Gated communities and large scale residential developments in Santiago, Chile, 1995/2005 ¿consequences of urban regulation?

Abstract

Santiago has been growing rapidly during the last decade and most of the new housing development within the consolidate area, around the periurban areas and even more in the periphery, just in the edge of the city, is taking place under a type of housing called “gated communities”. There are all kind of them, smaller, medium and bigger, insert in the traditional urban grill or outside it, for low, medium and high income people. In the last five years we can realize that the scale of gated communities is increasing, both in number and in sizes, generating a fragmented city that is changing the urban image, the urban structure and the way of living the city. This paper is the starting point a new research that wanted to look at the impact or the influence that changes in the urban legislation that has took place in the last decade has contributed to an increase in this way of building the city. We are taking specifically about the urban regulation that has define three types of intervention in urban areas or for creating urban areas, they are the zone called ZODUC (Zona de Desarrollo Urbano Condicionado), the zone AUDP (Area de Desarrollo Urbano Prioritario), and the Project called PDUC (Proyectos con Desarrollo Urbano Condicionados). They define the scale of the project or the minimum hectares of the zone, the regulation within the zone and the percentage of social housing they should include, the development in stages, and other specific regulation. Finally the law, Ley de Copropiedad Inmobiliaria (1997), that has allow the development of the condominium or gated communities. We will like to answer questions as follows: - Is this new legislation benefiting the entrepreneurs, the new residents or the city as a hole? - Why is that people is choosing this way of living, more and more enclosed, with services and amenities only for the residents, is that people doesn’t want to share with different people? - Why building entrepreneurs prefers to developed this kind of housing development, is just because it is easier, it increase their profit, why they have convinced the new families so rapidly? - It is only a problem of security or also a matter of status, social and economic? - How the new communities integrated the “traditional city”?, do they integrated?