Ecological Planning in Santiago, Chile. How Far Are We? Classification of Planning Initiatives Based on a Brief Literature Review

By the mid-twenty-first century, it is expected that over 65% of the world’s population will live in urban areas. The shift will entail the conversion of natural areas into cities. The inclusion of these natural areas poses new challenges for spatial planning that can be addressed in a new approach to spatial planning that incorporates features of the natural environment. This new approach is appropriately called ecological planning. The purpose of this study is to understand the current planning trends in Santiago, capital of Chile, and evaluate how spatial planning initiatives are conducted in relation to concepts inherent to ecological planning. To achieve this, we conducted a general literature review on ecological planning and a study of the planning initiatives developed in Santiago. Our results indicate that urban planning in Santiago has so far focused on three sets of ecological planning concepts. First, within the urban area, there is a set of instruments and initiatives that narrow down the incorporation of ecology to the planning of green areas. The second group–implemented outside the urban area–focuses on planning biodiversity and nature. The third, a broader set of concepts, associates the aforementioned groups to concepts related to landscape ecology. It is not common to find initiatives that promote concepts such as corridors and natural environments to improve quality of life. Instead, there are unincorporated concepts such as resilience, urban infrastructure, sustainability, and climate change. Overall, we believe that the integration of contemporary concepts is needed to implement an ecological planning perspective in Santiago; defining it as an urban region with integrated urban and periurban ecosystems