. England: England: T. F. Unwin, 1906, 1906.

22. Seits, Irina. “From Ignis Mundi to the World’s First Oil-Tanker The Legacy of the Nobels’ Oil Empire in Baku.” Approaching Religion 13, no. 2 (2023): 57–76.

23. Tadeusz Swietochowski, Russian Azerbaijan, 1905-1920: The Shaping of National Identity in a Muslim Community, 1985, p.xiii

24. Tolf, Robert, Russian Rockefellers,

25. Polo, Marco, and da Pisa Rusticiano. The Travels of Marco Polo

26. Swietochowski, Tadeusz. Russian Azerbaijan, 1905-1920: The Shaping of National Identity in a Muslim Community. Vol. 42. Cambridge University Press, 2010.

27. Fatullayev, Shamil. Gradostroitel’stvo Baku XIX – Nachala XX Vekov [Urban Development of Baku in the 19th – Early 20th Centuries]. Accessed April 14, 2025.

28. Harry Luke, Cities and Men, An Autobiography, (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1953)

Panoramic view of Comodoro Rivadavia, looking South c. 2009

Satellite

1. Cabral Márquez, Daniel y Godoy, Mario (coords.): Distinguir y comprender. Aportes para pensar la sociedad y la cultura en Comodoro Rivadavia., Comodoro Rivadavia, Ediciones Proyección Patagónica, 1995.

2. Ibid.

INTRODUCTION

The formation of Comodoro Rivadavia did not emerge from a deliberate state project of industrial modernity norfromthespeculativeinitiativesofforeigncapital,but fromtheaccumulationofcircumstantialdecisionsmade at the margins of Argentine territorial consolidation. Initially conceived as a logistical node to connect the remote agricultural interior of southern Chubut to maritimeroutes,itsselectionasaportsiteowedmoreto geographical pragmatism than to any urban vision. It was the discovery of oil in 1907, during a routine search for potable water, that shifted the axis of development from pastoral economy to extractive industry, rapidly transforming the scale and meaning of the settlement. YetunlikeBakuorTampico,whereoilurbanismunfolded under the dominance of multinational companies and thefluctuatingdemandsofforeignmarkets,Comodoro’s industrial destiny was from the outset entangled with national sovereignty, territorial security, and the ideological project of integrating Patagonia into the Argentinenation-state.

3. Barrera, M., 2014, La entrega de YPF. Análisis del proceso de privatización de la empresa,Editorial Atuel, Colección Cara o Ceca, Buenos Aires.

Thecity’searlystructurereflectedneithertheconcentric rationality of planned industrial cities nor the chaotic layering of speculative boomtowns. Instead, it developedasamultifocalandsegmentedterritory,with industrial enclaves, railway nodes, and provisional urban centers dispersed across a harsh landscape.1 The originalportuarysettlementcoexistedwithanemerging archipelago of oil camps established first by the state, and then by private companies such. Cerro Chenque, a physicalbarrierbetweenthecoastalsettlementandthe northernoilzones,becameasymbolicdemarcationofa deeperterritorialdivide:betweencivilmunicipallifeand the extraterritorial governance of industrial production.2 Unlike the colonial urban fabrics of Baku, where dense capitalist competition produced intricate residentialcommercial zones, or the disjointed foreign bubbles of Tampico,Comodorodevelopedasaspaceoffunctional zonescreatedonablankslate.3

The discovery of oil coincided with a national ideological shift.In the aftermath of the Conquest of the

Desert (a late 19th-century military campaign led by the Argentine government to forcibly subjugate and displace indigenous populations in Patagonia), the Argentine state viewed the region less as a frontier of opportunity and more as a precarious, semi-integrated periphery vulnerable to foreign influence and internal disorder.4 The project of "argentinizing Patagonia," articulated especially during the administrations of Hipolito Yrigoyen5, positioned oil not merely as an economic asset but as a means of asserting political control. The creation of Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales (YPF) in 1922—the first vertically integrated state oil company outside the Soviet Union—was both a culmination of this ambition and a preemptive defense against the influx of foreign capital into a vital industry.6 Oil nationalization in Comodoro was not a belated reaction to multinational abuses, as elsewhere; it was embedded since the very start of industrialization, shaping the city's social, political, and urban fabric from itsinception.

UnderEnriqueMosconi’sleadership,YPFconstructednot only wells, pipelines, and refineries but also a totalizing social infrastructure: worker housing, schools, public baths, and hospitals.7 The state assumed a paternalistic role, regulating everyday life as much as production, framing labor not only as a technical necessity but as a patrioticduty.8

Migration patterns further complicated the demographicandsociallandscape.IncontrasttoBaku’s multiethnic proletariat or Tampico’s transient workforce drawn to volatile extractive booms, Comodoro’s labor base was composed largely of foreign migrants, mainly from Europe but also from South Africa, Chile, and internalArgentinemigrants.9 Settlementwasfragileand uneven:administratorsandskilledtechnicianstendedto reside in company-built neighborhoods with access to services, while temporary and low-wage laborers often occupied marginal spaces. The absence of a deeply rooted local population created a society that was at onceopentonewformsofidentificationandvulnerable to fragmentation through factionalization. Unlike cities with established oligarchies or municipal institutions,

4. Navarro Floria, Pedro: «La República Posible conquista el desierto. La mirada del reformismo liberal sobre los territorios del sur argentino», en Navarro Floria, Pedro (coord.): Paisajes del Progreso. La resignificación de la Patagonia Norte 18801916, Neuquén, EDUCO, 2007, 191-234.

5. Yrigoyen, Hipólito: Mi vida y mi doctrina, Buenos Aires, Leviatán, 1981 (1.ª edición 1923).

6. Bucheli, Marcelo. “Major Trends in the Historiography of the Latin American Oil Industry.” The Business History Review 84, no. 2 (2010): 339–62. http:// www.jstor.org/stable/ 20743908.

7. Gutiérrez, Ramón, Liliana Lolich, Liliana Carnevale, y Patricia Méndez. Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina: un siglo de vida petrolera. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Fundación YPF, 2007.

8. Ester Elizabeth Ceballos (2005). “El primero de mayo en Comodoro Rivadavia durante el período 19011945”. X Jornadas Interescuelas/ Departamentos de Historia. Escuela de Historia de la Facultad de Humanidades y Artes, Universidad Nacional del Rosario. Departamento de Historia de la Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación, Universidad Nacional del Litoral, Rosario. Dirección estable:

9. Mármora, Lelio. Migración al Sur: argentinos y chilenos en Comodoro Rivadavia. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Libera, 1968.

Comodoro Rivadavia grew under the heavy hand of state and corporate administrators on a quite literal blankslate.

In tracing Comodoro’s evolution, it becomes clear that it neither replicated the speculative extractive urbanism of Tampico nor the dense, cosmopolitan industrialism of Baku. Instead, it instantiated a third model: a stateindustrial city, shaped as much by the needs of the nation and ideological projection as by the technical requirementsofoilextraction.

BEGINNINGS

The formation of Comodoro Rivadavia were part of the larger framework of Argentina’s late territorial consolidation efforts. Patagonia, formally annexed during the late nineteenth century through military campaigns such as the Conquest of the Desert, remained only tenuously integrated into the national fabric at the dawn of the twentieth century. Sparse settlement, fragile infrastructure, and lingering perceptions of geographic and cultural marginality rendered the region both a frontier to be secured and a liabilitytobemanaged.Inthiscontext,theestablishment of a port along the Golfo San Jorge was not the realization of a deliberate urban vision but of a pragmatic response.Comodoro Rivadavia emerged not as a colonial city, but as an improvised outpost in a territory that remained, in many ways, imagined more

thaninhabited.

Early narratives by explorers such as Robert FitzRoy and Charles Darwin emphasized the starkness of the Patagonian landscape. Their observations recorded a region marked by severe winds, infertile soils, and a relentless climatic hostility that seemed to resist conventional forms of European settlement.10 Yet it was precisely this environmental austerity that conferred strategic value on certain sites. The areas’ geographic features—a natural bay protected from the worst Atlanticcurrentsandwinds—providedafeasiblepointof anchorage for ships transporting goods between the interior colonies and Buenos Aires. It was not an ideal harbor, nor a natural center of commerce, but in the absenceofalternatives,itbecameindispensable.

In 1900, the construction of provisional infrastructures such as the Muelle Maciel and rudimentary wool warehouses marked the embryonic stages of Comodoro’s material formation. The port’s primary functionwastoservetheinlandtownofSarmiento(now a neighbourhood in the municipality of Comodoro Rivadavia). It had been founded through national colonization programs aimed at introducing European settlers into the interior, particularly Welsh and Boer migrants displaced by the conflicts in South Africa. However, despite the fertility of certain valleys, the absence of efficient transport links rendered economic survivalprecarious.Theestablishmentofacoastaloutlet thus became essential to the success of the inland colonization schemes. Comodoro, positioned between geographic necessity and economic survival, assumed its role not through an internal dynamic of urbanization butthroughexternaldemandsprojecteduponit.11

The relationship between Comodoro and Sarmiento defined much of the former's early urban logic. Comodoro was, from its inception, a secondary settlement meant for exportation and not much else. Wool, hides, and rudimentary agricultural products flowed from Sarmienton to Comodoro’s port installations, where they could be loaded onto ships for transport to Buenos Aires and beyond. In return,

10. Mármora, Lelio. Migración al Sur: argentinos y chilenos en Comodoro Rivadavia. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Libera, 1968.

11. Gutiérrez, Ramón, Liliana Lolich, Liliana Carnevale, y Patricia Méndez. Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina: un siglo de vida petrolera. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Fundación YPF, 2007.

12. Gutiérrez, Ramón, Liliana Lolich, Liliana Carnevale, y Patricia Méndez. Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina: un siglo de vida petrolera. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Fundación YPF, 2007.

Comodoro received goods and supplies essential for sustaining itself.12 The founding of Rada Tilly, a coastal settlement located just south of Comodoro, further reinforced the dispersed, functional nature of early settlement patterns. Conceived primarily as a supplementary point of access to the sea, Rada Tilly never developed an independent economic base and remained tethered to Comodoro’s logistical and administrative orbit. It exists now as a holiday town for residents of Comodoro, one composed mainly of secondaryweekendhomesratherthanofresidentsofits own.

13. Cabral Márquez, Daniel y Godoy, Mario (coords.): Distinguir y comprender. Aportes para pensar la sociedad y la cultura en Comodoro Rivadavia., Comodoro Rivadavia, Ediciones Proyección Patagónica, 1995.

14. Guevara, Tomás Alejandro. La ciudad (re)negada: aproximaciones al estudio de asentamientos populares en nueve ciudades argentinas. Edited by María Cristina Cravino. Los Polvorines, Prov. de Buenos Aires, Argentina: Ediciones UNGS, Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento, 2018.

Politically, Comodoro Rivadavia was incorporated underthenationalframeworkgoverningtheterritories— spaces which, unlike provinces, remained under direct federal authority. The Law 1532, enacted in 1884, had established a centralized model of governance for the national territories, forcing them to answer to administrators appointed by the executive government and limiting local autonomy.13 In 1911, local elites in Comodoro succeeded in establishing a municipal council,a partial recognition of the community’s growth. Yet this political body operated within narrow confines: ultimate authority remained vested in the National GovernmentDelegate,andmunicipalinitiativesrequired federal approval. The tension between the aspirations of local settlers—many of them European immigrants envisioning a participatory civic life—and the centralizing tendencies of the national state would shape the trajectory of Comodoro’s political and social evolution.14

Geography and governance thus combined to produce a peculiar urban form. The early town clustered around the port facilities and the foot of Cerro Chenque, whose imposing mass both sheltered and constrained the settlement’s expansion. Streets were laid out with minimalplanning,respondingtotheimmediateneedsof commerce rather than to any vision of civic order. The construction of basic public infrastructure—cemeteries, a modest hospital, water supply networks—depended heavily on local initiative, often spearheaded by immigrant organizations and civic associations . Yet the

limitationsimposedbyterritorialgovernancemeantthat such efforts frequently ran up against bureaucratic inertiaandfederalindifference.Ineffect,Comodorowas left to improvise its urban existence within a structural frameworkthatdenieditfullagency.15

The discovery of oil in 1907 occurred within this matrix of precariousness and improvisation. The drilling expedition that struck petroleum had been intended merely to locate potable water for the settlement.16 The accidental discovery of oil would forever alter the city's destiny, shifting its orientation from a marginal node to national resource frontier. Yet it would do so without resolving the underlying structural tensions that marked its formation. If anything, the discovery of oil would intensify the segmentation, external control, and precariousness that had characterized Comodoro from itsinception.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE CITY

The discovery of oil in Comodoro Rivadavia was an accident, a lucky consequence of a necessity rather than a deliberate search for it. In 1907, engineers dispatched by the national government initiated a drilling operation aimed at alleviating the chronic water shortages that had been plaguing the settlement. The arid climate of Patagonia, compounded by the town's Atlantic coastal location, rendered the search for

15. Cabral Márquez, Daniel y Godoy, Mario (coords.): Distinguir y comprender. Aportes para pensar la sociedad y la cultura en Comodoro Rivadavia., Comodoro Rivadavia, Ediciones Proyección Patagónica, 1995.

16. Gutiérrez, Ramón, Liliana Lolich, Liliana Carnevale, y Patricia Méndez. Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina: un siglo de vida petrolera. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Fundación YPF, 2007.

potable water a matter of survival rather than simply one of expansion. When, on December 13 of that year, the drilling rig at Cerro Chenque struck oil instead of fresh water, it fundamentally altered the trajectory not only of Comodoro Rivadavia but of Argentine industrial policymorebroadly.17

Unlike the organized explorations that characterized petroleum discovery in other parts of the world, Comodoro’s encounter with oil was marked by improvisation, administrative uncertainty, and a complete absence of preparatory frameworks for managing an oil industry. There was no existing infrastructure—physicalorcapital—specificallydesigned for petroleum exploitation, no local industrial elite positioned to capitalize swiftly on the find, and no preexistingnetworksofexpertiseliketheonesavailable in the Gulf of Mexico. In this far-flung settlement, the Argentine state moved to assert a direct interest in the resource, framing oil not as a private commodity to be exploited but as a strategic asset intimately tied to nationalsovereignty.

Thelegalfoundationforthisstate-centricapproachhad been laid decades earlier with the promulgation of the Mining Code of 1887. This code, influenced by European juridical traditions and adapted to Argentine territorial

realities, established that all subsoil mineral resources belonged to the state, regardless of surface property rights. Unlike in many other emerging oil-producing countries, where private landowners retained significant claims oversubsurface wealth,the Argentine framework separated the ownership of land from the ownershipofmineraldeposits.Thislegalprinciplewould prove decisive in shaping the particular form of oil urbanism that emerged in Comodoro Rivadavia. From the moment of its discovery, petroleum was understood not as the property of settlers, companies, or local authorities, but as a resource managed by the nation itself.18

The implications of this legal regime extended beyond the simple question of ownership. By framing petroleum as a state asset, the Mining Code effectively excluded thepossibilityofspontaneous,anarchicdevelopmentby private actors. While private capital would eventually entertheregion,particularlythroughcompaniessuchas AstraandShell,theiroperationswouldremainsubjectto theoverarchingauthorityofthenationalgovernment.In Comodoro, the state's mineral sovereignty translated into an early assertion of control over the city’s spatial, economic,anddemographicdevelopment.

This code, influenced by European juridical traditions and adapted to Argentine necessities, established that all subsoil mineral resources belonged to the state, regardless of surface property rights. Unlike in many other emerging oil-producing countries, where private landowners retained significant claims over subsurface wealth, the Argentine framework separated the ownership of land from the ownership of mineral deposits.19 This legal principle would prove decisive in shaping the particular form of oil urbanism that emerged in Comodoro Rivadavia. From the moment of its discovery, petroleum was understood not as the property of those who found it, but as a resource managedbythenationitselfregardlessofotherclaims.

The first years following the discovery were marked by administrativeexperimentationandimprovisation.Inthe absence of a dedicated petroleum agency, the

19. https://www. argentina.gob.ar/ normativa/nacional/ley1919-43797/actualizacion

responsibilityformanagingthenewresourceinitiallyfell to the Ministry of Agriculture, a bureaucratic misfit that underscored the novelty of the situation. Early drilling operations were rudimentary, employing adapted water extraction techniques rather than purpose-built petroleum technology. Nevertheless, the symbolic and strategic importance of the find was immediately recognized. Oil represented not only a potential economic boon but a critical element of national security, particularly in the context of Argentina’s growing industrial sector and the increasing global importance of fossil fuels for military and commercial purposes.

Thefederalgovernment’sresponsetothediscoverywas shaped both by domestic political currents and by

international pressures. The early twentieth century witnessed the growing connection of oil with global geopolitics, as European powers and the United States moved to secure overseas petroleum supplies. In Latin America, the experience of Mexico—where vast oilfields had already attracted heavy foreign investment— providedacautionaryexample.Argentinepolicymakers werekeenlyawareofthedangersofgivingcontrolover resources to multinational companies, particularly in a region as as underpopulated and remote as Patagonia. As a result, even in the absence of a coherent national petroleum strategy, the foundational principle that oil in Comodoro Rivadavia must remain under state control wasestablishedearlyandwithlittledissent.

Thisearlyregulatoryframeworkservedasaprecursorto the full nationalization of the oil industry that would occur in the 1920s. The Mining Code’s assertion of state ownership, the creation of specialized petroleum administrative bodies, and the careful limitation of private corporate autonomy collectively laid the groundwork for the establishment of Yacimientos PetrolíferosFiscales(YPF)in1922.WhenEnriqueMosconi tookthehelmofYPF,heinheritednotatabularasabuta legal and institutional scaffolding that had already defined the parameters within which the industry could continue to grow. In this sense, the "nationalization" of petroleum in Argentina was less a revolutionary thing ratherthan the formalization of practices and principles thatwerealreadyprecedent.20

The initial material conditions of Comodoro Rivadavia— the discovery of oil during a search for water, the application of the Mining Code’s sovereignty principles, the emergence of a segmented urban-industrial fabric oriented toward extraction—shaped not only the city's early expansion but its long-term structural trajectory. Unlike cities where oil wealth engendered speculative booms and the proliferation of parasitic development, Comodoro'sgrowthremainedtetheredtothefunctional imperatives of a national project. Every well drilled, every camp erected, and every administrative decision madehadtheideaofalargervisionforthefutureofthe industry.

20. Bucheli, Marcelo. “Major Trends in the Historiography of the Latin American Oil Industry.” The Business History Review 84, no. 2 (2010): 339–62. http:// www.jstor.org/stable/ 20743908.

“Triunfaron

mis ideas, mi concepción de la libertad y de la justicia, y las glorias y prosperidades futuras serán comunes, porque no trasuntan el triunfo de un partido político sobre otro, sino el triunfo de la Nación para bien de todos.”

MI VIDA Y MI DOCTRINA, 1923

Hipolito Yrigoyen, p.55

“My ideas, my concept of freedom and justice, have triumphed, and the future glories and prosperity will be shared by all, because they do not represent the triumph of one political party over another, but the triumph of the Nation for the good of all.”

MY LIFE AND MY DOCTRINE, 1923

Hipolito Yrigoyen

Trans. Catalina Cabral Framiñan

NATIONALIZATION

The nationalization of the oil industry in Comodoro Rivadavia came about not as a belated reaction to foreign domination, as in Tampico, nor imposed from above, as in Baku, but as a deliberate preemptive act carried out at an unusually early stage of industrial development.Bythetimemajoroilconcessionsbeganto define the spatial and political economies of other petroleum cities, oil had already been designated a strategic national asset, embedded within a legal and ideological framework that placed sovereignty over resourcesattheheartofstate-buildingefforts.Thisearly intervention would distinguish the city’s trajectory, framing its urban growth, labor relations, and political identity around the evolving relationship between the national state and the material substratum of modern industry.

Thus, by 1922 when Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales (YPF) was founded through decree, Comodoro Rivadavia had already witnessed a decade and a half of oil production managed largely by the Argentine government itself. In contrast, Tampico remained under the effective control of British and American companies well into the 30s, while Baku, despite Soviet nationalization in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, had first experienced decades of multinational capitalist development. This, Argentina

21. Bucheli, Marcelo. “Major Trends in the Historiography of the Latin American Oil Industry.” The Business History Review 84, no. 2 (2010): 339–62. http:// www.jstor.org/stable/ 20743908.

became only the second country in the world after the Soviet Union to nationalize its petroleum industry, but unlike the Bolshevik regime, the Argentine case was not framed as part of a broader socialist transformation. Rather, it emerged from a confluence of nationalist, pragmatic,andideologicallyhybridmotivations.21

In this sense, the nationalization of petroleum in Comodoro Rivadavia was never a settled or uncontested process.The city’s identity was shaped by these tensions, producing a form of oil urbanism separatefromthatofBakuorTampicointhatitwasfully

shaped by the state from its inception, with a responsibilitytowardsworkerwelfareinherentinitscivic nature rather than as philanthropic endeavours by foreign (or local) oil barons. However, the ideological tension between nationalism and socialism that underpinned the nationalization project became increasingly apparent. While Yrigoyen framed the control of petroleum as an extension of national sovereigntyandmoralrectitude,criticsfromboththeleft and the right challenged the efficacy and legitimacy of state management. For some, YPF represented a series of federal decisions that was hindering the production of oil and reinforcing Argentina’s semi-colonial status rather than liberating it.22 The state owned company wouldhaveseveraldetractorsthroughoutitsoperations in the mid-to-late 20th century, and it wouldn’t be until the 90s where writers on the subject would see write on it in a different light,23 looking at the social and cultural imprint it has left on the Argentine population, particularly in comparison to other private players that would appear in the country such as Astra (a privately owned Argentina company founded prior to YPF that wasrathersmallinscaleanddisappearedsoonafter)or Royal Dutch Shell, and arguing its policies were in fact good (this difference could be in part to differences in governmental policies present during the military dictatorship).

Ultimately, the early nationalization of oil in Comodoro Rivadavia marked a decisive divergence from the models that had shaped other petroleum cities in the early twentieth century. It embedded the city within a project of state-led modernization that sought not merely to extract value from the subsoil but to transform social relations, political structures, and territorial identities. In the layered urban fabric of Comodoro Rivadavia one can trace the material imprint of a nationaldreamofnationalisticpetroleum.

TABULA RASA

From the outset, the discovery of oil placed unprecedented demographic and infrastructural pressures on a settlement that had barely evolved

22. Ibid. p.342

23. Ibid. p. 343

24. Daniel Cabral Marques, Hacia una relectura de las identidades y las configuraciones sociales en la historia petrolera de la ciudad de Comodoro Rivadavia y de la Cuenca del Golfo San Jorge”

beyond a small outpost port.The initial influx of workers, technicians, and administrators—both Argentine and foreign—exceeded the city's capacity to absorb new residents. The nascent municipality, already limited by fragile political autonomy and weak resource bases, was ill-equipped to respond. Housing shortages becameoneoftheearliestandmostvisiblesymptomsof Comodoro’s transformation from isolated outpost to industrialfrontier.24

25. Gutiérrez, Ramón, Liliana Lolich, Liliana Carnevale, y Patricia Méndez. Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina: un siglo de vida petrolera. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Fundación YPF, 2007.

The early spatial organization of worker accommodation reflected the ad hoc nature of this transition. Laborers arriving to work the oilfields often constructed provisional dwellings near drilling sites: precarious huts, canvas tents, or repurposed wooden structures brought down from the port. These settlements emerged organically, oriented around the rhythms of extraction rather than any coherent urban logic. Access to water, proximity to worksites, and minimal shelter from the region’s punishing winds determined the location and form of early worker camps. Living conditions were harsh, with little sanitation,minimalpublicservices,andexposuretoboth environmentalhazardsandindustrialaccidents,andthe early camps operated largely outside formal corporate ormunicipaloversight. 25

26. Ibid.

The state’s entrance into the management of housing came incrementally and in response to the necessities imposed by oil production itself. Under the leadership of Mosconi,YPFdevelopedaverticallyintegratedmodelof labor organization that included not only wages and benefits but also residential provisioning . Purpose-built neighborhoods for oil workers began to emerge, characterized by standardized housing units, proximity to administrative centers, and integrated social services suchasschools,clinics,andrecreationfacilities.26 Priorto its creation,any petroleum led development occurred in the 3-5 years prior to the creation of YPF, and consisted of small camps in the outskirts of the city nearby the respective oil fields the companies of Astra in km20, the Compañia Ferrocarrilera de Petroleo in km8, and Royal Dutch Shell (which operated at a very small level) in km27.Theydostillexisttothisday,mostlyintheremnants

of the names (Astra is now more known as the neighbourhoods name rather than as an existing company), but they were small and marginal in nature when they were built, and due to the creation of YPF in only a few years they were vastly outshone by the development of the city proper and of the camps createdbythem.

These camps would include the following, and would have not only housing stock but also other civic infrastructuresuchashospitals(inparticularthehospital “Presidente Alvear”), post offices, theaters, social clubs, sportsfacilities,anabattoir,andsoupkitchens.27

▪ CañadonPerdido(1929)20kmNE

▪ Escalante(1931)35km

▪ CaletaCordova(1933)13km

▪ RestingaAli(1934)10km

▪ ManantialesBehr(1937)35kmNE

▪ ElTrebol(1938)40kmSE

▪ ElTordillo(1938)45kmSE

▪ PuntaPiedras10kmS

▪ Sarmiento(1955)130kmWfromthecentralcamp

28. Gutiérrez, Ramón, Liliana Lolich, Liliana Carnevale, y Patricia Méndez. Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina: un siglo de vida petrolera. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Fundación YPF, 2007, p.132-152

They were mostly located in the dips between the hills that prevailed in the areas around the city, near each type of oil field. It produced a decentralized urban form ofthecityitself,astheyeachexistedintheirownclusters, yet part of the larger Comodoro municipality. Yet there proved obstacles created by such an inherent fragmentation of the city itself. Attempts to articulate a coherent civic identity across these spaces were continually undermined by the spatial and social divisions imposed by oil urbanism. Workers identified more strongly with their specific camps and companybuilt neighborhoods than with Comodoro Rivadavia as a unified municipal entity. The city, in effect, became a mosaic of camps nestled within the hilly terrain of the area.

The lived experience of housing in Comodoro thus embodied the contradictions of state-led oil urbanism. On the one hand, YPF’s intervention provided levels of stability, social services, and material infrastructure that were absent in many extractive cities dominated by foreign capital. Workers enjoyed access to education, healthcare, and recreational facilities that would have been unimaginable in the early improvised camps. On the other hand, the rapid deployment of these camps and housing resulted in the lower class units lacking in individual services, in many cases having to share lavatory facilities between multiple units, reinforcing a class structure between the worker and the administrator.28

Ultimately, the patterns established during this period would leave a durable imprint on the urban and social morphology of Comodoro Rivadavia. The camps that YPFbuilt,thedivisionsitentrenched,andthecommunity identities it fostered would persist long after the initial boom years. In the uneven streetscapes, in the spatial memory of neighborhoods tied to specific company functions, and in the lingering distinctions between "municipal"and"industrial"Comodoro,onecantracethe enduring legacy of a housing born from the intersection of national ambition, industrial necessity, and territorial constraint.

URBAN DEVELOPMENT

Beyond the wells, refineries, and camps that constituted the industrial skeleton of Comodoro Rivadavia, YPF articulatedavisionofciviclifethatextendedthelogicof petroleum sovereignty into the urban domain. As the nationalization project deepened and the demands of industrial production stabilized, the state enterprise undertook the construction of schools, hospitals, administrative buildings, and public spaces, attempting to transform Comodoro from a fragmented oil enclave intoafunctioningcivicorganism.

The basic infrastructural investments of the 1920s and 1930s addressed the chronic deficiencies that had plagued Comodoro since its founding. Roads were paved to connect the scattered oil camps with the port (though not all,as anothermass paving effort had to be implemented in the 80s)29, facilitating the movement of goods, workers, and administrative personnel. Schools wereerectednotonlyforthechildrenofYPFworkersbut alsoforthebroaderpopulation,reinforcingtheimageof YPF as a provider of public goods and a civilizing agent in a region otherwise marginalized by the national state.30

The architecture of these civic projects was deliberate and loaded with symbolic meaning, designed also to

29. Daniel Cabral Marques, Hacia una relectura de las identidades y las configuraciones sociales en la historia petrolera de la ciudad de Comodoro Rivadavia y de la Cuenca del Golfo San Jorge, p.13”

30. Gutiérrez, Ramón, Liliana Lolich, Liliana Carnevale, y Patricia Méndez

mimic the style used in public buildings elsewhere in the country and creating a national civic identity. YPF’s buildings were not merely functional but embodied a specific aesthetic of modernity, order, and restrained monumentality. Administrative centers, schools, and clinics were often constructed in stripped-down neoclassical or rationalist styles (which also reflected the large population of European settlers, and in particular the style of the Italian rationalists), favoring clean lines, symmetrical compositions, and durable materials. The choice of architectural language communicated an image of the state as rational, progressive, and enduring—qualities that YPF sought to project both internally to its workers and externally to thebroadernationalaudience.

This architectural imagery served to naturalize the presence of the state within everyday urban life. Public buildings asserted a spatial order that mirrored the socialhierarchiesembeddedwithintheoileconomy:the disciplined worker, the benevolent administrator, the industrious citizen all found their place within a built environment that sought to regulate behavior as much as it provided services. Nothing was too beneath the civic realm to not deserve a grand building as a source of civic pride, so from the YPF administration building to the power station, everything was given the full architectural treatment. This stood in contrast to the chaotic, speculative urban forms that characterized other oil cities such as Tampico—where civic infrastructure was often an afterthought subordinated to private corporate interests and where architectural beautywasnotofgreatimportance—Comodoro’spublic spaces were planned expressions of state ambition. Yet this ambition remained constrained by the underlying logics of fragmentation and functionalism that had marked the city’s growth from the beginning. Civic projects clustered around industrial nodes rather than forming a coherent urban core, and public investments were unevenly distributed according to proximity to YPF operations.Thisledtoinstancessuchasmunicipalparks existing on their own nestled within the hills in between several camps, and thus requiring more modes of transportation to reach them, or of large scale administrative buildings sitting forlornly in the desert landscape with little to no development surrounding them.31

In the built environment of Comodoro Rivadavia—the ordered facades of YPF schools, the disciplined geometry of worker neighborhoods, the monumental of administrativecenters—onecanfindamaterialrecordof an ambitious, if incomplete, project of territorial and social transformation. These spaces, designed to stabilize a volatile far flung frontier and project the authorityofthestate,standasenduringwitnessestothe intersection of petroleum, sovereignty, and urban life on thewindsweptmarginsoftheArgentina.

31. Gutiérrez, Ramón, Liliana Lolich, Liliana Carnevale, y Patricia Méndez. Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina: un siglo de vida petrolera. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Fundación YPF, 2007

32. Gutiérrez, Ramón, Liliana Lolich, Liliana Carnevale, y Patricia Méndez. Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina: un siglo de vida petrolera. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Fundación YPF, 2007, p.41-65

MIGRATION

The demographic formation of Comodoro Rivadavia unfolded within the larger patterns of displacement, settlement, and labor migration that characterized Patagonia’s belated integration into the Argentine national project. Unlike older cities in the Argentine interior, which grew upon pre-existing indigenous, colonial, and criollo foundations, Comodoro emerged in alandscapewithoutastablesedentarypopulation.The indigenouspeoplesofPatagonia—theTehuelchemainly in this area—had historically practiced nomadic and semi-nomadic forms of subsistence, moving across vast distances in response to environmental conditions. The territorial reordering imposed by the Conquest of the Desertfragmentedthesetraditionalwaysoflifewithout immediately replacing them with a dense colonial grid. As a result, the early twentieth-century settlement of Comodoro Rivadavia was not a process of urban expansion over older foundations, more similar in that sense to Tampico’s, which while still had an indigenous population prior to the formation of the city in the area, weren’tnomadicinnature.

The first waves of settlers were drawn largely from European migrant communities already established elsewhere in Argentina, supplemented by targeted colonization initiatives. Spaniards, Italians, and Welsh settlers, joined by Boer families fleeing the aftermath of the Anglo-Boer War.32 These groups, often encouraged by government incentives, brought with them varied traditionsoflanduse,politicalorganization,andcultural identity. Yet the promises of agricultural colonization quickly collided with the harsh realities of the Patagonian environment: infertile soils, extreme aridity, and isolation frustrated the development of sustainable rural economies. The discovery of oil offered an alternative horizon of survival, redirecting the region’s demographicenergyfromfailedagriculturalcoloniesto industrialcamps.

Migration into Comodoro Rivadavia boomed after the discovery of oil in 1907, transforming the settlement from alogisticalnodeintoanfledglingindustrialcity.Workers

arrived from across Argentina’s interior provinces, particularlyfromregionsaffectedbyagrariancrisisand underemployment. Chilean migrants, crossing the Andean frontier in search of work, formed another significant component of the labor force, bringing with them both agricultural and mining experience. Spaniards and Italians, already present in the coastal port towns, diversified into petroleum labor, administrativework,andsmallcommerce.33

The distinction between permanent settlers and temporarylaborersbecameoneofthedefiningfeatures of Comodoro’s social landscape. Permanent settlers— those who envisioned their futures and the futures of their families tied to the city—tended to occupy more stable positions within the municipal or YPF administrative hierarchies. They invested in property, participatedincivicinstitutions,andsoughttoshapethe urban environment according to visions of middle-class respectability and national integration. Temporary laborers, by contrast, engaged in more fleeting employment cycles, often living in provisional accommodations near extraction sites, with limited accesstoservices. 34

33. Mármora, Lelio. Migración al Sur: argentinos y chilenos en Comodoro Rivadavia. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Libera, 1968.

34. Ibid

Budiño, L. M., 1971, Comodoro Rivadavia, Sociedad enferma, Hernández Editorial, Buenos Aires. Mármora, Lelio. Migración al Sur: argentinos y chilenos en Comodoro Rivadavia. p. 46-47

35. Mármora, Lelio. Migración al Sur: argentinos y chilenos en Comodoro Rivadavia. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Libera, 1968. p. 47-55

Statistical data from the Migración al Sur studies reveal the magnitude of these demographic shifts. By the mid1920s, over 60% of Comodoro’s population had been born outside of Patagonia, with significant concentrations from Buenos Aires Province, Entre Ríos, Córdoba, and the Cuyo region. Chilean migrants constituted approximately 10–15% of the workforce in certain years, concentrated heavily in low-wage manuallaborsectors.35

36. Gutiérrez, Ramón, Liliana Lolich, Liliana Carnevale, y Patricia Méndez. Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina: un siglo de vida petrolera. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Fundación YPF, 2007

Yet amid these fragmentations, a distinct form of local identity began to crystallize: a Patagonian mindset forged through isolation, environmental adversity, and the peculiar social dynamics of frontier urbanism. The harshness of the Patagonian environment demanded resilience and improvisation, qualities that came to be valorized in local narratives and cultural expressions. The dependence on oil, the omnipresence of the state through YPF, and the tenuousness of municipal governance produced a population at once deeply embedded in national industrial logics and marginal to the political and cultural centers of Argentina. Stories from settlers and people who grew up in the city show an identification with the nation that coexisted with a strong sense of regional distinctiveness, rooted not in long-standing traditions but in the shared experience of constructing community on the margins of national space.36

The demographic and cultural formation of Comodoro Rivadavia thus reproduced, in condensed form, the broadercontradictionsoftheArgentinenationalproject in Patagonia. Settlement was achieved not through organic expansion but through layers of displacement, migration, and industrial recruitment. Urban cohesion was sought through state intervention, yet undermined by structural inequalities and spatial fragmentation. Identity was constructed amid adversity, yet always haunted by the precariousness of the city's industrial foundations. In the shifting compositions of its neighborhoods, in the informal alliances and divisions among its working populations, and in the layered memories of settlement and struggle, Comodoro Rivadavia materialized a distinct form of oil frontier

society: one shaped as much by movement as by rooting, and as much by resilience in the face of vulnerability.37

OPPOSING VIEWS

The trajectory of Comodoro Rivadavia in the decades following the establishment of YPF was shaped by the broadercurrentsofArgentinepoliticalinstabilityandthe shifting ideological landscapes of national development. The industrial and social frameworks constructed during the early years of oil nationalization proved resilient but not immutable; they were reframed, contested, and, at times, undermined by the political transformations that swept Argentina throughout the mid-twentieth century. In this process, Comodoro’s position within the national space fluctuated: at times emblematic of Argentina’s industrial sovereignty, at others a site of contested visions of modernization, privatization,andstateauthority.

TheriseofPeronismointhe1940sreorientedthepolitical framework through which oil production and urban development were understood. Juan Domingo Perón’s model of industrialization, social inclusion, and national self-sufficiency resonated strongly with the organizational logics already embedded in Comodoro. YPF’s dual role as industrial engine and social provider aligned with Perón’s broader project of forging a cohesive, self-reliant Argentine nation. Yet despite the rhetorical emphasis on sovereignty and national autonomy, in 1955, YPF under Perón’s government signed an exploration and exploitation accord with a subsidiary of Standard Oil of California to try and combat the decline in oil production vs demand in the country.Thismarkedthefirstformalbreachoftheearlier ideal of fully nationalized oil development, introducing foreign corporate participation into the Argentine petroleumsector.

The fall of Perón in 1955 and the subsequent periods of political volatility introduced new uncertainties into Comodoro’s industrial and civic landscape. Competing visions of economic modernization came to the fore, culminating in the petroleum policies of Arturo Frondizi.

COMODORO RIVADAVIA

37. Ruffini, Martha: «El tránsito trunco hacia la República Verdadera. Yrigoyenismo, ciudadanía política y Territorios Nacionales, 1916-1922», Estudios Sociales, 36, XIX, Santa Fe, 2009, 91-115.

Elected in 1958, he sought to revitalize Argentina’s faltering economy through a model that combined nationalcontroloverresourceswithstrategicinvitations to foreign investment.He called his oil policy the “waron oil” and his goal was to achieve full self-sufficiency in oil production, which was eventually reached in three years. Under his presidency, capital and national support would be pumped into the industry, and oil production would reach record highs under his presidency.

In Comodoro, the consequences of Frondizi’s initiatives were immediate. With the new influx in capital and developmentandsubsequentoilboomcameaninfluxof immigration wanting to cash in on the bourgeoning industry.Theymostlycamefromothercitiesandareasin Argentina as well as an added influx of immigrants from southern Chile. The rapid demographic growth outstripped the ability of municipal authorities to manage urban development. Massive housing deficits emerged, as new peripheral neighborhoods sprang up to the southwest of the original city core, often without access to basic services such as running water,sewage, electricity, or gas. Neighbourhoods like Roca, Pueyrredón,LasFlores,andLaFlorestawereestablished through large-scale municipal land sales, while spontaneous settlements proliferated in areas such as Jorge Newbery and San Martín despite efforts by the municipality to try to mitigate such development. Areas

previously blocked off form development (such as the sides of the steeper hills and areas under industrial use) were flooded by informal development in the face of an overwhelmedmunicipality.Thus,between1942and1960, the city’s original 300-hectare core expanded by over 500 hectares through formal and informal urbanization.38

ThusunderFrondizi’sexpansionand“waronoil,"thecity experienced a period of accelerated—albeit chaotic— urban growth. The city's spatial and social order, once organized around an industrial logic of stability and controlled expansion, fractured under the pressures of unregulateddevelopmentanddemographicexplosion.

CONCLUSION

The development of Comodoro Rivadavia offers a striking counterpoint to the dominant narratives that have long shaped the study of petroleum urbanism. Emerging not from the calculated ambitions of private capital nor the controlled expansion of colonial networks, Comodoro materialized through a sequence of contingent decisions, geographical constraints, and shifting ideological frameworks. Its transformation from a precarious logistical outpost to the national center of Argentina’s petroleum industry was neither inevitable nor linear. It was instead the product of layered negotiations between state sovereignty, industrial necessity, and the constraints of Patagonia’s social and geographicrealities.

Unlike Baku or Tampico, where private multinational interests dominated the initial urban-industrial formation, Comodoro Rivadavia was shaped from its inception within a nationalizing framework that subordinated petroleum extraction to broader statebuilding projects. The early assertion of mineral sovereignty through the Mining Code of 1887, and the subsequent establishment of Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales in 1922, grounded the city’s industrial and civic development in an ethos of public ownership and national redemption. Oil was thus not merely a commodity to be exploited, but a strategic resource around which a vision of territorial integration and

38. Daniel Cabral Marques, Hacia una relectura de las identidades y las configuraciones sociales en la historia petrolera de la ciudad de Comodoro Rivadavia y de la Cuenca del Golfo San Jorge, p.8-10

socio-economic modernization could be organized. Yet if Comodoro avoided the spatial and political fragmentations typical of private oil cities, it did not emerge as a coherent or stable urban project. The city's built environment—the scattered camps, the administrative centers, the austere public architecture— reflected the underlying tensions between industrial functionality, territorial ambition, and social stratification. Despite monumental efforts to project an image of order and modernity, Comodoro remained a city marked by structural incompleteness, its civic life tethered to the shifting priorities of the oil economy and thepoliticalreconfigurationsoftheArgentinestate.

The demographic history of Comodoro further complicated its civic and political formation. Composed largely of migrants—internal Argentine, Chilean, European, and Boer—the city lacked the sedimented social hierarchies or stable civic traditions that might have anchored a more cohesive urban identity. Instead, identity was forged through shared experiences of frontierhardship,industrial labor,and the omnipresence of YPF as both employer and civic actor. Over time, this produced a distinct Patagonian urbanism: pragmatic, resilient, yet constantly vulnerable to the fluctuations of nationalpoliticsandglobalmarkets.

To compound all of this, political instability at the national level reverberated through Comodoro’s industrial and social life with particular force. Each period—from Yrigoyen’s Radical nationalism, to Peronismo’s populist industrialism, to Frondizi’s pragmatism, and eventually the military dictatorship— projected distinct visions onto the city, alternately expanding, restructuring, or compromising the ideals that had animated its original construction. Comodoro became a barometer for national debates over sovereignty, modernization, and the role of the state in economic life. The city’s physical expansion under Frondizi’spetroleumboom,itssubsequentinfrastructural crises, and the shifting narratives of oil’s place in the national economy all attest to the extent to which local urbanformwasinextricablytiedtothenationalcurrents, unabletodomuchbutgowithitsflow.

Yet beyond the material transformations, the historiographical treatment of Comodoro Rivadavia itselfrevealsanotherlayerofcomplexity.UnlikeTampico, where the long dominance of Mexico’s Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) imposed a relatively consistent narrative on the history of oil and urban development, or Baku, where Soviet historiography controlledinterpretationsofindustrialurbanismuntilthe 1990s, Argentina’s political fragmentation produced a fractured and contested historiographical field. Each Argentine regime brought with it a different vision of what petroleum, and by extension YPF and Comodoro Rivadavia, should represent. Under the Radicals, YPF was celebrated as a pillar of national industrial dignity; similarly under Peron and Frondizi, albeit with an encouraged increase in production through careful contracts with foreign petro-companies, and finally under the military dictatorship, its role was diminished andprivatizedindiscourse.

This succession of ideological frameworks did not merely influence state policy; it actively shaped the production of knowledge about Comodoro’s past. Historiographical accounts written during periods of strong state nationalism often framed YPF as a heroic agent of modernization and social justice, while accounts produced under neoliberal or authoritarian governments tended to emphasize inefficiency and corruption. As a result, the secondary literature on Comodoro must be approached with a critical awareness of its temporal and political situated-ness. The same historical facts—the expansion of oil production,thedevelopmentofworkerhousing,therole of YPF in urban life—can be narrated as triumphs of sovereignty, failures of bureaucracy, or experiments in social engineering, depending on the ideological climateofthemoment.

This historiographical fragmentation has profound implicationsforthestudyofComodoroRivadavia.Unlike in Tampico or Baku, where certain archival or historiographicaltraditionsdominateinterpretation,any serious analysis of Comodoro must engage in a secondary reading of its sources, interrogating not only

what is said but when and under what political conditions it is said. There is no unified master narrative to be retrieved; there are only fragments, refracted through the shifting lenses of nationalism, developmentalism, authoritarianism, and democratic recovery.Inthissense,theurbanandindustrialhistoryof Comodoro Rivadavia mirrors its historiography: layered, contested,andunresolved.Itisacitybuiltthroughefforts to impose order on a hostile landscape and unstable politics, yet perpetually vulnerable to the centrifugal forcesofeconomicdependency,politicalinstability,and territorialmarginality.

ComodoroRivadaviathusstandsasbothamaterialand historiographical palimpsest: a site where the contradictionsofArgentinemodernizationareinscribed not only in asphalt and concrete but also in the contested narratives that seek to make sense of its past. TostudyComodoroistotracethefaultlinesofanation’s uncertainrelationshipwithitsownpromisesofprogress, sovereignty,andsocialjustice—arelationshipasvolatile, and as enduring, as the oil that first brought life to its barrencoast.

En un lugar lejano de nuestra Patria grande,

Alli esta la cuna del bravo viento sud,

Alli donde a lo lejos se ve surgir los Andes

Se ala Comodoro, lindero del Chubut.

Alli la tierra virgen esconde su tesoro, que solo manos fuertes lo pueden arrancar y lo hacen dia a dia sacando el negro oro, aquellos hombres fuertes que saben trabajar.

COMODORO RIVADAVIA

Reinaldo Yiso

BIBLIOGRAPHY: COMODORO RIVADAVIA

1. Cabral Márquez, Daniel y Godoy, Mario (coords.): “Distinguir y comprender. Aportes para pensar la sociedad y la cultura en Comodoro Rivadavia., Comodoro Rivadavia, Ediciones Proyección Patagónica, 1995.

2. Baeza, Brígida; Crespo, Edda y Carrizo, Gabriel (comps.): “Comodoro Rivadavia a través del siglo XX. Nuevas miradas, nuevos actores, nuevas problemáticas”, Comodoro Rivadavia, Municipalidad de Comodoro Rivadavia, 2007

3. Ester Elizabeth Ceballos (2005). El primero de mayo en Comodoro Rivadavia durante el período 1901-1945. X Jornadas Interescuelas/Departamentos de Historia. Escuela de Historia de la Facultad de Humanidades y Artes, Universidad Nacional del Rosario. Departamento de Historia de la Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación, Universidad Nacional del Litoral, Rosario.

4. Enrique Masés y otros, El mundo del trabajo: Neuquén 1884-1930, Grupo de Estudio de Historia Social, Universidad Nac. del Comahue, 1972

5. Carl. Solberg “Petróleo y Nacionalismo en la Argentina”, Biblioteca Argentina de Historia y Política, Hispamérica Argentina SA 1986

6. Susana Torres, Two Oil Companies in Patagonia: European Immigrants, Class and Ethnicity, 1907-1933, PhD, Rutgers University, 1995

7. DIARIO EL CHUBUT (Check for digitized newspapers)

8. Bohoslavsky, Ernesto: El complot patagónico. Nación, conspiracionismo y violencia en el sur de Argentina y Chile (siglos XIX y XX), Buenos Aires, Prometeo, 2009.

9. Navarro Floria, Pedro: «La República Posible conquista el desierto. La mirada del reformismo liberal sobre los territorios del surargentino»,en Navarro Floria,Pedro (coord.): Paisajes del Progreso. La resignificación de la Patagonia Norte 18801916, Neuquén, EDUCO, 2007, 191-234.

10. Ruffini, Martha: «El tránsito trunco hacia la República Verdadera. Yrigoyenismo, ciudadanía política y Territorios Nacionales, 1916-1922», Estudios Sociales, 36, XIX, Santa Fe, 2009, 91-115.

11. Yrigoyen, Hipólito: Mi vida y mi doctrina, Buenos Aires, Leviatán, 1981 (1.ª edición 1923).

12. Barrera, M., 2014, La entrega de YPF. Análisis del proceso de privatización de la empresa,

13. Editorial Atuel, Colección Cara o Ceca, Buenos Aires.

14. Budiño, L. M., 1971, Comodoro Rivadavia, Sociedad enferma, Hernández Editorial, Buenos Aires.

15. Gallegos, Eduardo. Invasión por el sur. 2a ed. Comodoro Rivadavia: Editorial Sur, 1971.

16. Mármora, Lelio. Migración al Sur: argentinos y chilenos en Comodoro Rivadavia. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Libera, 1968.

17. Diccionario geográfico argentino Tomo II: Neuquén - Río Negro - ChubutComodoro Rivadavia - Santa Cruz - Tierra del Fuego - Malvinas. Buenos Aires: Ejercito Argentino, Instituto Geografico Militar, 1954.

18. “[Plans on the Coast of Argentina],” 1953.

19. “Ports and Anchorages on the Coast of Argentina.” London: Admiralty, 1922.

20. Guevara, Tomás Alejandro. La ciudad (re)negada: aproximaciones al estudio de asentamientos populares en nueve ciudades argentinas. Edited by María Cristina Cravino. Los Polvorines, Prov. de Buenos Aires, Argentina: Ediciones UNGS, Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento, 2018.

21. Gadano, N., 2006, Historia del petróleo en la Argentina. 1907-1955, Desde los inicios hasta la caída de Perón, Edhasa, Buenos Aires.

22. Instituto Municipal del Empleo y la Producción, 1994, Zona Franca: Comodoro Rivadavia se proyecta al futuro y al mundo, Serie Documentos Nro. 1, Municipalidad de Comodoro Rivadavia.

23. Justo Ezpeleta, R., (Director), 1957, Medio Siglo de Petróleo Argentino (1907-1957), Editorial El Rivadavia, Comodoro Rivadavia.

24. Justo Ezpeleta, Roberto (Sub-Director), 1951, Cincuentenario de Comodoro Rivadavia (1901-1951), Editorial El Rivadavia, Comodoro Rivadavia.

25. Moreno, C. 1988, “Rada Tilly-Comodoro Rivadavia. El espacio y los hombres”, en Rada Tilly-

BIBLIOGRAPHY: COMODORO RIVADAVIA

26. Comodoro Rivadavia. Sus ancestros, u historia regional, Impresora Patagónica, Diario Crónica.

27. Torres, S. y Ciselli, G., 2001, “La Gobernación Militar de Comodoro Rivadavia 19441955.

28. Problemáticas y fuentes”, VIII Jornadas de Interescuelas y Departamentos de Historia, Salta.

29. Bucheli, Marcelo. “Major Trends in the Historiography of the Latin American Oil Industry.” The Business History Review 84, no. 2 (2010): 339–62. http://www.jstor. org/stable/20743908.

30. Andujar, Andrea, “Comunidad obrera, género y políticas asistenciales: Comodoro Rivadavia, 1922-1932”

31. Daniel Cabral Marques, “Hacia una relectura de las identidades y las configuraciones sociales en la historia petrolera de la ciudad de Comodoro Rivadavia y de la Cuenca del Golfo San Jorge”

32. Gutiérrez, Ramón, Liliana Lolich, Liliana Carnevale, y Patricia Méndez. Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina: un siglo de vida petrolera. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Fundación YPF, 2007.

33. Palermo, Hernán M. Apuntes para pensar la nacionalización de YPF: relaciones laborales y tensiones sociales en Comodoro Rivadavia. Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 2015.

34. Graciela Ciselli. «Las huellas de la industria petrolera en Comodoro Rivadavia, Patagonia Argentina». Identidades (Comodoro Rivadavia) 11, n.o 20 (2021): 60-81.

35. Santiago Bachiller. «Petróleo, planificación urbana y exclusión residencial en Comodoro Rivadavia». Identidades (Comodoro Rivadavia) 8, n.o 14 (2018): 119-37.

36. Carl E. Solberg, Oil and Nationalism in Argentina (Stanford, 1979)

37. Hechem, Jorge. (2015). Cien años de modelos geológicos en la cuenca del golfo San Jorge. Revista de la Asociacion Geologica Argentina. 72. 1-11.

“Stream of oil” Foto Kohlmann postal card, Retrieved from “Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina: un siglo de vida petrolera”

View of the river inlet and port, as well as the construction of offshore shallow oil platforms in

Satellite map of Tampico and the Tamipco-Misantla Basin, with approximate extents of inland oil fields highlighted.

SHIFTS

IfBakustandsastheprototypicaloilcity—aplacewhere petroleum shaped not only the economy but also the very structure of cultural and urban life—then Tampico offers a mirror image, a cautionary one of what can happen when a city grows fueled by oil without embedding a sense of urban civic responsibility. A city that survives today with a widespread nostalgia for the past glory days of the city as a petroleum metropolis. Where Baku was defined by density, planning, and a centralized vision of infrastructural and ideological control, and Comodoro Rivadavia’s by nationalist integration and state-led industrial symbolism which innatelytiedoiltonationalisticsentiment,Tampico’swas shaped by inherent fragmentation and volatility in capital and labour. Its rise as a petroleum hub emerged from nothing and was incredibly rapid, but the development it fostered was oriented not towards a vision of a future much less the development of a cohesive urban society, but rather towards swift and extreme levels of extraction by foreign companies for foreign markets to the point of completely depleting wells within decades and resulting in widespread saltwaterintrusion.

Tampico’s early urban formation lacked the political or symbolic rooting that characterized its counterpart cities. Founded in 1823 on the ruins of a failed colonial outpost, and later refashioned as a port, Tampico was neverenvisionedasacapitaloracivicemblem.Instead, it served as a logistical hinge: at the confluence of two main rivers and followed by a port where oil could be exported (and re-exported in some cases) to the rest of the region. The discovery of oil in the region with the Ebano oil well by the Californians Doheny and Canfield , followed by the rapid exploitation of the oil field of the Faja de Oro, inserted the city into a global system for extraction that grew at an extremely rapid pace, importing both local workers from elsewhere in the country and well as more knowledgeable skilled workforces from abroad. However, the rapid expansion and total dependence on foreign oil capital left little to noroomforlocaldiversification.

The spatial sprawl was compounded by an early and lasting over-dependence on foreign capital. Unlike Baku, where local oil barons such as Taghiyev and Asadullayev and even foreign ones such as the Nobel brothers actively reinvested in urban housing, culture, and infrastructure, Tampico’s development was shaped almostexclusivelybyforeigncorporatelogics.American and British firms like El Aguila (founded by a British Baron), Standard Oil, and Huasteca Petroleum established enclaved company housing for administrators, such as Colonia Águila, while leaving laborers to self-settle in flood-prone, marshy zones. Infrastructure investment was speculative and extractive. Civic integration was minimal. As Baku densified under a logic of industrial co-habitation and Comodoro was framed by state-led narratives of nationalprogress,Tampico,however,fragmented.

This civic precarity became institutionalized in 1924 with the administrative separation of Ciudad Madero from Tampico. The move, prompted by growing labor unrest and pressure in the area known as Villa Cecilia near the refineries,was an explicit attempt to displace volatility— to cordon off the politically combustible populations from Tampico’s commercial and administrative core. Tampico thus expelled its working class, converting an urban labor question into a jurisdictional fix, though provingdetrimentalinthelongrunwiththejurisdictional lossoftwoimportantrefineries.

The contrast becomes starker still when one considers the timing and symbolic roles of YPF versus PEMEX. By founding YPF while Comodoro was still relatively young, the Argentine state was able to shape the city’s identity around nationalized energy. PEMEX, by contrast, was established in 1938, nearly four decades after Tampico had become the de facto center of Mexico’s oil export economy.Itarrivednotasafounderorevenakeyplayer in its development, but as a replacement—tasked with displacing foreign capital, but not equipped with the trust, infrastructure, or civic presence to immediately unify the fractured city and labour force. PEMEX thus inherited a heavily stratified and mistrustful workforce which would take several years to change the narrative

of production. Meanwhile in Baku, the city had become a testing ground for Soviet urbanism immediately after its1920incorporationintotheUSSR.Sovietplannersused the city’s dense oil infrastructure and working-class population to prototype collective housing typologies, such as those in Armenikend and Stepan Razin. In Tampico,nosuchreorganizationoccurred.Theindustrial landscape remained scattered and uneven, the labor housing remained largely informal or transitional, and the city’s identity remained tied to its function as a conduit—notacapital.

Even after the creation of PEMEX, Tampico never fully recovered its centrality in the Mexican oil narrative. As newfieldsopenedintheBayofCampecheandoffshore logistics intensified, oil capital began to flow elsewhere. With no densified industrial infrastructure, no symbolic labor investment, and no civic loyalty mechanisms, companiesleftquicklyandefficiently—afamiliarpattern in cities overbuilt for extraction and under built for residence. This mobility of capital stands in sharp contrast to Baku, which maintained industrial relevance through both the Soviet and post-Soviet periods, and Comodoro,wherethememoryandmaterialpresenceof YPF continue to shape the urban identity even into the presentday.

By tracing Tampico’s rise and fall, shaped by foreign capital , infrastructural fragmentation, environmental fragility, and a delayed—and ultimately inadequate— attempt at national integration. It will argue that Tampico’s trajectory reveals the limits of urban development driven by external logics, especially in contrast with Baku’s ideological embedding and Comodoro’snationalistsymbolism.

BEGINNINGS

Unlike Baku, whose continuous occupation and early significanceasacaravancrossroadsprovidedcenturies of layered urbanism before oil accelerated its development, Tampico’s foundation was more similar to that of Comodoro Rivadavia’s in terms of being newly established in the past few centuries, though significantly more fragmented and with long period of

not being occupied and abandonment. Its initial establishment by the Spanish in the mid-16th century proved short-lived: malaria, hostile indigenous groups, and environmental difficulties led to the abandonment of the early settlement within decades. For over two centuries,thesitethatwouldbecomeTampicoremained marginal.

The first Spanish attempt to establish a settlement near modern-day Tampico in the early 16th century, Nuevo Santander,failedalmostimmediatelyduetogeographic isolation, disease, and continuous raids by English and Dutch pirates along the Gulf Coast. Unlike Baku, whose natural harbor and fire temples tied it symbolically and economically into regional networks as early as the medieval period, Tampico lacked either a mythological anchor or a secure trading route. Colonial ambitions

“Tampico from the church” set of photographs, c. 1880-1897. Library of Congress.

focused elsewhere: Veracruz, Mexico City, and the silver-richnorth.Tampicoremainedamarshy,mosquitoridden afterthought, notable mainly for its vulnerable coastline, subject to pirate raids and imperial rivalries between Spain, Britain, and later France. Efforts to consolidate the region floundered repeatedly, with few resources allocated for serious urban development. The citythuswasperipheralfromitsinception.1

Itwasonlyin1823,followingMexicanindependenceand theneedforasecureGulfporttocomplementVeracruz, that Tampico was formally re-established. Even then, it remained small and fragile, subject to periodic hurricanes, flooding, and health crises. Lacking a clear economic engine or geographic advantage beyond its riverine access, Tampico developed haltingly throughout the early to mid-19th century. Its economic base—modest trade in lumber, livestock, and coastal goods—offered neither the wealth nor the strategic urgency that fueled investment in larger cities. This slow emergence parallels Comodoro’s early marginality, yet without the cultural importance of the Patagonia in Argentina’snationalimagination.

Thearrivaloftherailroadinthelate19thcenturymarked the first real infrastructural pivot for Tampico. Under the Porfiriato, with its emphasis on modernization and export-led growth,Tampico was selected forsignificant port improvements, culminating in the construction of jetties,customshouses,andshippingterminalsalongthe Pánuco River. Yet even these developments emphasized movement over permanence. Tampico’s value lay in its ability to channel goods—not to cultivate a local industrial economy or to build dense civic infrastructure. Unlike Baku, where the oil fields and refineries became woven into the city's spatial fabric, or Comodoro, where the city grew directly adjacent to oil fields, Tampico remainedacitybuilttoexport,nottodensify.2

The discovery of oil in Ebano in 1901 would finally transform Tampico's fortunes, but not its fundamental orientation. Located inland in the neighboring state of San Luis Potosí, the Ebano fields initially seemed distant from the marshy coast. However, as the scale of oil

1. González Salas, Carlos. Tampico: mi ciudad. México: Ediciones Contraste, 1981.

2. Ibid

3. Martínez Leal, Antonio, and Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas. Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas. Tampico. 2a ed. correg. y ampliada. Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas: Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas, Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, 1985.

production increased, the logistical necessity of a port capable of handling petroleum exports brought Tampico into prominence. By the 1910s, Tampico had become the logistical center of the nascent Mexican oil economy, acting as the main shipping point for the Faja de Oro (Golden Belt) oil zone. From 1910 to 1930 the population grew from 16,528 to 70,183 people, a testament to the city’s newfound status as a magnet for workersseekingopportunitiesinthethrivingoilindustry, not only regional immigrants but also American and British engineers and administrators brought in to administer the foreign companies now headquartered inthecity. 3

In contrast to Baku's dense, gridded Black and White Cities—where drilling derricks, housing, and refineries collided in close proximity—Tampico’s petro-industrial landscape was dispersed. Pipelines and railways stretchedinlandtoconnectwellswithstoragetanks,but drilling sites themselves were generally separated from the city's core, creating a disjointed geography of extractionandexport.Thiswouldhaveprofoundeffects later on: environmental degradation would center not around urban drilling, but around the port's peripheries andthedelicatelagoonecosystems.

Perhaps most tellingly, Tampico’s early oil-driven prosperity did not yield robust urban planning or diversified economic development. The city’s monoculture economy—built almost entirely around petroleum logistics—left it vulnerable to shocks. Labor unrest, hurricanes, declining production inland, or political upheaval could destabilize the city's fortunes almost overnight. Moreover, because Tampico's development was tied so heavily to foreign-controlled flows of capital, it lacked early diversification and internalresilience.Incontrast,Baku’searlyindustrialists— foreign and local alike—constructed a relatively embedded urban system, investing in public works and monumental architecture as displays of civic pride. Tampico's foreign companies, by contrast, treated the city as a transactional space, moving their operations rapidly to new fields when easier opportunities or politicalinstabilityarose.

Thus, from its obscure beginnings to its emergence as a major port, Tampico was shaped by forces that prioritized movement over rootedness, extraction over accumulation, circulation over community. These dynamics would continue to define the city’s trajectory well into the 20th century, influencing its spatial form, labor relations, environmental degradation, and political fragility. Unlike Baku, which densified into an imperial and later socialist oil capital, and unlike Comodoro, which nationalized its oil wealth into a durable civic identity, Tampico would remain a transit city—anartifactofpetroleumglobalization,builttomove oilbutnevertoholditoritswealth.

FOREIGN CAPITAL

If Tampico’s emergence as an oil port was catalyzed by the demands of extraction logistics, its urban form was decisively shaped by foreign capital. The companies that descended upon the Faja de Oro fields in the early 20th century did not view Tampico as a civic space to cultivate,butratherasaninfrastructuralnodetoexploit. Urban expansion in this period was driven not by municipal vision or national planning, but by the private needs of multinational corporations, each staking claim

to pieces of the riverfront and adjacent lands in service oftheirshipping,refining,andadministrativeoperations.

This foreign domination stands in stark contrast to both Baku and Comodoro Rivadavia, though for different reasons.InBaku,foreigninvestmentfromfamilieslikethe Nobel Brothers and the Rothschilds arrived some 50 years earlier, primarily in the 1870s. This earlier influx of capital coincided with the peak of European postindustrial philanthropic ideals, where notions of worker welfare, public hygiene, and urban investment influenced foreign oil baron’s decisions. The Nobels, in particular, invested not only in extraction and refining but also in other philanthropic endeavours, in particular the surrounding worker housing and spaces around their Villa Petrolea. Most crucially, many of these investors physically lived in Baku; they were embedded in the social and environmental fabric of the city they helpedindustrialize.

In Tampico, by contrast, foreign investors arrived at a later moment—after 1901—when corporate structures had evolved toward greater abstraction and detachment. British and American oil executives rarely lived permanently in the city. Management circulated between posts in Texas, London, and New York, while administrative housing in Colonia Aguila remained a protective bubble, never fully integrated into the broader urban life of Tampico. The ideological framework that had shaped earlier European industrial philanthropyinBakuwaslargelyabsent.Instead,foreign investment in Tampico was driven by the extractive capitalism of the early 20th century and which resulted in little to none of the profits being retained din the city itself. Any investment in the urban fabric of the city was for the administrative class which had been brought in from both Mexican hubs such as Monterrey as well as importedfromtheUS.

This is perhaps clearest in the creation of the administrative neighbourhoods present in the city. They were built out of necessity as the city had little actual housing stock before its rapid growth after the extraction and exportation of oil began in earnest. Such

neighbourhoods (called “colonias” in Mexico) such as Colonia Aguila—built by El Aguila for its executives and such in the northern part of the city on a bluff overlooking one of the inland lagoons—are perhaps some of the best examples of such investment. It reflected Anglo-American ideals, and featured detached single-family homes with porches, gabled roofs, attics, and all the architectural elements typically found in American or English models rather than vernacular Mexican ones. In addition to the AngloAmerican typology of architecture, the difference can also be seen in the urban form of the development. RatherthanthestrictSpanish-colonialstylegridpresent in the center of the city (an example of Mexican urban standard form rather than a direct example of colonialtime urban fabric) the enclave had winding streets and a much more freeform block shape—one defined by the designerratherthangeologicalrequirements.4

It served as both a practical residence for foreign engineers and executives and a symbol of corporate sovereignty over urban space. Other similar models would also be created, though Colonia Aguila remains the most well known of these petro-neighborhoods, the name of which it still maintains today. This physical and social separation emphasized Tampico’s growing urban fragmentation: foreign capital built enclaves for its

y la

5. Pratt, Joseph A, Martin V Melosi, and Kathleen A Brosnan. Energy Capitals: Local Impact, Global Influence. Pittsburgh, Pa: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014.

agents,butlefttheMexicanworking-classpopulationto fend for itself in ad-hoc settlements on the city’s lowlying, often flood-prone margins. It was a new form of colonialism: a capitalistic one as opposed to a gubernatorialone.Throughthearchitecturalstyleofthe homes as well as the inherent differences in lot size, the (mostlyforeign)administrativeandexecutiveclasscould even further distance themselves from the lower workingclass..

The architectural language of Tampico’s historic center further reflected the Gulf-world connections forged by oil capitalism. Particularly during the boom years of the early 20th century, Tampico’s downtown area saw the construction of numerous New Orleans-style buildings, distinguished by cast-iron balconies, colonnaded arcades, and high ceilings designed for ventilation in humid climates.5 This stylistic importation was not incidental. Many of the American oil administrators stationedinTampicoduringtheoilboomhadpreviously worked in or hailed from other Gulf Coast production hubs, particularly Louisiana and Texas, where similar architectural forms were widespread. Thus, just as Colonia Águila reproduced Anglo-American suburban ideals in its residential layouts and building types, the commercial and civic center of Tampico mirrored the vernacular of southern U.S. port cities, creating a transnational urban aesthetic rooted in shared environmental adaptations and corporate migration patterns. The repetition of familiar architectural forms served to make the foreign elite feel more at home in an alien landscape, reinforcing the perception of Tampico

not as a Mexican city to integrate into, but as a newly created frontier city administered by foreign characters alientothelargerMexicancontext.

HOUSING STRATIFICATION AND LOCAL CIVIC DEVELOPMENT

By1913therebecameastratifiedformofhousingrelating to both the oil and railway industry in Tampico. The first strata included the houses of the social and administrative elite, built in neighborhoods with proper infrastructure and inside the municipal lines of Tampico. The next sets were roughly equal and can be separated into three sub-categories. The first were proper houses built by the workers on company lands, about 45-60 square meters, which accommodated up to three families. The next were houses for skilled labor constructed near the refineries, and which were in most casesrentedfromthecompany,6 Thelastcategorywere thead=hochutsmadewithscrapmaterial. 7

“Economic model of a house for labourers, comfortable and simple”, El Mundo, 26 October, 1924, Hemeroteca Nacional, UNAM

6. Hernández Elizondo, Roberto. Empresarios extranjeros, comercio y petroleo en Tampico y la Huasteca (1890-1930). México D.F: Plaza y Valdés, S.A. de C.V., 2006.

7. Bartorila, Miguel Ángel, y Reina I. Loredo Cansino. 2017. « México». CONTEXTO. Revista De La Facultad De Arquitectura De La Universidad Autónoma De Nuevo León 11 (14). https://contexto.uanl.mx/ index.php/contexto/ article/view/63.

8. “Es improbable que este año inauguren multifamiliares” El Sol: Periodico de la vida porteña Tampico, Nov. 11, 1958

“Economic model of a house for labourers, comfortable and simple”, El Mundo, 26 October, 1924, Hemeroteca Nacional, UNAM

In Tampico, and unlike in Baku, the lack of local capital relatingtotheoilindustrymeantthatlittleconsideration wasgiventotheremaininginfrastructureofthecity,both in terms of living quarters aside from those for the administrative elite, and also in terms of the remaining services such as schools and hospitals. It wasn’t until after the government expropriated the oil industry in 1938 that the oil industry began to consider further housing and civic infrastructure as well. In fact, the president Lázaro Cárdenas cites this lack of foreign interest in the local development and the proletariat as thereasoningbehindtheneedforthenationalizationof the oil industry in his announcement speech. The new developments towards infrastructure and housing postnationalization would continue along the modernist, functional style that the Soviets developed, rather than the American models which were considered prenationalization.8

Perhaps what sets Tampico furthest apart from Baku in terms of its development of housing was the difference between considering the architectural rather than urban form of it from the administrative level.9 One explanation for this perhaps is the existence of Baku as an urbanized city priorto the explosion of its oil industry. Tampico was nothing before oil came, and thus didn’t have a pre-existing urban fabric to contend with when deciding where to house workers. This reason is also why Baku’s population had greater diversification labour-wise. In Baku settlements where created to specificallyhouseworkersinthepetroleumindustry.Like Comodoro,Tampicoreallyonlyhadpeoplewhoworked in the petroleum industry, housing projects were considered at the city population level, and thus administrationoverthemfellunderthejurisdictionofthe nationalwelfareministryratherthanthecompanyitself.

WAR AND BOOM

The outbreak of World War I in 1914 had profound consequences for Tampico’s oil economy, accelerating both its rise as a global export node and reshaping the patterns of foreign capital that defined its urban structure. While Tampico had already become a vital port for the transshipment of crude oil from the Faja de Oro fields, the war dramatically increased international demand, particularly from Britain and the United States, turning the city into one of the world's critical energy chokepoints.Thestrategicimportanceofpetroleumwas made unmistakably clear during the conflict. The mechanization of warfare catapulted petroleum from an industrial commodity to a geopolitical necessity. Petroleum fueled the tanks, trucks, ambulances, battleships, boats, and planes that became necessary for warfare, and all that petroleum needed to be extracted, refined, and transported to the arenas of war.10 The rate of extraction was raised significantly not only in Tampico but across the country, and in just five yearsproductionwouldrisefrom25millionbarrelsin1913 to55millionin1917.

It was during the wartime decade that Tampico would properly turn into an industrial landscape. The mouth of

9. “Modelo economico de una casa para obreros, comoda y sencilla” El Sol: Periodico de la vida porteña Tampico, Oct 26, 1924

10. Pratt, Joseph A, Martin V Melosi, and Kathleen A Brosnan. Energy Capitals: Local Impact, Global Influence. “Tampico, Mexico” Santiago, Myrna Pittsburgh, Pa: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014. p. 151

11. Myrna I. Santiago, The Ecology of Oil: Environment, Labor, and the Mexican Revolution, 1900-1938 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006)

theriverwouldbedredgedtoallowforlargeroiltankers to anchor further into the port, and hundreds of miles of pipelines would connect the city’s refineries to the oil wellsintheoilfieldsfurtheraway.Thecourseoftheriver would also change, with lower lying areas reclaimed form the river and filled in to create more refineries. In total, 5 more refineries were created, with their main goal being to refine the crude oil just enough to make transportationviableandlesshazardous.Littleoftheoil was processed there to be turned into products such as lubricants,kerosene,gasolineassuch.

This was in part due to the local market not being as demanding due to the presence of the Mexican Revolution. While oil produced in Tampico would be used to fuel the railways and such which were so instrumental to it, the larger market for gasoline and other products were much lower. Inflation also plagued the city and food shortages were a constant concern— one which furthered the divided between the highlystratifiedeconomicclassesinthecity. 11

Ultimately,WorldWarIandtheRevolutionmagnifiedthe structural weaknesses already embedded in Tampico’s urban fabric. It accelerated the influx of foreign capital, deepened the spatial segregation between corporate enclaves and labor settlements, and entrenched a model of development based on circulation and extraction rather than rooted civic investment. The environmental consequences were equally severe. Wartime urgency often meant abandoning even minimal safety protocols, leading to more frequent oil spills into the wetlands, unregulated flaring, and catastrophic fires at storage facilities. The marshy geography that surrounded the port offered little natural containment for these disasters, further poisoningtheriversystemsandcoastalecosystems.

ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION

From the outset, Tampico’s urban and industrial expansionunfoldedthroughthesystematicdisruptionof a precarious, living environment. Unlike Baku, whose industrial urbanism compacted contamination into dense districts, or Comodoro Rivadavia, whose oil fields

We have just passed large patches of muddy water in a space of about two miles in this deep bright blue sea, which cause some speculation among the passengers; one, whose nationality is settled at once, suggests that the big fishes, &c., are holding a democratic meeting, far down below; the captain says when he passed here last, there were patches of petroleum on the water…

SEA” A TRIP TO MEXICO

Becher, H.C.R, p.11

12. Becher, H.C.R.,”At Sea” A Trip to Mexico (Toronto: Willing and Williamson 1880) accs. LOC, p. 11

vvvvsprawled across arid steppes, Tampico’s growth directly consumed and corroded an unstable deltaic ecosystem. Oil slicks in the water were common, even before proper exploitation of oil wells began, one CanadiantravelerthatwaspassingthroughTampicoon hiswayinlandwouldwriteinhistravelogue:

“We have just passed large patches of muddy water in a space of about two miles in this deep bright blue sea, which cause some speculation among the passengers; one, whose nationality is settled at once, suggests that the big fishes, &c., are holding a democratic meeting, far down below; the captain says when he passed here last, there were patches of petroleum on the water…” 12

13. Santiago, Energy Capitals, “Tampico, Mexico” p. 158

Afterthecitybecameindustrialized,therateofpollution skyrocketed. Refineries would dump their byproducts and waste directly into the surrounded water. The result was a river so polluted that it could combust, and twice reached tankers loading fuel and resulting in the explosionofthem.Chapopoteortarfilledclumpswould absolutely cover beaches across the coast, usually the result of polluted ballast waters being dumped into the water. In 1920, the Chamber of Commerce in the city would complain that the beaches were “totally covered with chapopote and one can neither walk one step without one’s shoes getting soaked by such bothersome and sticky object nor take a bath without one’s body being totally tarred.”13 Such environmental pollution wouldalsoresultindifficultysellingthecityasatouristic destinationonceoilproductionslowed,provingacurse.

Environmental recklessness on the part of the foreign oil companies would also prove detrimental to the city on the verge of the global crisis created by the Great Depression. During the war, the oil fields south of Tampico were extracted at such a fast rate that the oil that was readily available without deeper drilling was soon exhausted, and so companies preferred to open new sites both in the region and also abroad in Venezuela. While production did continue, the city undoubtedly felt the shock and stopped growing at the same pace it had been doing in the decade prior. Companies laid off a great amount of their workforce in

mid 1921 and the social upheaval that followed would dividethecityinhalf—literally.14

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

The rapid industrialization of Tampico during the oil boom years exacerbated deep social and spatial stratifications. The oil economy did not create a unified urban society but reinforced rigid class and national hierarchies, physically materialized in housing patterns. Unlike Baku, where industrial density forced proximity between different social classes (even if separated by spatial zoning), Tampico’s geography allowed for a greater dispersal of privilege and poverty, reinforcing a fractured urban experience. In Tampico, administrative and technical staff—almost exclusively foreign, primarily American and British—were housed in companyprovided, fully serviced neighborhoods such as Colonia Águila. In stark contrast, common laborers, overwhelmingly Mexican and from rural backgrounds, were forced into makeshift settlements on the city's flood-prone peripheries. They were ad-hoc at best, made with scrap material, often flammable, and were builtdangerouslyclosetotherefineries. 15 Thedifference inlivingconditionswasnotmerelyoneofcomfort,butof basic survival: access to sanitation, safe drinking water, and solid construction was systematically reserved for foreign elites.16 These were the types of settlements that dotted the landscape around the refineries such as Arbol Grande to the east of the city near the coast. In 1896thepopulationoftheareawasaround5,000butby the1920sithadtripledtoaround15,000.

While Tampico’s historic center concentrated administrative, commercial, and civic functions linked to port operations and foreign investment, these northeastern zones became the domain of labor: oil workers, porthandlers,andinformalserviceeconomiesthatgrew without systematic planning, often under precarious environmental conditions. As conditions worsened, workers in these industrial areas campaigned to become separated from the rest of the city in an act of self-determination. It wasn’t until a few years later, however,thattherestofthecity’s administrationsfinally

14. Ibid. p.153

15. Hernández Elizondo, Roberto. Empresarios extranjeros, comercio y petroleo en Tampico y la Huasteca (1890-1930). México D.F: Plaza y Valdés, S.A. de C.V., 2006.

16. Bartorila, Miguel Ángel, y Reina I. Loredo Cansino. 2017. « México». CONTEXTO. Revista De La Facultad De Arquitectura De La Universidad Autónoma De Nuevo León 11 (14). https://contexto.uanl.mx/ index.php/contexto/ article/view/63.

17. Bartorila, Miguel Ángel, y Reina I. Loredo Cansino. 2017. « México». CONTEXTO. Revista De La Facultad De Arquitectura De La Universidad Autónoma De Nuevo León 11 (14). https://contexto.uanl.mx/ index.php/contexto/ article/view/63.

agreed and the area that had been known as Villa Cecilia(namedafterDoñaCecilia,oneofthefirstsettlers in the area) as well as some area from the area of Altamirasecededfromtherestofthecitytoformitsown administrativecenter. 17

While Tampico’s historic center concentrated administrative, commercial, and civic functions linked to port operations and foreign investment, the northern zones became the domain of labor: oil workers, port handlers, and informal service economies that grew without systematic planning, often under precarious environmental conditions. The spatial segregation of administrative privilege and industrial labor had been evident for decades; the formalization of Ciudad Madero merely gave bureaucratic recognition to what urban geography had already imposed. Thus, the creation of Ciudad Madero must be understood not merely as an administrative reclassification, but as a materialization of the urban and industrial contradictions of Tampico’s oil economy. It formalized a division that had always been latent: between a city designedforcirculation,foreignprofit,andexport,anda city inhabited by those whose labor sustained it, but who were themselves rendered peripheral. It was, in effect, the political codification of an industrial geography that had never been fully urban, never fully nationallyhomogenous,andneverfullystable.

NATIONALIZATION

In the official narrative of Mexico’s oil nationalization of 1938, the treatment of Mexican workers by foreign companies—particularly in Tampico and the northern Gulf fields—was cited as a decisive catalyst.Decades of exploitative labor practices, chronic underpayment, racialized workplace hierarchies, and a disregard for workerhousingandwelfarewereelevatedintosymbols of foreign domination. Strikes by oil workers throughout the 1930s, culminating in the major walkouts of 1937, revealed a deep-seated structural inequality: the oil economy had modernized infrastructure, transformed cities, and enriched foreign investors, but left the Mexican labor force marginalized in slums, exposed to

“Let's examine the social work of these companies: In how many of the towns near the oil fields is there a hospital, a school, or a community center; or a water supply or sanitation project, or a sports field, or a power plant...?

Who doesn't know or isn't aware of the irritating difference that governs the construction of company camps? Comfort for the foreign personnel; mediocrity, misery, and unsanitary conditions for nationals. Air conditioning and insect protection for the former; indifference and neglect, medical care and medicines always reluctant if given for the latter; lower wages and harsh, exhausting work for our people...”

SPEECH ON THE EXPROPRIATION OF OIL

President Lázaro Cárdenas del Rio, 18 March 1939

toxic working environments, and politically disenfranchized.IncitieslikeTampico,wherethedivision between the privileged enclaves of foreign administrators (such as Colonia Aguila) and the subpar settlements of Mexican laborers had become physically embeddedintheurbanfabric,themoraljustificationfor nationalizationseemedincontrovertible.

The true impetus behind the 1938 nationalization lay in more strategic considerations. Oil, now critical to global military and industrial economies, had become not merelyasourceofrevenuebutaquestionofsovereignty. As Mexico modernized in a post-revolutionary context, the realization grew that reliance on foreign companies—companiesthatcouldwithdrawinvestment at will, dictate terms, and lobby external governments againstnationalinterests—posedanexistentialthreatto the independence painstakingly constructed in the wake of the Revolution. In Tampico, the nature of industrialdevelopmenthadmadethisthreatparticularly visible. The city’s economic structure was designed for export-oriented circulation, not for national development. Profits flowed outward, infrastructure catered to shipment rather than settlement, and the environmental degradation of the delta was tolerated precisely because it affected only those populations excluded from the corridors of foreign capital. Nationalization thus aimed not merely to correct worker exploitation but to restructure the direction of accumulation:toharnessoilnotforthebenefitofforeign shareholders but for the purposes of Mexican statebuilding.

Nationalization must be situated within the broader political project of post revolutionary Mexico. Following two decades of political fragmentation after the Revolution, the Cárdenas administration (1934–1940) sought to consolidate a new social pact: one that integrated the rather sharply stratified Mexican societies into a corporatist state structure. Land reform, labor rights, and both economic and social nationalism were pillars of this vision. Nationalization provided a demonstration of the new state's capacity to assert economic independence. In the case of Tampico, this

transformation was particularly symbolic: the very city whose urban form had been sculpted by foreign extraction would now stand as a testament to national sovereignty. Yet the contradictions of this transition would also become clear in the years to come, as the state inherited not only the profits but also the infrastructural decay, environmental devastation, and urban inequalities left behind by decades of laissezfairecorporateurbanism.

Comparing Tampico’s nationalization to the earlier experiences of Baku and Comodoro Rivadavia reveals both parallel trajectories and critical divergences. In Baku, the seizure of the oil industry by the Bolsheviks in 1920 was part of a broader project. The goal was not simply the transfer of ownership from foreigners to locals, but the total abolition of private capital and the integration of petroleum into a centrally planned economy oriented toward the world proletariat. Oil nationalization in Baku was, from its inception,

Tampico-Madero in 1956, Note Post-Nationalization “Oil Neighborhoods”, Map from Bartorila, Miguel Ángel, y Reina I. Loredo Cansino, CONTEXTO. Revista De La Facultad De Arquitectura De La Universidad Autónoma De Nuevo León 11

Article 1. The machinery, installations, buildings, pipelines, refineries, storage tanks, communication lines, tank cars, distribution stations, vessels, and all other movable and immovable assets owned by the companies listed below are hereby declared expropriated for reasons of public utility and in favor of the Nation: Compañía Mexicana de Petróleo El Águila, S.A., Compañía Naviera de San Cristóbal, S.A., Compañía Naviera San Ricardo, S.A., Huasteca Petroleum Company, Sinclair Pierce Oil Company, Richmond Petroleum Company of Mexico, California Standard Oil Company of Mexico, Compañía Petrolera el Agwi, S.A., Compañía de Gas y Combustible Imperio, Consolidated Oil Company of Mexico, Compañía Mexicana de Vapores San Antonio, S.A., Sabalo Transportation Company, Clarita, S.A., and Cacalilao, S.A., all of which are deemed necessary, in the judgment of the Ministry of National Economy, for the exploration, extraction, transportation, storage, refining, and distribution of petroleum products.

Article 2. The Ministry of National Economy, with the involvement of the Ministry of Finance as administrator of the nation's assets, shall proceed with the immediate occupation of the properties subject to expropriation and process the corresponding file.

Article 3. The Ministry of Finance shall pay the corresponding compensation to the expropriated companies, in accordance with the provisions of Articles 27 of the Constitution and 10 and 20 of the Expropriation Law, in cash and within a period not exceeding 10 years. The funds for this payment shall be taken by the Ministry of Finance itself from a percentage, to be determined later, of the production of petroleum and its derivatives originating from the expropriated assets, the proceeds of which shall be deposited in the Federal Treasury while the legal proceedings are underway.

Article 4. The representatives of the expropriated companies shall be notified personally, and this decree shall be published.

This decree shall enter into force on the date of its publication in the Official Record of the Federation. Given at the Palace of the Executive Branch of the Union, on the eighteenth day of March, nineteen hundred and thirty-eight.

EXECUTIVE ORDER (ENGLISH TRANSLATION)

President of the Republic Lázaro Cárdenas

Secretary of the National Economy Efraín Buenrostro Secretary of Finance and Public Credit Eduardo Suárez

18 March 1938

Translated by Catalina Cabral Framiñan

18. Unthoff López, L. (2010), “La industria petrolera en México, 19111938”, América Latina en la historia económica, 530.

ideologically socialist, rooted in Marxist visions of resource collectivization. In Comodoro Rivadavia, by contrast, Argentina’s founding of YPF in 1922 predated Mexico’s (and was the second to have nationalized its petroleum industry globally) and reflected a nationalist idea of expropriation rather than socialism. It was predated by a law which had already declared resourcesaspropertyofthestate,andYPFwascreated to ensure that Argentine oil served Argentine industrialization, not foreign profit. Although worker welfare was important, the central concern was state sovereignty over strategic resources, much as it would be in Mexico. The ideological framework underpinning Mexico’s oil nationalization was nationalist, not socialist, despite rhetorical borrowings from labor movements andstrongsocialistmovementswithinthecountry.While the Cárdenas government promoted land redistribution and worker rights, it did not aim to dismantle capitalism itself. Instead, it sought to Mexican-ize profits—to bring key industries under national control, including through the creation of PEMEX. The nationalization here produced a change in ownership, not necessarily a transformation of the spatial hierarchies or environmental vulnerabilities created under foreign capital.18

ThenationalizationofMexico’soilindustryin1938didnot merely transfer ownership of oil infrastructure from foreign to Mexican hands—it initiated a profound reimagining of urban space and public life in cities like Tampico. After decades in which development had served the logic of foreign extraction and transient capital,nationalizationofferedanopportunity,however imperfectly realized, to root economic modernization in a framework of social investment and territorial integration. In the years that followed, Tampico saw the emergence of new public hospitals, schools, housing initiatives, and civic institutions designed to embed the city more securely within the national political and economic project. PEMEX would create hospitals and other infrastructure for its workers (and members of its union)incitiesacrossthecountry,andinTampicowhere so much of the population worked in the industry, the developmentswerefeltmoredeeply.

Unlike Baku, where the Soviet government rapidly implementedlarge-scale,state-plannedhousingblocks directly tied to industrial complexes—often characterized by communal apartments and standardized urban layouts—Tampico’s postnationalization housing development was more fragmented and mediated through emerging federal institutions such as the Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social (IMSS) which was founded a few years later in 1943. In the first few decades this came about through collaborations between government offices such as IMSS and unions such as the Sindigato de Trabajadores Petroleros de la Republica Mexicana. Like in other areas of the country during the 40s-60s, housing developments called “Unidades” were developed with the intention to provide social housing to lower income workers in rent controlled apartments in neighbourhoods which boasted not only housing stock but also civic spaces such as theater and recreational centers. One such development was the Unidad NacionalonbothCiudadMaderoandTampico,located roughlynorth,spanningaround190hectares,andwhich opened in 1963.Like othersuch developments it boasted a public pool, shops, and where the PEMEX hospital would be constructed nearby and opened in the same year. This area, however, would now be unrecognizable, as it moved away from the model of the “unidad” and

19. Mosivais, Paulo

“Unidad Nacional: colonia que La Quina "se regaló" hace más de 60 años” El Sol de Tampico 14 August 2023 accs. https://oem.com.mx/ elsoldetampico/local/ la-unidad-nacionalcolonia-que-la-quinale-regalo-a-ciudadmadero-hace-mas-de60-anos-15894502

split into private lots, with its civic infrastructure left to decay.19

INFONAVIT (Instituto del Fondo Nacional de la Vivienda para los Trabajadores) would be created to branch off of the IMSS several decades later, which was established in 1972. Although PEMEX, the newly nationalized oil company, was no longer building company towns or private housing colonies as foreign oil companies had once done, INFONAVIT assumed the role of coordinating and financing worker housing, including for oil laborers, who comprised a substantial share of Tampico’s industrial workforce. Rather than creating cohesive worker enclaves adjacent to industrial facilities, INFONAVIT projects were often suburban,mass-produced,anddispersed,reflectingthe broader modernization goals of mid-century Mexico. These developments marked a shift from the earlier model of corporate or developmental led provision towardamodelwherestate-backedfinancingenabled workers to acquire private homes through programs such as payroll deductions and government backed mortgages. In contrast to Baku's Soviet-era collectivist ethos, Tampico’s post-nationalization housing policy leaned toward an individualized, ownership-based ideal of modernization, blending industrial labor with aspirationsformiddle-classdomesticity.

TRANSITION TO OFFSHORE

20. Brooks, Dario

“Complejo Cantarell | El pescador que descubrió el más grande tesoro petrolero de México (y murió en el abandono)” BBC News Mundo, 28 June 2020 accs. https:// www.bbc.com/mundo/ noticias-america-latina51866199

The final reshaping of Tampico’s petroleum identity came not from internal exhaustion alone, but from a profound shift in the geography of extraction itself: the transition to offshore drilling. By the mid-20th century, the declining productivity of the Faja de Oro fields, compounded by decades of environmental degradation,technologicalstagnation,andglobalshifts in oil exploration strategies, pushed Mexican petroleum efforts further afield. The definitive turning point came with the discovery of the Cantarell oil field, named after Rudesindo Cantarell, a local fisherman who first reported oil slicks while fishing in the Bay of Campeche in 1958.20 Although oil seepages had been noticed for decades, it was not until the 1970s, under an intensified

state-led exploration initiative, that seismic studies and exploratorydrillingconfirmedthepresenceofamassive, high-yield offshore reservoir. Cantarell would go on to becomeoneofthelargestoffshoreoilfieldsintheworld, rivaling the North Sea and Middle Eastern fields in productivityduringitspeakinthelate20thcentury.

The magnitude of the Cantarell discovery radically reoriented PEMEX’s strategic priorities. New regional command centers were established, particularly in Ciudad del Carmen, which transformed almost overnight from a sleepy fishing town into the nerve center of Mexico’s offshore oil economy. Tampico, by contrast, retained a residual role as a logistical and manufacturing node—its shipyards and fabrication plants adapted to build components for offshore platforms—butitwasnolongercentraltothenationaloil narrative. The city's economic and political significance recededasCantarell'sproductiondominatedheadlines, budgets,andtheimaginationoftheMexicanstate.

This shift decisively reconfigured the social geography of the oil workforce. The oil economy became physically and socially removed from the city, existing instead in a network of floating infrastructures over the Gulf, tethered to new supply ports farther south. Tampico’s population, which had once surged alongside the expansionofterrestrialoiloperations,begantostabilize

21. Hollander, Kurt “The tragedy of Tampico, Mexico: a city of violence, abandoned to the trees” The Guardian 2 June 2014 https://www. theguardian.com/cities/ 2014/jun/02/thetragedy-of-tampicomexico-a-city-ofviolence-abandonedto-the-trees#: ~:text=Then, in 1923, Mexico's largest, forced to flee the city.

and eventually decline, as opportunities followed the southwardpullofoffshorecapital.

The port itself underwent a quiet transformation. No longerahubfortheshipmentofcrudeoil,itadaptedinto aplatformfactory—fabricatingandassemblingthesteel skeletons that would be towed out into the open Gulf. Supply vessels and service ships, not tankers, now dominated the port's industrial traffic. In this new configuration, Tampico functioned less as a city of oil and more as a backstage workshop for a production happening elsewhere, offshore and out of sight. The civic life that had once been organized around the visiblepresenceofoildissolvedintoaneconomyofparts manufacturing,subcontracting,andsecondarylogistics. The offshore transition completed the narrative arc that had begun with Tampico’s emergence as a city built for extraction and export. Once again, the city found itself operating not as a center of accumulation but as a node—its economic survival dependent on movements andinvestmentscenteredelsewhere.

Even today, the legacy of this offshore shift is palpable. Tampico remains a port of production rather than of extraction—asitewhereindustrialknowledgeandlabor persist, but where the profits, political clout, and symbolic centrality of the oil economy have long since drifted away. In its skeletal shipyards, faded administrative buildings, and aging working-class neighborhoods, one can trace the full cycle of a city constructed for global circulation: rising on the tides of foreign capital, flourishing briefly as an industrial node, and ultimately rendered marginal by the changing geographies of extraction in a post-industrial world. It is a city who’s population lives on nostalgia of its past as the grand “petro-city,” trying to shift to other industries such as tourism, yet inhibited from fully doing so due to theverythingsthatoncemadeitgreat.21

CONCLUSION

The transition to offshore drilling marked not just the geographicalrelocationofMexico’soileconomy,butthe culmination of a long historical arc in which Tampico’s fate was repeatedly determined by forces that lay beyond its control. From its foundation as a precarious colonial outpost, to its fleeting centrality in the early 20th-century oil boom, to its gradual marginalization as capital and infrastructure flowed elsewhere, Tampico’s urban and economic history reads as a narrative shaped more by external demands than by internal coherence or civic ambition. It was a city built to serve extraction,alogisticalnodewhosefortunesroseandfell according to the needs of distant markets, foreign investors, and later, federal strategies of resource management, and which seems to prove the “resource curse” true in the face of Baku and Comodoro’s exception.

In contrast to Baku, whose urban density and infrastructural integration allowed it to adapt repeatedly to shifting political and economic regimes, Tampico lacked the urban resilience that might have enabled a similar reinvention. Nor could it emulate the trajectory of Comodoro Rivadavia, where national narratives of self-sufficiency and energy sovereignty rooted the city firmly within the symbolic and material fabric of the Argentine state. Tampico’s political and economic marginality persisted precisely because its foundational urban logic was never centered on selfreproduction or civic expansion, but on throughput: the movement of oil, goods, labor, and later, modular industrial parts, through a landscape never designed to holdthempermanently.

Even the nationalization of the oil industry in 1938, a moment of profound political symbolism for Mexico, could not fully reconfigure the spatial and social inequalities that had been etched into Tampico’s landscape by decades of laissez-faire foreign extraction. Although PEMEX’s creation brought important infrastructural investments—new hospitals, schools, and housing initiatives aimed at embedding oil

labor within a national framework—the structural patterns of fragmentation and external dependence remained. Housing developments like Unidad Nacional, initially envisioned as cohesive social spaces for a new working class tied to the national project, soon suffered the same fate as much of the city's earlier infrastructure: erosion through privatization, disintegration through neglect, and a slow unraveling of the collective civic identity that had only ever been tenuously constructed. TheestablishmentofINFONAVITin1972furtherillustrated the shifting logics of urban development in the postnationalization period. Rather than direct corporate or state provision of housing tied to specific industrial sites, the new model emphasized individualized homeownership financed through payroll deductions and state-backed credit. While INFONAVIT expanded access to housing for many oil workers in Tampico and elsewhere, it also deepened spatial dispersion, encouraging suburbanization without corresponding investments in civic infrastructure. The dream of ownership replaced the earlier, if tenuous, ideals of communal urban belonging. The logic of circulation, which had defined Tampico’s emergence as a port and petroleum hub, thus persisted into the era of mass suburbanization—only now channeled through the aspirations of individual families rather than the strategiesofforeigncorporations.

Today, Tampico stands as a palimpsest of industrial globalization, its built and natural environments layered with the residues of successive economic epochs: colonial neglect, industrial boom, corporate abandonment, and infrastructural obsolescence. Its downtown, once animated by the flows of global capital, now hosts the faded architectural echoes of foreign mercantile ambition. Its outlying neighborhoods, once the hopeful sites of oil worker settlement and civic modernization, have become fragmented spaces of suburban dispersal and economic precariousness. Its port, once vital to the movement of petroleum, now labors as a quiet hub for modular offshore infrastructure—a factory forparts in an oil economy that has largely moved beyond the horizon. Yet in this very layerednessliesadifferentkindofhistoricalsignificance.

Tampico’sstoryisnotsimplyoneoffailureordecline,but of a particular kind of urban condition: a city produced by,andsymptomaticof,theglobalpatternsofextraction and circulation that have characterized much of modern industrial history. It is a reminder that not all petroleum cities were built to last, that the so called “oil curse” does exist if the city is not developed properly, thatcitiesthatfailtodiversitycanfallvictimtothesame mercurialnatureofindustrythatoncemadethemgreat, that foreign vs local capital in all stages of development matter, and that the infrastructural grandeur of the oil age often masked profound vulnerabilities—social, environmental, and political—that would surface once thetidesofcapitalreceded.

By tracing Tampico’s development alongside those of Baku and Comodoro Rivadavia, a comparative framework emerges that highlights the critical importance of civic integration, ideological embedding, and infrastructural investment in determining the longterm trajectories of petroleum urbanism. Where Baku leveraged density and state-driven transformation to survive the collapse of imperial and industrial orders, and Comodoro embedded oil into the very narrative of national selfhood, Tampico remained an outpost— importantbutexpendable,prosperousbutperipheral.Its storyunderscoresthecostsofbuildingurbanlifearound logics of movement without settlement, of circulation without rootedness, of extraction without reinvestment. Ultimately, Tampico’s petroleum history offers a cautionary counterpoint to more triumphant narratives of oil-driven modernity. It reveals the fragility of cities constructed primarily as instruments of external economies, and the difficvulty of reconstructing civic resilience once foundational patterns of spatial inequality and environmental degradation have been entrenched. As Mexico, and the world, move into an uncertain post-petroleum future, the lessons of Tampico's rise and fragmentation remain sharply relevant: a testament to both the possibilities and the profoundperilsofcitiesbuiltintheserviceofextraction.

1. Pratt, Joseph A, Martin V Melosi, and Kathleen A Brosnan. Energy Capitals: Local Impact, Global Influence. Pittsburgh, Pa: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014.

2. Bartorila, Miguel Ángel, y Reina I. Loredo Cansino. 2017. « México». CONTEXTO. Revista De La Facultad De Arquitectura De La Universidad Autónoma De Nuevo León 11 (14).

3. Cetto, Max. Modern Architecture in Mexico.: Arquitectura Moderna En México. New York: Praeger, 1961.

4. Elizondo, Lucia. “A Justified Plan Graph Analysis of Social Housing in Mexico (1974–2019): Spatial Transformations and Social Implications.” Nexus Network Journal 24, no. 1 (2022): 25–53.

5. Gómez Cruz, Filiberta. Circuitos mercantiles y grupos de poder portuarios: Tuxpan y Tampico en la primera mitad del siglo XIX. Primera edición. México: Miguel Ángel Porrúa, 2012.

6. Hernández Elizondo, Roberto. Empresarios extranjeros, comercio y petroleo en Tampico y la Huasteca (1890-1930). México D.F: Plaza y Valdés, S.A. de C.V., 2006.

7. Herrera, Jose Antonio, and Angela Lombardi. “Introductory Approach to Eco-Hydrological Urbanism: The Adaptive Reuse of Pemex Former Refinery in Reynosa, Mexico.” International Journal of Environmental Impacts (Print) 4, no. 1 (2021): 1–13.

8. Muir, John M. Geology of the Tampico Region, Mexico. Tulsa, Okla: The American association of petroleum geologists, 1936.

9. Olson, Toby. Tampico. First edition. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008.

10. Unthoff López, L. (2010), “La industria petrolera en México, 1911-1938”, América Latina en la historia económica, 5-30.

11. “Mil Chalets va a construir el Gremio Unido de Alijadores en esta Ciudad” El Sol: Periodico de la vida porteña Tampico, Deb. 23 1930

12. “Es improbable que este año inauguren multifamiliares” El Sol: Periodico de la vida porteña Tampico, Nov. 11, 1958

13. “Modelo economico de una casa para obreros, comoda y sencilla” El Sol: Periodico de la vida porteña Tampico, Oct 26, 1924

14. Myrna I. Santiago, The Ecology of Oil: Environment, Labor, and the Mexican Revolution, 1900-1938 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006)

15. Cardenas, Lazaro, “1938 Discurso con motivo de la Expropiacion Petrolera”, 18 March 1938, accessed https://www. memoriapoliticademexico.org/Textos/6Revolucion/1938MEP.html

16. Martínez Leal, Antonio, and Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas. Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas. Tampico. 2a ed. correg. y ampliada. Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas: Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas, Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, 1985.

17. Sidaner, Jean-Gérard, Isabel Arvide, and Tampico, Ayuntamiento. Tampico: crónica de un renacimiento. Tampico, Tam: Ayuntamiento, 1992.

18. González Salas, Carlos. Tampico: mi ciudad. México: Ediciones Contraste, 1981.

19. Mosivais, Paulo “Unidad Nacional: colonia que La Quina "se regaló" hace más de 60 años” El Sol de Tampico 14 August 2023

20. Loredo-Cansino, Reina. (2019). Arquitectura moderna y la recolonización del Golfo de México.

21. Becher, H.C.R.,”At Sea” A Trip to Mexico (Toronto: Willing and Williamson 1880) accs. LOC

CONCLUSION

The relationship between oil and urbanism, often flattened into the shorthand of the “resource curse,” reveals itself as a far more layered and historically contingent phenomenon when viewed through the trajectoriesofBaku,ComodoroRivadavia,andTampico. Rather than petroleum inherently condemning cities to fragmentation, instability, or environmental ruin, its impact varied dramatically according to governance structures, ideological framings, and circuits of capital. Oilitselfdidnotproduceidenticalspatialconsequences; itwasthemodeofextraction,thelogicofownership,the integration or exclusion of labor, and the symbolic investments made—or withheld—that determined whether petroleum would act as a catalyst for civic consolidationoravectorofdisintegration

In Baku, petroleum extraction reshaped not only the economy but the very spatial and ideological structure of the city. Early capitalist densification laid the groundwork for a later socialist urbanism that embedded oil production within new collectivist spatial experiments. Comodoro Rivadavia, by contrast, was entangled from the outset with nationalist projects of territorial sovereignty. Oil production was integrated into a vision of Argentine modernization and industrial self-sufficiency,itsurbanformreflectingbothpragmatic fragmentation and the symbolic weight of national integration. Tampico, however, presents a mirror image. Founded on the margins of colonial settlement and thrust into global extraction circuits by foreign capital, it evolved as a logistical node rather than an urban organism. Oil wealth accelerated its growth but did not root it; fragmentation, infrastructural volatility, and environmental precarity were inscribed into its urban fabric long before any nationalization efforts could attempt redress. The comparative study of these three cities illustrates that the intersection of industry and urbanism is neither inherently corrosive nor inherently generative.Rather,itistheproductofhistorical,political, andspatialchoices,madeandunmadeacrosstime,that conditionwhethertheindustrialcitycanendurebeyond thelifeofitsextractiveeconomy.

As such we can now answerthe fourquestions posed in theintroductionofthisthesis:

1. What were the demographic, economic, and infrastructural characteristics of Baku, Tampico, and Comodoro Rivadavia prior to the discovery of oil? How connected were they to their surrounding regions? Was there a pre-existing urban fabric or population? How did these pre-existing conditions influence the way that the cities developed in response to oil extraction?

2. How did the physical characteristics of oil extraction shape the spatial development of each city? How does industrial density affect the development of residential neighbourhoods? What areas were considered untouchableduetofutureextractionandthuscouldnot be used?

3. How did the different models of industry governance (foreign-controlled, state-led, mixed, etc.) impact the development of urban infrastructure, labor policies, priorities, and architectural characteristics? Where was the wealth based or exported to? Was it purely local, semi-regional, foreign? How did broader political stability and geopolitics directly and indirectly affect development in the city and region?

4. How did the past factors influence the creation of housing developments? What social stratification became prevalent in the city? What were the living conditionsandhousingpoliciesforoilworkers?Howdid the difference between nationalized vs privatized industry affect the conditions? How did these all impact long-term urbanization through informal vs. formal settlements?

QUESTION 1: URBAN AND HISTORICAL CONTEXTS

The pre-industrial conditions of Baku, Tampico, and ComodoroRivadaviashapedthetrajectoriesoftheiroildriven transformations in fundamental ways. Baku, long a fortified port and religious center on the Caspian Sea, possessed an embryonic urban fabric well before petroleum exploitation began. Trade routes, maritime

connectivity, and imperial investment had already positioned it within broader regional circuits, allowing the rapid layering of industrial infrastructures onto a recognizable urban core once oil extraction intensified. In Tampico, by contrast, colonial foundations were tenuous and episodic; cycles of abandonment and reoccupationleftbehindonlyfragmentaryurbantraces. Its later revival as a port city provided the logistical backbone for oil export but offered little in the way of consolidated civic or infrastructural investment. Comodoro Rivadavia occupied yet a different position: founded as a logistical node to support distant agricultural settlements, it lacked any meaningful urban core prior to the discovery of oil. Its spatial growth unfolded without inherited constraints, shaped almost entirely by the needs and improvisations of industrial expansion.Thestrengthorabsenceofthesepre-existing frameworks profoundly conditioned whetherpetroleum urbanism would densify,bypass,orconstruct new forms ofsettlement.

QUESTION 2: GEOGRAPHY, GEOLOGY, AND SPATIAL CONFIGURATIONS

The physical landscapes across Baku, Tampico, and Comodoro Rivadavia dictated not only the mechanics ofextractionbutthepossibilitiesandlimitationsofurban form.InBaku,theproximityofrichpetroleumfieldstothe existing city compressed industrial and civic life into an entangled spatial density, where derricks, refineries, workerhousing,andboulevardscollidedwithinalimited geography. Extraction saturated the urban core, shaping zones of exclusion and contestation. In Comodoro, the semi-arid plateau and inland oil fields enforced dispersal; industrial camps proliferated across vast, windswept terrains, tethered together by pragmatic infrastructures rather than a unified civic plan. Residential areas emerged along logistical lines butremainedconstrainedbyfutureextractionprospects and difficult environmental conditions. Tampico’s flat coastal geography permitted rapid infrastructural expansion for the port, reinforcing an urban focus oriented around movement and export rather than civic life. Extraction zones and logistical corridors dictated

urban growth patterns, with little concern for the formationofintegratedneighborhoods.

QUESTION 3: GOVERNANCE, INDUSTRY, AND POLITICAL STABILITY

The models through which petroleum industries were governed—foreign, nationalized, or hybrid—profoundly influenced urban infrastructure, labor relations, and political trajectories. In Baku, the late imperial model fostered a speculative capitalist urbanism, in which private wealth partially translated into cultural and infrastructural investment even amid deep labor exploitation.TheSovietnationalizationof1920realigned urbanprioritiestowardcollectivistideals,embeddingoil into the fabric of worker-centered city planning, albeit with persistent contradictions between ideological claims and material inequalities. Comodoro Rivadavia’s development under YPF followed a different path: nationalized from the outset, oil extraction was framed within narratives of territorial sovereignty and industrial modernization. Wealth, while unevenly distributed, was retained within national circuits, and urban investments, however fragmented, reflected a broader state-driven project of integration. Tampico, dominated for decades by foreign corporations, bore the imprint of externally oriented extraction economies; wealth was exported, infrastructural investments were minimal, and civic developmentremainedasecondaryconcern.Onlyafter nationalization did efforts to redirect resources inward begin,bywhichpointtheurbanfabrichadalreadybeen deeply conditioned by external priorities. Political stability—or its absence—further shaped these outcomes: where state institutions could sustain ideological and infrastructural commitments, urban growth found a measure of continuity; where political volatilityprevailed,fragmentationdeepened.

QUESTION 4: LABOR, HOUSING, AND URBAN STRATIFICATION

The structuring of labor and housing in petroleum cities mirrored the larger logics of governance and industrial organization. In Baku, workers were drawn from a volatile mix of ethnic groups—Azeris, Armenians, Russians—compressed into overcrowded districts adjacent to extraction sites, while industrial elites established segregated enclaves of cultural and material privilege. Soviet interventions sought to rationalize these inequalities through collective housing projects, yet stratifications remained etched into the city's spatial patterns. Comodoro Rivadavia, while less ethnically fractured, reproduced hierarchies through occupational stratification: administrative elites occupied planned neighborhoods with access to schools, clinics, and civic amenities, while manual laborers were settled closer to production sites, often with reduced services. YPF’s paternalistic provision of housingstabilizedthesedivisionsbutdidnoterasethem. In Tampico, social segregation was even more pronounced. Foreign executives lived in well-serviced corporate enclaves, while Mexican laborers, abandoned by both corporate and civic authorities, built informal settlements along hazardous and floodprone peripheries. Housing conditions reflected the broader economic structures: in cities where nationalized industries invested in civic life, formal settlementsprevailed;whereforeigninterestsprioritized extraction, informal urbanism and social precariousness becamedominantfeaturesofthelandscape.

In light of the comparative analysis of Baku, Comodoro Rivadavia, and Tampico, a fifth question emerges:

5. How did culture, migration, and labor intersect to generate different models of urbanization. How did the movement of populations influence the formation of social hierarchies and spatial divisions. To what extent did immigrant and local communities shape administrative priorities, housing policies, and the broader urban fabric?

QUESTION 5: CULTURE, MIGRATION, AND

URBAN CULTURE

Patterns of migration and cultural layering further influenced the social composition and spatial organization of these petroleum cities. Baku’s industrial boom drew migrants from across the Caucasus and beyond, creating a multi-ethnic urban environment marked by both cosmopolitanism and violent tensions. Cultural affiliations, labor divisions, and ethnic hierarchiesshapedneighborhoodformationsandsocial mobility within the city. Comodoro Rivadavia’s population emerged from waves of European immigrants, Chilean workers, and internal Argentine migrants, producing a more fluid frontier society where national identity played a stronger integrating role than ethnic differentiation. Yet occupational hierarchies and geographic dispersal still reinforced divisions between the administrative and manual labor. Tampico’s migrationpatterns,dominatedbyruralMexicanworkers and foreign administrators, cemented both spatial and social segregation. The cultural distance between the foreign elites and local laborers translated into distinct urban geographies, reinforcing exclusionary practices at both the administrative and neighborhood levels. Across all three cities, the migration of populations did not simply supplement labor needs but reshaped urban life itself, embedding cultural and ethnic stratifications intothematerialandsymbolicarchitecturesofoil-driven growth.

Thus,urban histories of Baku,Comodoro Rivadavia,and Tampico reveal that the relationship between industry and urban development cannot be reduced to a singular trajectory of decline or prosperity. Their experiences resist the stereotypical models often applied to resource cities, showing instead how resilience or fragility emerge from the layering of governance structures, economic flows, ideological investments, and spatial strategies over time. Baku’s endurance across imperial, revolutionary, and socialist regimes was not the product of oil wealth alone, but of the density and infrastructural integration forged through early industrialization. Comodoro’s trajectory

suggests that even fragmented urban forms can sustain civic meaning when tethered to broader narratives of sovereignty and modernization. Tampico, however, standsasacautionarytale:anindustriallandscapebuilt for transportation and extraction rather than proper settlement,whoseurbanfragilitymirroredtheextraction ofwealthtobeyonditsborders.

These histories sharpen the need to reconsider how industrial urbanism is conceptualized. Petroleum cities should not be treated as anomalies within urban theory, but as acute expressions of the tensions inherent in linking extraction to settlement. The durability or collapse of these cities was never inherent to the resource itself but was determined by the degree to which industry was embedded within, rather than adjacent to, civic life. In attending to these entanglements, future studies can move beyond resource typologies to understand how industrial infrastructures shape, and are shaped by, the political andspatialconditionsoftheirtime.

Ifthere’sonethingthatthisanalysishasshownisthatthe question of whether oil cities can endure beyond the exhaustion of their primary resource is not answered solely by economic diversification or technological substitution. The capacity for survival depends instead on the depth of civic, infrastructural, and symbolic investmentsmadeduringtheperiodofindustrialgrowth. Baku, Comodoro Rivadavia, and Tampico offer sharply different trajectories in this regard, each revealing how the urban life of oil outlasts or collapses with its economicfoundations.

Baku’s survival was anchored not only in the continuing strategic value of its petroleum reserves but in the density of its urban form, the layering of industrial and civic infrastructures, and its incorporation into successive ideological projects. Even as regimes changed—from imperial to Soviet to post-Soviet—the city’s spatial coherence and symbolic centrality provided a framework for adaptation. Its petroleum heritage, rather than erasing previous urban layers, became one of many strata through which Baku

redefined itself. Comodoro’s endurance has been messier, shaped by the uneven legacies of nationalist industrialization and at the mercy of the country’s larger messier political history throughout the 20th century. Yet its integration into the Argentine territorial imagination, andthecontinuedpresenceofcivicinstitutionsrootedin its oil era,have allowed forits ability to remain.Tampico, by contrast,illustrates the fragility of a city whose urban development remained peripheral to its industrial function. The shift of Mexico’s oil economy offshore relegated Tampico to a secondary logistical role, while its civic core stagnated and declined. The absence of earlier infrastructural investment and symbolic rooting madepost-oiladaptationelusive,anditstransformation into a touristic hub near impossible due to the pollution created by the very industry which had made it so important. Without a durable civic substrate independent of extraction, Tampico struggled to transform its historical identity into a foundation for future growth, embodying the risks faced by cities wherecirculationeclipsessettlement.

The survival of oil cities, then, seems to hinge less on the continuity of extraction rather than on the degree to which urban life was cultivated alongside industry. Where civic infrastructures, symbolic integration, and spatial coherence were built, adaptation remains possible; where extraction was prioritized at the expense of civic investment, decline becomes a more likelyinheritance.

“Explore the architectural legacies and speculative futures of oil-driven urbanism. Juxtaposing historical research with design speculation, Oil Future/Past examines how petroleum shaped the spatial and urbanistic evolution of Baku, [Azerbaijan], Tampico [Mexico], and Comodoro Rivadavia [Argentina]. Through maps, models, and archival materials, it reveals the urban forms and material landscapes forged by extraction. A parallel design component envisions oil futures, proposing the adaptive reuse of offshore platforms for new modes of living and ecological regeneration. By bridging past and future, Oil Future/Past rethinks architecture’s role in transitioning beyond extraction.”

Iterations of the exhibition poster.

[Top] Exhibition Images

Unlike traditional design projects that rely on prescriptive plans and sections, this project presented the speculative redevelopment of oil fields through “found objects” such as invented newspapers, postcards, and archival ephemera. These narrative artifacts were used to show the story rather than tell it directly, inviting viewers to piece together imagined futures through traces of everyday life rather than fixed drawings.

OBJECTS FOUND

[Top] “Found Objects” Original artifacts and invented narratives.

By introducing both true (past) and invented (future) archival materials that mirror each other, visitors are encouraged to rethink preconceived ideas of history and architecture as well as both’s relationship to the stories of the ordinary people than inhabit cities and how they interact with their built environment.

Past

Future

Unfolded plan and elevation of the gallery space and curated exhibit.

The rectangular gallery space was divided in half, with one wall presenting the “past” and the other the “future”. Large movable blocks roughly 6’ wide and 8’ tall which are typically used for pin-ups in reviews were used to divide the space and block off the entry and exit areas. Upon entering visitors would then have the option of turning to the right or left–future or past–and then continue through the exhibit in a loop. The “Past” wall would present visual media consisting of maps and photographs documenting the history of each of the three cities through visual media with small text descriptions. The “Future” wall would somewhat mirror the “Past” by presenting this new city on the water made of the repurposed platforms of Cantarell via “found objects” rather than a typical architectural presentation. In the center would be a table holding a collection of actual items such as postcards, press photos, and magazines which I collected and had shipped from various places such as Ukraine, Estonia, Argentina, Mexico, Italy, Chile, and the Netherlands.

The “Past” Section of the exhibition would showcase the three cities’ histories through visual mediums: maps, plans, historical diagrams, photographs (both historical and modern) and newspaper clippings. Overlayed would be short descriptions explaining the history of the city to complement the visual media. Each collection of items were printed in various paper types ranging from standard plotted bond to acetate and mylar in order to create a layered visual collage of each city’s history.

The following are images of the digital twin of the collage which was made during the curation of the exhibit.

As part of the exhibit curation and general research, I searched for postcards from and of each of the cities. This started due to many of Comodoro Rivadavia’s (and to a lesser extent, Tampico’s) historical photographs being from postcards and wanting to have copies to scan properly, but over the course of my search I found that many of these held stories of the inhabitants themselves, and the places where these postcards were being shipped from also told the story of migration from places such as Italy, the Netherlands, and Germany. Unfortunately, some were lost in shipping, but the postcard on the right shows one such story, obtained in Milan.

Postcard of the refinery “Nuevos Proyectos” in Tampico, never mailed, date unknown (estimated mid ‘60s - early 70s). Obtained from Cleveland, OH.

Italian language post card, sent from Comodoro Rivadavia. Obtained in Milan.

Text Reads:

“This is the ‘big city’ 30km away. As you can see there are similar things in S. Maria delle Fabrecce. All the mountains don’t have grass because of the sandy origin, and all has the aspect of planted house in the desert. Nevertheless, Comodoro Rivadavia is an ‘important city’!”

“Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh (Magazine for all)” literary magazine, early soviet 1929, obtained from Estonia.

This edition was chosen due to the inclusion of a short story/essay regarding Baku and its oil industry called “Star Sickle”

Other items collected included magazines and press photos. The press photos originally came from the same desire for better quality scans than those available online that spurred the search for postcards. Below is one example from Baku, others are shown in the past sections (such as the refinery on page 13 and the image of the women in Baku on page 53). The magazine on the left was found by coincidence during my search for items from Baku. It is a copy of the magazine “Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh”, or, “Magazine for All” which was a soviet populist literary magazine which had a short run from 1928 to 1932. While normally having not much to do with oil or industry, what caught my eye was one of the short stories/essays which was about Baku and its relationship with oil, and compared its soviet industry to that of the American capitalists.

Text Description:

“This oil drilling rig is anchored in the Caspian Sea in a bay off Baku, capital of the Soviet Union’s Azerbaijan Republic. The platform is the fourth to be launched in the USSR’s hunt for oil in the inland sea. A crew of 30, supported by helicopter lives on the platform. (AP Wire-photo from Novosti)”

Postage stamps are typically made to commemorate special events or things which are meant to show a country’s pride. In this case, I managed to find several postage stamps relating to the oil industry in both Soviet Baku and Argentina. Below are three such examples, as well as the stamp commemorating the National Festival of Oil in Argentina on page 88.

Mail from the inaugural flight between Buenos Aires and Comodoro Rivadavia, 1962

Text Reads:

“Inaugural flight Buenos Aires-Comodoro Rivadavia with the ‘Jet’ Comet 4 - 3rd of March of 1962

CHAC EK

IXTOC

KAMBESAH

KUTZ

NOHOCH

SIHIL

TAKIN

UTAN

[Below] Images from platforms in the Cantarell Oil Field in the Bay of Campeche. The oil field has been in decline for several years, and a few have been abandoned already, begging the question how they can be reused or repurposed, especially in the face of rising sea levels in the nearby mainland region and intensifying hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico.

Traditional mexican Amate paintings can vary in style, but many typically show a village or festival in a very specific oblique style, with thick borders and very particular drawing styles. This painting was made to show the founding myth of Cantarell through this medium to connect traditional mexican craftsmanship with the more futuristic speculative narrative of an offshore city which in many ways mirrors the foundation myth of the mexica and Tenochtitlan (Mexico City).

It was like Huitzilopochtli’s divine message to the Mexica, of the eagle feasting on a snake while perched on a cactus in the lake of Texcoco. Except it was Kʼinich Ajaw now guiding us towards the vast yellow tinted city already created for us, shining in all his divine magnificence from the tip of the now extinguished flare stacks, giving them life once more. Here, above the waves, steel rose where land should have been, floating trails of chapopote leading our way.

It was here where we were led and commanded to imbue new life to where there was once extraction, to not grow from solid ground, but to forge from our sacrifices and the fire, a new city tethered to K’in by its burning towers. As the Mexica once built upon water, so to we shall anchor ourselves above the churning waves. We left our homes and cities behind us, waterlogged and destroyed as they were from the storm, but we mustn’t mourn, we must celebrate, for where there was once destruction of the natural order there shall now be life. THE FOUNDATION OF CANTARELL

The Cantarell Complex in the Bay of Campeche is a series of shallow water oil platforms, meaning that instead of the typical monolithic isolated platforms one typically imagines when thinking of oil rigs they are smaller and more decentralized, creating vast networks within networks. Each one of these individual rigs can be made up of several platforms connected to each other via bridges, typically separating programs between them. Each of these rigs then are further connected into the larger networks such as “Akal” or “Nohoch” via supply networks., Resulting in a vast circuitry of rigs.

[Right] a diagrammatic section of one of the rigs that make up Akal-C, colorcoded for different uses. This section would represent one of the earlier phases of re-use as the standard dimensions of containers which make up the infill spaces at these rigs are still maintained.

[Below] A use diagram for the rig showing the time and usage of each different space/activity, inspired by OMA’s diagram for the Yokohama masterplan project.

Time->

Industry

Market

Shopping

Cinema

Library

Eating

Leisure

Viewing Deck

Club

Sleep

ObservationDeck

“Cantarell doesn’t burn now with the angry fires that once burst from its towers. The ones that would occasionally leave their enclosures and engulf the platform in their rage. Rather than fire as destruction, the platforms now burn softly with the embers of life, quiet and nurturing...

The yellow is now joined by other colours, making the tiny platforms on the horizon look like confetti floating on the water instead of the dark oil which once coated its waves. The air still smells of brine and rust, that would always be there, but it’s joined by other smells now: that of the fishermen’s wares in the mornings as they take their daily quotas from the communally maintained farms that dot the waters below; of the spices wafting from the ventilation stacks leading to the atrium tianguis...

At dusk the horizon burns not only with the setting sun, but also with the lights from the platforms beyond as they transition from day to night...”

MUSINGS OF WHAT WAS AND WHAT NOW IS 2049

“Arte Crudo (Crude Art)” art magazine, February 2052

Articles included: “Offshore Exhibitions: How oil architecture inspires new visual narratives”, “Oil over rust: The industrial aesthetic of the contemporary maritime art”, “Vegetal life and architecture: what can we learn from it?”

“Arte Crudo (Crude Art)” art magazine, February 2054

Articles included: “The Ocean as a Canvas: Floating installations for the post-oil era”, “From the Spill to Hope: How art regenerates forgotten industrial spaces”, “Emergent Art, between Waves and Rust: Creative voices of Cantarell”

FOTODE2021DELASPLATAFORMAS

LIENZO: INSTALACIONES FLOTANTESENLA ERAPOST-PETRÓLEO ALGUNAVEZFUIMOS ANCLASDEL EXTRACTIVISMO, INCRUSTADASENELMAR PARAEXTRAERSU ENERGÍAFÓSIL.HOY FLOTAMOSCONOTROS PROPÓSITOS.ENLAERA OCÉANOPOST-PETRÓLEO,EL SEHAVUELTO NUESTROLIENZO,Y NOSOTRAS—PLATAFORMAS REIMAGINADAS—SOMOSEL ANDAMIAJEDENUEVAS FORMASDEEXPRESIÓN. ESTENÚMERONAVEGA ENTREINSTALACIONES FLOTANTESQUEDIALOGAN CONLASCORRIENTES,LA LUZ,ELCLIMAYLA MEMORIASALINADEL PAISAJEINDUSTRIAL. OBRASEFÍMERAS, SUMERGIBLES,MÓVILESO ANCLADAS,QUE ENTIENDENELAGUANO COMOOBSTÁCULO,SINO COMOSUPERFICIE ACTIVA,SENSIBLEY VIVA.DESDELOQUE ANTESFUEZONADE PRÁCTICASSACRIFICIO,EMERGENQUEVINCULAN ARTE,ECOLOGÍAY REPARACIÓN.YANO EXTRAEMOSDELMAR: AHORALOESCUCHAMOS, LOHONRAMOS,LO HABITAMOS CREATIVAMENTE.

ESPERANZA:CÓMO ELARTEREGENERA ESPACIOS INDUSTRIALES OLVIDADOS FUIMOSTESTIGOSDEL DERRAMEDE2010,UNA MANCHADEDESESPERANZA QUESEEXPANDIÓSOBRE ELOCÉANOYLAMEMORIA COLECTIVA.AQUELLA CATÁSTROFEMARCÓ IMPREGNÓNUESTROCUERPO,NUESTRAS ESTRUCTURASYNOSDEJÓ COMOVESTIGIOSDEUN TIEMPODEDESTRUCCIÓN. PEROELARTELLEGÓ,NO PARABORRARLAS HUELLAS,SINOPARA TRANSFORMARLAS.EN EXPLORAMOSESTAEDICIÓN,CÓMOLA CREACIÓNARTÍSTICAHA INTERVENIDONUESTROS ESPACIOSINDUSTRIALES, DESDELASPLATAFORMAS PETROLERASHASTALOS RINCONESOLVIDADOS, REGENERANDOLOQUEUNA VEZESTUVOMANCHADO PORELPETRÓLEO.CON CADATRAZO,CADA ESCULTURAYCADA INSTALACIÓN,LOS ESPACIOSSEHAN RECONFIGURADOCOMO TERRITORIOSDE REFLEXIÓNY RENOVACIÓN,DONDEEL DAÑOSECONVIERTEEN OPORTUNIDAD,YLA MEMORIADELDERRAMEDA PASOAUNFUTURODE SANACIÓNYESPERANZA.

Table of Content spreads created for each respective “magazine”, providing a short description of each “article” as well as a “historic” photo of one of platforms.

ENTREOLASY ÓXIDO:VOCES CREATIVASEN CANTARELL DURANTEDÉCADAS, CANTARELLSOSTUVOUNA DELASMAYORES EXTRACCIONES PETROLERASDEL PLANETA.SUS PLATAFORMAS,ANTES MOTORESDELDESARROLLO FÓSIL,HOYSEELEVAN COMOTERRITORIOSDE CREACIÓNENMEDIODEL MAR.ENTREÓXIDO, BRUMASALINAY ESTRUCTURAS SUSPENDIDAS,HA SURGIDOUNACOMUNIDAD ARTÍSTICAFLOTANTEQUE TRANSFORMALOSRESTOS DELAINDUSTRIAEN MATERIAPOÉTICA.ESTA EDICIÓNRECORRELAS VOCESQUEHABITANESTE NUEVOARCHIPIÉLAGO CULTURAL: INSTALACIONESNÓMADAS, INTERVENCIONES SONORAS,CUERPOSEN DANZACONLAS CORRIENTES.EN CANTARELL,ELARTENO SOLOOCUPAELVACÍO DEJADOPORELPETRÓLEO —LOREIMAGINA.ENTRE OLASYACERO,LO EMERGENTESEVUELVE FUERZAVITAL,SEÑALDE QUEAÚNENLOMÁS DESGASTADOPUEDE BROTARUNANUEVA SENSIBILIDAD.

The name for the magazine “Crude Art” is a play on words for crude oil, art being truest in its “raw” form, while also leaning slightly into the more humourous double-entendre of “crudo” in Mexican slang meaning “hungover”. As artists are typically one of the first to inhabit these peripheral industrial spaces it seemed fitting for one of the “found objects” for Cantarell being an art magazine. As such, two copies were “sourced” from the years 2052 and 2054, with the illustrations also being used on postcards which visitors to the exhibition could take home in addition to write their own as if writing from Cantarell to then be pinned up on the wall as part of the exhibition.

“Explore the architectural legacies and speculative futures of oil-driven urbanism. Juxtaposing historical research with design speculation, Oil Future/Past examines how petroleum shaped the spatial and urbanistic evolution of Baku, [Azerbaijan], Tampico [Mexico], and Comodoro Rivadavia [Argentina]. Through maps, models, and archival materials, it reveals the urban forms and material landscapes forged by extraction. A parallel design component envisions oil futures, proposing the adaptive reuse of offshore platforms for new modes of living and ecological regeneration. By bridging past and future, Oil Future/Past rethinks architecture’s role in transitioning beyond extraction.”

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thisresearchprojecthasbeenthreeyearsinthemaking, evolvingfromasingleclasspaperintothemassivethesis it is today. It began in Fall 2022 as a final essay for Professor Goff’s Imperial Russian History course, where I first explored the urban history of Baku—an interest sparked not from academic texts, but from a curiosity with the unique layout of the Baku street circuit of the Baku GP in Formula 1. What began as a personal curiosity gradually expanded—first with the addition of Tampico during my time in the REEES Think Tank, where I had the opportunity to present at the ASEEES national conference in Philadelphia in December 2023. It was there that I realized the potential for an even broader study,which ultimately led to the inclusion of Comodoro Rivadaviaandthedevelopmentofthisthesis.

There are many individuals and institutions without whom this project could not have been completed.First, to the many libraries and archives that made this researchpossible.TheUniversityofMiamiLibraries—and especially theirInterlibrary Loan service—were essential at every step. My thanks as well to the staff at the Biblioteca Nacional de México, UNAM’s library system, the Hemeroteca Nacional de México, the Library of Congress,theAzerbaijanNationalArchives,theNational Library of Azerbaijan, Medioteca INAH, the State Film Archive of the Republic of Azerbaijan, the archives and library of INFONAVIT, the archive at CIESS, Fototeca Comodoro Rivadavia, and all others—named and unnamed—whose digitization efforts made critical materialsaccessiblefromacrosstheworld.

I am particularly grateful to Professor Elena for her incredible patience and support throughout my final, chaoticsemester,andtoProfessorPivoforherguidance in organizing the exhibition component of this research during my independent study in architecture. I owe special thanks to Professor Christina Crawford, whose mentorship in the REEES Think Tank helped shape the initial comparative framework of this study, and to the faculty and peers in the Think Tank—Professors Fabritz, KC, and Rucker-Chang, along with the rest of my

cohort—for their encouragement in transforming a 300level paperinto a fully realized research project.I would also like to thank Professor Harling for supporting my Independent Study in Fall 2023 and serving as faculty of record in UM for my work in the Think Tank. Most importantly, I want to thank Professor Goff, whose course first set this research in motion. Her class and its final paper were the catalyst for everything that followed,includingthevastamountofopportunitiesand doorsithasopenedforme.

This project has grown far beyond what I could have imagined, and I am deeply thankful for everyone who helped make it possible.

-Catalina Cabral Framiñan

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10. Ruffini, Martha: «El tránsito trunco hacia la República Verdadera. Yrigoyenismo, ciudadanía política y Territorios Nacionales, 1916-1922», Estudios Sociales, 36, XIX, Santa Fe, 2009, 91-115.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY: FULL

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TAMPICO

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7. Herrera, Jose Antonio, and Angela Lombardi. “Introductory Approach to Eco-Hydrological Urbanism: The Adaptive Reuse of Pemex Former Refinery in Reynosa, Mexico.” International Journal of Environmental Impacts (Print) 4, no. 1 (2021): 1–13.

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GENERAL

1. Wiedmann, Florian. Building Migrant Cities in the Gulf : Urban Transformation in the Middle East, edited by Salama, Ashraf M. A.,

ProQuest (Firm). London: London : I. B. Tauris, 2019.

2. Schwantes, Benjamin. "No Title." Iranian Studies 36, no. 3 (2003): 431433. http://www.jstor.org.access.library.miami.edu/stable/4311564.

3. Salama, Ashraf M. A. Demystifying Doha : On Architecture and Urbanism in an Emerging City, edited by Wiedmann, Florian, Ebooks Corporation. Farnham, Surrey: Farnham, Surrey : Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2013.

CATALINA CABRAL FRAMIÑAN