This article deals with the interest of the Academia on social matters in relation with territory and cities; and urban development initiatives implemented in Chile. It analyses the changing relationship between social sciences according to an academic vision and the planning policies generated by local and national authorities that propose public projects and programmes for the development of the city, generating conflicts as well as a necessary and contradictory process of urbanisation. This process, has gone through various stages and its evolution combines different temporal and territorial spaces. In this article, it is possible to identify a renovation of these efforts since the Bicentenary Programme, by which the State of Chile plans...