Exploring the periurban residential areas in Santiago de Chile: The asymmetric residential model between Corporate and State residential areas in Lampa 2000-2010

Abstract

In the last two decades Santiago exhibited an intensive urban development characteristic for a change in the residential model. At the turn of the nineties, the role of the central and regional State changed from being the main agent of urban development via housing programs into a minor actor – though still maintaining its activities – when private agents began their sophisticated participation through the creation of a new generation of urban landscapes i.e. malls, satellite towns, private highways, etc. The scientific work is focused on the emergence of a more complex and diversified urbanization model, particularly visible in peri-urban territories of the regional Santiago where private satellite towns co-exist with social housing estates. As an attempt to contribute to the still incomplete understanding of the complex phenomenon of metropolitan development of Santiago, this thesis aimed at study the residential development in the peri-urban commune of Lampa for the period of 2000-2012. Interviews with inhabitants and experts in combination with statistical analysis were used to analyze how this process involved profound transformations in the local urban policy, landscape, as well as new expressions of social inequality. The main findings describe a periphery in Santiago that is no longer defined by slums or merely social housing suburbs. Instead, they embody an unprecedented asymmetric residential model with shared action of holdings companies and the urban development led by the central-regional state. Consequences were: (1) Two differentiated urban development agendas were established between an urbanism of holdings with the primary aim of economic growth and the development of social housing estates led by the regional and local government aimed to deliver standardized welfare programs. (2) Residential areas exhibit strongly differentiated neighbourhood infrastructure between “holding” and social housing projects. (3) A social morphology was configured that does not exactly mirror the material quality of residential areas, i.e. high private standard vs. precarious public urbanity. It rather shapes a fragmented cartography of wellbeing which additionally encompasses new forms of poverty in peri-urban ghettos, and also social vulnerability of emerging middle income groups in private residential areas. In contrast to the image of the peri-urbia as calm and non-political territory, Lampa embodies a socially complex residential model where new expressions of social exclusion emerge that reach beyond the classical division between private and the suburbia composed by social housing projects. Both, local and regional governments lack instruments to overcome the new urban quality gaps between the “holding” and social housing areas. They neither are able to guide the metropolitan development toward the achievement of basic standards in peri-urban town centers.