Socio-Spatial Differentiation. Drivers, Risks and Opportunities

The unmistakeable pattern that has long divided Santiago de Chile into the ‘rich’ northeastern municipalities and the ‘poor’ rest of the city has recently begun to change. Little is known about the mechanisms that drive these processes of socio-spatial differentiation and their associated opportunities and risks. This chapter explores three trends in socio-spatial change for 39 municipalities of the Greater Metropolitan Area of Santiago: demographic variables such as population trends and intra-metropolitan migration streams, housing and land market trends with respect to construction volume, building permits and land prices, and finally state housing policy with particular reference to social housing programmes. The analysis shows that in combination, these trends have supported the formation of two extreme types of socio-spatial conditions in various locations throughout the city. The chapter stresses the prominent role of state housing programmes. While the contemporary debate on these aspects focuses to a large extent on the agglomeration of low-income groups in social housing schemes on the periphery, the results suggest that the housing policy should give attention to some of the more central locations, where the move towards gentrification could cause the displacement of low-income groups in the future