Villa Carlos Paz

Villa Carlos Paz is with 56 407 inhabitants ( 2001), the fourth largest city in the province of Cordoba, in central Argentina and an important tourist center.

Location

Carlos Paz is located at 600 meters above sea level in the central west of the province at the mouth of the Río San Antonio in the reservoir Lago San Roque in the Valle de Punilla, between the Sierra Grande in the west and the Sierra Chica in the east, which belong to the Sierras de Córdoba. The most striking point is the 950 meter high Cerro La Cruz, just east of the city.

In the agglomeration of the city ( including San Antonio de Arredondo, Mayu Sumaj, Icho Cruz, Cuesta Blanca and Tanti ) live about 75,000 inhabitants, and growing. The entire metropolitan area around Lago San Roque until after Cosquín has around 120,000 inhabitants.

History

Villa Carlos Paz was founded in 1914 by the landowner Carlos Paz Nicandro, shortly after it was built near the San Roque Dam, which supplies millions of Córdoba, including drinking water and energy. After a few years, Carlos Paz at a resort town, the population grew very quickly. Today Carlos Paz is also become a dormitory suburb of the provincial capital, to whose metropolitan area it belongs to.

Economy

Carlos Paz is known primarily as a tourist center, where it occupies third place in the national statistics behind Mar del Plata and Bariloche. About two million tourists visit the city each year. In the surrounding area you can swim, hiking, kayaking, sailing and paragliding. For families there are theme parks and a chairlift to Cerro La Cruz. Another attraction is the night life with several theaters, casinos and discos in the shifting a large part of the scene of Córdoba in the summer.

In the summer there are various events in Carlos Paz, but among other things, concerts and festivals of all kinds The biggest event of the year is the World Rally Championship round in May or June, which attracts tens of thousands of onlookers.

Ecological problems

The unconditional growth of tourism and at the same time the permanent resident population in the city has led to a number of environmental problems. The most serious problem is the scarcity of water: Since the water dispenser of the city, the river Río San Antonio, in the dry winter months leads little water, its water volume is now no longer sufficient to satisfactorily fill the reservoir and at the same time to meet the water needs of the growing population. The result are forced rationing especially in the spring and fish kills in the lake. Furthermore, the pollution of the lake and the river is already so far advanced, that can not be bathed in a radius of ten kilometers around the city. There is also in the city already has a strong air pollution, particularly in summer.

Despite this generally associated with large industrial cities problems will continue to put on growth, rethinking, or at least regulating the growth hardly takes place. The city even tried einzugemeinden wide lands from the surrounding area to gain more room for new construction projects. This also leads to a strong landscape consumption: In the metropolitan area between Cuesta Blanca in the south and Cosquín in the north and Tanti in the West there is an area of ​​70 kilometers in length and up to 15 kilometers wide, barely significant green spaces, apart from the uncultivated steep mountain slopes.

Environment

20 km south of Carlos Paz, near the village of Cuesta Blanca, Playa de los hippies is a former refuge from political persecution dropouts in an isolated valley. Today it is a popular destination for camping tourists.

Twinning

Provinces of Argentina Departments of Argentina Punilla Department San Roque Lake San Carlos de Bariloche Tanti, Córdoba
804908
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