The Political Economy of Land Use Governance in Santiago, Chile & Its Implications for Class-Based Segregation

II.  Background: Residential Segregation in Santiago, Chile, and its Institutional Dimension

This paper builds on two premises. The first premise is that residential segregation along socioeconomic lines is an extensive and problematic phenomenon in Santiago, Chile, from a theoretical and empirical perspective. The second premise is that the legal and political structure governing cities, especially in the realm of land use regulation, plays an important role in residential segregation. These two premises will be developed in the following paragraphs.

A.  The Problematic Nature of Residential Segregation in Santiago

The term “residential segregation” can be understood as a type of social segregation that refers to the “the degree to which two or more groups live separately from one another, in different parts of the urban environment.”²⁶ Residential segregation is a problematic phenomenon because it usually leads to inequality.²⁷ Segregated social groups have less access to social and economic opportunities that can help them overcome their disadvantaged situation.²⁸

Although racial and socioeconomic residential segregation is a global social phenomenon, its main characteristics and causes may vary from country to country and city to city.²⁹ How extensive is socioeconomic residential segregation in Santiago, Chile? What are the factors that led to it?

Santiago, like many other Latin American cities, has had significant changes in its traditional urban development pattern.³⁰ It has been argued that the traditional pattern of segregation in Latin America was characterized by what has been called “high-scale” segregation, which refers to a pattern of territorial concentration of upper classes in a certain area of the city — the east part of Santiago — with the vertex in the downtown area, and to extensive zones with agglomerations of low-income families in peripheral areas, far from the city’s downtown and with low quality public services.³¹

This pattern has been changing in recent decades. New alternatives of urban developments for high-income families and new business centers outside downtown and surrounding areas have emerged.³² The prices of land have been increasing, leaving almost no opportunity for low-income families to purchase housing in well-located places.³³ Finally, a new type of concentrated urban poverty, with similar characteristics to American ghettos, has arisen in Latin America, and the interaction in urban spaces among different social class groups has become less frequent.³⁴

The recent changes in the pattern of residential segregation in Santiago are, at least in part, caused by legal and economic reforms that were implemented in Chile by the dictatorship regime between 1973 and 1990 and continued afterwards by the democratic governments.³⁵ The military government implemented substantial reforms toward the deregulation of urban land markets.³⁶ Along with strengthening private property rights in the constitution of 1980, the regime expanded urban boundaries, eliminated some regulations and property taxes that affected the urban market, sold public urban land, divided the metropolitan area into more municipalities, regularized illegal settlements, and moved other settlements that were placed in high-income areas to the periphery of the city.³⁷ Indeed, one of the poorest municipalities in Santiago, La Pintana, was created on the urban edge of Santiago to receive a significant number of families living in slums that were located in the upper-class zone of the city.³⁸ The assumption of the military government reforms was that with a free market functioning properly, the increase of urban prices and developers’ speculation with the land would be neutralized. None of these things has occurred.³⁹ The deregulation of the urban market has promoted alternative models of development that, in some cases, have led to more physical proximity between high-, middle-, and low-income neighborhoods.⁴⁰ However, the rising prices have established more obstacles to the integration of low-income families into wealthier neighborhoods.⁴¹

Consistent with the deregulation reform of the urban land market, the dictatorship implemented a new model of housing policy based on subsidies programs aimed at stimulating the market to provide housing for the poor. As Sugranyes argues, even though these programs were internationally perceived as demand subsidies targeted to the promotion of homeownership for the poor, during their first decades of operation (1980s and 1990s) they actually worked as supply subsidies.⁴² The MHU, through its regional agency (SERVIU), organized public auctions for the construction of social housing projects, and assigned the construction to the private developer who would offer to build the defined number of housing units at the cheapest price.⁴³ The main objective of this policy was to reduce the housing deficit existing in Chile, and it was quite successful in achieving this goal. The annual production of social housing units increased from 22,000 units in 1982 to 142,000 units in 1997.⁴⁴ However, another problem started to emerge as a consequence of the same policy: the creation of large and isolated neighborhoods of low-income families in the periphery of Chilean cities. The reason was that localization was never a relevant dimension in the implementation of these programs, and because the government paid a fix amount of money per unit constructed, private developers maximized their profit by con- structing those units on cheap land.⁴⁵

These legal mechanisms are largely responsible for the creation of big and isolated ghettos of poverty in Chilean cities. A recent study conducted in the 25 biggest cities in Chile, which includes 67% of the population of the country, shows that there are 64 ghettos in Chile, where 1,684,190 people live.⁴⁶ This means that approximately 10% of Chile’s inhabitants live in ghettos.⁴⁷ Forty-four percent of people living in ghettos live in Santiago, which constitutes the most populous ghetto of the country.⁴⁸ In part because of the increased segregation that resulted from these social housing programs, significant reforms to the housing assistance programs were created in the beginning of this century to promote the opposite policy outcome.⁴⁹

Today, the quality of life of the residents in Chile is better than it was thirty years ago due to the recent decades of economic growth and redistributive policies. A recent study of Santiago shows that the level of inequality among districts has decreased, and that the quality of housing and durable goods of the population has increased.⁵⁰ In terms of income, there are peripheral and central districts that show similar levels of either income homogeneity or heterogeneity.⁵¹ However, the data shows that the poorest and the wealthiest districts are the most homogeneous in terms of income.⁵² Citizens with the highest level of education are concentrated in only a few municipalities; and, concomitantly those municipalities also have very few people with little education.⁵³ Indeed, there are three districts that tend to be hugely superior to the others in terms of housing quality, access to durable goods, and income per capita.⁵⁴ It seems that poverty and wealth are still very concentrated in Santiago.

Now, the fact that the poor (and the rich) are territorially isolated in Santiago leads to the question of whether this is a problematic phenomenon that urges a response from the law and public policy. Indeed, there is a large body of research that suggests that neighborhood context affects individual and social outcomes. Empirical evidence in the United States suggests that residential segregation, based on class or race, has negative effects on residents and the city as a whole.⁵⁵ A well-known paper in the field shows that minority groups that are segregated are in worse condition than those who are integrated with other communities in terms of exposure to education, outcomes, and commuting time to work.⁵⁶ A similar study focused on Chile shows that residential segregation has negative effects on the poor regarding variables such as preschool attendance, school dropout, poorer grades in school, and economic inactivity of young people.⁵⁷ Another recently published study that compared social housing projects with different levels of territorial isolation, finds that communities living in more segregated housing projects have less social mobility, higher rates of unemployment of the head of household, higher rates of economic inactivity of the head of household’s partner, longer commuting time to work, and access to lower quality jobs. Also, they have a more negative perception of the neighborhood where they live and a higher desire to leave that place.⁵⁸

This question also has normative implications regarding the ideal model of the “city” that should be promoted by the law. An in-depth discussion of this debate is beyond the scope of this work. However, it must be said that “city life” is usually associated with the possibility of interaction among different social groups.⁵⁹ Indeed, that interaction is actually very real in many places of a city, especially in public spaces like the downtown area or public parks, and it is plausible to argue that social interaction between different groups is something that has normative value because it helps people respect differences and to empathize with those they consider different.⁶⁰ Creating and protecting isolated communities goes against this normative ideal.⁶¹

B.  Competing Models of Land Use Governance

There are many reasons why people decide to live in homogeneous communities that create a pattern of social fragmentation. Gerald Frug offers three explanations for this phenomenon: psychological, sociological, and political.⁶² The psychological explanation associates people’s desire to live in a homogeneous neighborhood with a psychological characteristic developed during adolescence.⁶³ Adolescence, according to this view, is the moment in life when people define their identities in response to the fear they feel for living in times of uncertainty and complexity.⁶⁴ The idea of living in a homogeneous community reflects the same behavior learned during adolescence, as a reaction to the uncertainties and complexities produced by urban life.⁶⁵ The sociological explanation is related to a long tradition of a negative perception about city life. This negative perception can be divided into two basic complaints about cities: their physical conditions and the people who live in them.⁶⁶ With regards to this last claim, Frug affirms that in the United States there is a long tradition of perceiving cities as areas populated by ¨the mob,”⁶⁷ nowadays usually in reference to poor African American communities. The political explanation is related to the use of political and legal power to separate residential areas in terms of class and ethnic criteria.⁶⁸ This research focuses on this third explanation for residential segregation.

What the political dimension calls into attention is that residential segregation is not only a natural phenomenon. It is true that many people want to live with those they perceive as part of their community.⁶⁹ Generally speaking, people tend to be more open to share spaces with ¨strangers¨ at work or in public places such as parks, shopping malls, and business districts, but when deciding where to locate their home, the sense of community becomes stronger and more exclusive.⁷⁰ However, residential segregation cannot be only understood as a spontaneous social process. It is also the result of legal and policy instruments used to divide different groups of people within a city.⁷¹

The growth and development of urban areas is a significantly regulated process. Public institutions at all levels make policy decisions and use legal instruments that affect the way cities develop. When a public institution decides to construct a freeway that connects a suburb with the city, it is promoting one type of urban development. The same occurs with decisions on public transportation, social housing, property taxes, urban renewal projects, and others. There are many legal and policy decisions that shape the way metropolitan areas look, which impact the way their residents live. These decisions also affect the lives of residents from adjoining neighborhoods. Most of these decisions are made by municipal corporations that control urban development under their city’s jurisdiction. Some cities have only one institution that governs the urban space, and some others have many.⁷²

These legal and policy decisions that shape the urban development of a city constitute what I refer to in this paper as land use governance regime.⁷³ Now, there is not a unique form of structuring land use governance. On the contrary, the ways these regulatory powers are structured usually respond to conflicting visions of how cities’ land use ought to be governed. Different, and sometimes conflicting, theoretical models compete to guide the design and implementation of a land use governance system.

A very influential approach to land use governance is the “localist” model, which favors the fragmentation of large metropolitan areas into small, homogeneous communities to control the urban development of those territories.⁷⁴ Three arguments are usually mentioned to support a strong commitment towards localism. The first one is citizen participation.⁷⁵ The argument is that the best way to promote citizen participation in public affairs is through small governments.⁷⁶ This line of argument affirms that a small local government is the only institutional context capable of creating an immediate relationship with residents that incentivizes their participation in the polis’ affairs.⁷⁷ The territorial and demographic scale of metropolitan areas makes impossible the real engagement of citizens in the problems affecting their territories, and hinders the possibility of real civic participation of the residents.⁷⁸ This argument also affirms that small local governments are more likely to be responsive to the demands of the residents.⁷⁹ In other words, citizens’ voices would be listened to more locally than at the metropolitan level.

The second argument is efficiency,⁸⁰ which has been strongly defended by the “public choice” school based on the work of Charles Tiebout.⁸¹ This school argues that the fragmentation of metropolitan areas into multiple local governments leads “to a more efficient allocation of public goods and services.”⁸² The territorial fragmentation of cities among many municipalities creates a sort of a market model where local governments compete to attract residents to their districts.⁸³ Residents would go to the district that best fits with their personal preferences. In other words, they would “vote with their feet.”⁸⁴ A centralized government would not be able to create this consumer- based scenario and the distribution of public goods would not accurately reflect the preference of metropolitan citizens.⁸⁵

The third argument refers to the idea of community.⁸⁶ Authors who defend localism usually argue that the sense of community is felt more strongly in local governments.⁸⁷ Small local governments have the power to shape the character of their districts, creating a community among people with similar values and desires.⁸⁸ This ideal cannot be fulfilled in large-scale urban areas, where the diversity of people’s ideas and preferences cannot be avoided.⁸⁹ For this line of thought, it is only at the local level where people are able to use legal powers to create true communities.⁹⁰

Professors Richard Briffault and Sheryll Cashin have expressed a degree of skepticism about the localist model that has governed most of U.S. metropolitan areas.⁹¹ Cashin argues that the fragmentation of American cities has led to the emergence of a parochial spirit where citizens are blind to the social and economic situation that occurs across the borders of their districts.⁹² This fragmented institutional design makes them unable to empathize with those who are not members of their local communities.⁹³ The argument becomes even stronger when considering the fact that many social groups have used this institutional framework to exclude people according to race and class criteria.⁹⁴

The general view that Cashin proposes is that local fragmentation tends to benefit the position of what she calls “the favored quarter,” which are high-class districts or suburbs that get the majority of metropolitan public investments, and have the lowest barriers for civic participation.⁹⁵ The favored quarter usually is able to strengthen their fiscal position, hindering the possibilities of redistribution to low-income areas.⁹⁶

Briffault identifies several problems regarding the division of metropolitan areas into multiple local governments. The first one is what he called the “spillover problem,” which refers to the existence of local boundaries that exclude people that are actually affected by local decisions, but cannot participate in the decision-making process because they are not residents of the district.⁹⁷ This problem is very relevant today in metropolitan areas because people tend to participate in their daily activities in many jurisdictions. Usually they sleep in one district but have their labor activities in another territory.⁹⁸

The second problem is what he called the “aggregate regional consequences of locally bounded regulation.”⁹⁹ Briffault argues that in contemporary metropolises, important externalities about urban life are the consequence of aggregate local legal decisions.¹⁰⁰ For instance, through local regulation, local governments from high-income districts can increase the housing costs of their jurisdictions in order to exclude those who are not able to contribute to the local wealth.¹⁰¹ This type of decision made by groups of local governments impacts the geographic distribution of citizens who require affordable housing, forcing them to get housing far from developed metropolitan zones.¹⁰²

Finally, the third problem that Briffault identifies refers to the idea of a “metropolitan community.”¹⁰³ In his view, boundaries not only recognize existing political communities, but many times they create communities.¹⁰⁴ By establishing small local governments within a metropolitan area, the law hinders the possibility of creating a metropolitan community in itself.¹⁰⁵ With this institutional design, citizens’ concern would focus on local affairs rather than the problems of the whole metropolitan area.¹⁰⁶

The problems behind localism have led Professors Cashin and Briffault to propose a structural reform to the current pattern of metropolitan governance, where the metropolis could constitute a political unit.¹⁰⁷ This aspiration would require legal reforms to moderate the regulatory powers of local municipalities while creating political institutions with legal powers at the metropolitan level.¹⁰⁸

Of course, land use legal practices are usually an expression of a mix of different theoretical ideas on how to regulate the development of urban areas. There is not a unique model guiding land use regulatory practices in contemporary metropolitan areas. Also, these institutional practices cannot be blamed as the only factor driving the pattern of residential segregation along race and class within a city. However, they are an important variable, which can be used politically to produce certain outcomes, such as the exclusion of undesired groups of people. Therefore, land use legal structure and practices, and their causes and implications, should be subject to serious analysis.

III.  Chile’s Land Use Legal Framework

Urban land use law has to do with the principles and rules that govern the development and transformation of urban territories. It regulates the decision-making processes that define how urban land may be used. In other words, it constitutes the legal framework of the public policies that shape urban land. One of its central issues is the allocation of power over land to public agencies and private landowners.¹⁰⁹

The traditional justification for this power is that city life generates a number of externalities that the law has to control. The aggregation of individual decisions on urban land may cause significant social costs to an urban community like traffic, pollution, insecurity, and overcrowding.¹¹⁰ Then, land use law needs to ensure that those social costs are internalized.¹¹¹ As Foster notes, “[t]he notion that property is inextricably part of a network of social and economic relationships, and that its impacts traverse legally defined boundaries and relationships, is now deeply enshrined in our regulation of public and private land.”¹¹²

In addition to the classical objectives of land use regulation of preventing externalities, there are new purposes that contemporary cities are required to fulfill. New standards in the protection of cities’ environments and their cultural heritage, for instance, call for new approaches to the law governing cities. In the same sense, land use regulation has to deal with the barriers for the provision of social housing, and with the demand for more equality in access to cities’ opportunities for all its residents.¹¹³

An important aspect of land use regulation is that it affects many other policies. Public policies require the use of urban land in many areas, such as education, health, housing, and infrastructure. The geographic distribution of these policies is affected in crucial ways by the rules governing each of the affected territories.

The legal framework of Chilean land use regulation consists of multiple norms granting regulatory powers to many public institutions.¹¹⁴ The main statute governing Chile’s land use law is the General Law of Urban Planning and Construction, approved in 1975,¹¹⁵ during the military dictatorship, without Congressional deliberation.¹¹⁶ This statute has been amended more than twenty times in its thirty-seven years in force,¹¹⁷ which reflects the rapid evolution of ideas and problems in the realm of city regulation. This statute has broad delegations to the General Ordinance for Urban Planning and Construction, which is a set of rules adopted in 1992 by the President (Executive Power), through its Ministry of Housing and Urbanism (“MHU”).¹¹⁸ The role of the Ordinance is to implement the general rules established by the General Act. The Ordinance has more than 350 pages of text and has been amended more than sixty times since its creation,¹¹⁹ which exemplifies the complexity of the Chilean land use legal framework.

The General Law of Urban Planning and Construction and the Ordinance, establish the core of the legal structure governing land use.¹²⁰ Together with establishing a substantive set of rules about the uses of urban land, it recognizes the power of some public institutions to shape the urban land under their jurisdictions.

The three most important land use regulatory powers that can be exercised on Chilean urban land, according to the law, are (1) urban plans, (2) administrative authorizations, and (3) expropriation.¹²¹ These three powers have to be exercised according to the substantive rules established by the General Act and the Ordinance.

Urban plans are the institutional expression of the power of urban planning. Under Chilean law, this refers to the processes related to the organization and regulation of the development of urban centers, in accordance with the social and economic policies of the corresponding geographic level (national, regional, and municipal).¹²²

In Chile, the law recognizes four territorial levels of urban plans: (1) national, (2) regional, (3) interdistrict or metropolitan, and (4) district.¹²³ The MHU has the authority to elaborate a national urban plan.¹²⁴ Each of the fifteen regions into which Chile is divided may enact its own urban regional plan, which has to be established by the regional department of the MHU (SEREMI), with the approval of the Regional Council.¹²⁵ The same regional agency elaborates the interdistrict or metropolitan urban plan, which has to be authorized by the regional authority elected by the President (“Intendente”).¹²⁶ Also, for these plans, the municipalities that govern the districts affected by the plan are consulted.¹²⁷ Finally, each municipality into which a city is divided, following a strict procedure, establishes its own district urban plan. This, among other requirements, has to be discussed with the neighbors of the district, approved by the Municipal Council, and submitted to the corresponding SEREMI.¹²⁸

The most important function of urban plans is to define land use regimes.¹²⁹ These regimes include the definition of urban boundaries and the uses of urban land within those boundaries. If a piece of land is out- side the urban boundary, the only possibility for the owner to develop the land is to request a change in the use of that land, which implies modifying the corresponding urban plan. Within the urban limits, the regional/ metropolitan and the district plans are the main instrument that governs the use of land.¹³⁰ Typically, these plans establish different zones for distinct land uses: residential, commercial, public services, public spaces, and infrastructure. For each of these uses, the urban plan establishes rules about its intensity: density, constructability coefficient, coefficient of occupation of land, heights and gradients, etc.

The second expression of the land use power has to do with administrative authorizations.¹³¹ Each urban development project has to be authorized by the Department of Municipal Works in the municipality where the project is located,¹³² and without this permission, the work may not be executed.¹³³ The same institution has power to inspect and to verify that the construction complies with the corresponding urban rules.¹³⁴ Administrative authorizations are constrained by law, and there is not much space for innovation using this regulatory power.

Finally, a third type of land use power is expropriation.¹³⁵ The General Law of Urban Planning and Construction authorizes urban expropriations only in cases in which a municipality requires private land in order to create public use areas, or to comply with the rules of the district plan.¹³⁶ The owner of the land, in every case, has the right to compensation for the patrimonial harm suffered.¹³⁷

The following chart presents a summary of the regulatory powers and the public institutions involved:

Figure 1: Regulation Powers, Public Institutions Political Dependencies138

From this brief description of the regulatory powers governing city land use, it is clear that multiple actors, using different legal instruments, ultimately define the way Chilean cities develop. In the elaboration of urban plans, for example, at least five types of institutions participate depending on the geographical level: the MHU, SEREMIs, the regional council, municipalities’ mayors and their staff, and the municipal council. These institutions have different political dependencies.¹³⁹ Some of them are subordinated to the Chilean President; others depend on popular vote.¹⁴⁰ In the case of Santiago, for instance, land use powers are exercised by the MHU, the regional SEREMI, and by each of the fifty-two municipalities in which the metropolitan region is divided. Therefore, many different political actors are involved in shaping the city and the distribution of its residents.¹⁴¹

Urban plans are the main instruments that regulate the concrete urban development processes of Chilean cities. At the national level, the government recently published the “National Policy of Urban Development,” which constitutes a set of ambitious general principles and objectives that should guide the development of Chilean urban areas. But, its implementation would depend on future legal and institutional reforms, which have not occurred yet. Regional urban plans are non-binding documents aimed at coordinating urban development efforts in a particular region. As of 2012, only three out of fifteen regions had enacted a regional urban plan.¹⁴² The actual binding planning instruments that set the concrete rules for implementing development projects in urban areas are the interdistrict or metropolitan plans and the district plans. Santiago, for instance, is governed by a metropolitan plan adopted in 1994, and by the several district plans that have been approved over the years. Therefore, two are main actors: MHU, which, as the executive authority in the realm of housing and urban planning, is entitled to develop the national, regional, and interdistrict plans and issues guidelines to municipalities for the implementation of the General Act and the Ordinance, and municipalities, which elaborate the district plans and make daily decisions that impact the organization of the city.¹⁴³

IV.  The Political Economy of Land Use Governance in Santiago, Chile

A.  Land Use Institutional Choices and Practices

This section presents the results of the empirical investigation on how the legal framework that was described in the previous section operates in practice in Santiago, Chile, what political forces influence this legal regime, and how those institutional practices might affect the pattern of class-based residential segregation.

The power that allows the most discretion in the hands of public officials is the authority to elaborate urban plans. With this instrument, the MHU and municipalities are able to define the character of the territories under their jurisdiction.¹⁴⁴ Real estate developers design their projects under the set of rules governing the place where they locate their buildings.¹⁴⁵ Thus, the regulatory instruments established by political institutions guide the developments and have a strong impact on the value of a district’s property. Also, they impact the geographic distribution of people within the city.

Administrative authorizations are very constrained by law, at least in the perception of the public officials in charge.¹⁴⁶ There is not much space for innovation using this legal power. Regarding the power of expropriation, interviewees noted that it is rarely used.

In the case of Santiago, as was mentioned above, the main legal instruments that set the rules for urban development are the metropolitan plan and municipalities’ plans.¹⁴⁷ The main role of the metropolitan plan is to define the urban boundaries, set the rules for infrastructure that has a metropolitan impact, and to fix the average or maximum density that can be authorized by district plans, among other functions.¹⁴⁸ The district plan is responsible for regulating the concrete urban development of its jurisdiction in harmony with the provisions of the metropolitan plan.¹⁴⁹ It defines the different uses of the municipality’s jurisdiction and the rules for each of those uses identified, such as construction standards like density and height.¹⁵⁰ These are not very flexible instruments, and require complex bureaucratic processes for any amendment.¹⁵¹ Also, their main focus is the organization of the building and physical development of the city; other aspects of urban life like the problem of residential segregation are generally not considered in these documents.¹⁵² With respect to social housing, the metropolitan plan has experimented with some provisions that allow the development of urban areas outside the urban boundary on the condition of a quota of social housing units.¹⁵³ However, to date, no affordable housing unit has been constructed through this mechanism, which casts doubts about the strategy followed.¹⁵⁴ Also, considering the problem of residential segregation that has occurred through the massive construction of affordable housing in the periphery of Chile’s urban areas, it is questionable whether incentivizing social housing outside the urban boundaries is a reasonable idea.¹⁵⁵ The interviews with local officials did not indicate experiences where explicit provisions have been included in district plans to promote affordable housing in those territories.

The interviews conducted show different perceptions about the distribution of urban regulatory powers in Santiago. However, despite a long tradition of centralized power, the evidence seems to indicate that local governments are increasing their level of autonomy. As Figure 2a¹⁵⁶ shows, considering the whole metropolitan area, forty of the fifty-two municipalities have urban plans in force. The metropolitan plan regulates ten municipalities that do not have plans, whereas two do not provide information about the legal instrument that governs land use in these territories. Some of the municipalities have very outdated plans, while others have very updated ones. Indeed, as Figure 2b¹⁵⁷ shows, in recent decades, municipalities have been highly active in approving urban plans for their jurisdictions. Indeed, in the last decade, twenty-one municipalities passed a new district urban plan. This should not be a surprising fact, given that one explicit policy of the MHU in the last decades has been to encourage local governments to elaborate their corresponding urban plans.¹⁵⁸

How autonomous are municipalities’ urban plans from the metropolitan plan? No unanimous response to this question was found. It is interesting to note that those public officials who work in wealthy municipalities considered that their regulatory power is more autonomous¹⁵⁹ than what was perceived by public officials from middle or low-income districts.¹⁶⁰ It is interesting to contrast these perceptions with the opinion of the attorney and the MHU public official interviewed for this project, both of whom acknowledged a strong degree of autonomy in the hands of each municipality.¹⁶¹ Thus, the  

Figure 2a: Number of Municipalities with Urban Plans Before & After 1994

Figure 2b: Historical Evolution of the Approvals of Municipal Urban Plans

possibilities for autonomy and innovative action under the restrictions imposed by the metropolitan plan are perceived in different ways by the actors involved in land use governance. Overall, however, it seems that this degree of autonomy has been growing with time, and now a municipality that has the resources and staff to produce innovative changes in the regulation of its territory can do so, using either the zoning power or other regulatory mechanisms.

The interviews also show that the actors involved in land use regulation in Santiago influence each other. There is a process of negotiation whenever one of these actors has to make a decision that will affect other parts of the metropolitan area. An interesting example happened with a low-income municipality that does not have its own urban plan, and hence is governed by the metropolitan plan. How- ever, when the metropolitan plan was in the process of elaboration, the officials from that municipality negotiated certain regulatory outcomes with the Ministry. In particular, they wanted to stop the process of shaping that jurisdiction into a ghetto of poverty. A public official reported the following to that effect:

In the moment of the elaboration of the metropolitan plan, I am referring to 1995 more or less, we had a strong participation. I mean, we proposed some crucial issues that finally were approved. Not all of them, but the most important ones. This has to do with what we wanted, as a very top priority, to stop the process of transforming this district in the depositary of the poor from all over the metropolitan region . . . . Thus, our intention was to stop this process abruptly, completely, because if not, we would have ended being an unviable district. We achieved this, through the metropolitan plan, by leaving land out of the urban development; I would say, more than two-thirds of the territory of the district.¹⁶²

The story told by the public official is a good example of a negotiation process between a municipality and the MHU in the definition of certain rules that govern the city. It implies that the legal structure that governs city land use works through multiple actors with some degree of autonomy and discretion, and that there is space to negotiate decisions that may affect different parts of the metropolitan area.

Another interesting aspect that emerged from the interviews is that public officials use more mechanisms that shape the city’s land use than what we can infer by only analyzing the law on the books, especially at the municipal level. One of these mechanisms, which does not have a binding effect on private developers, is the “district development plan” (“plan de desarrollo comunal”).¹⁶³ In these plans, each municipality establishes the policy considerations that should govern its districts. The municipalities that have these instruments try to adjust their activities according to these rules.¹⁶⁴

The difference between district development plans and district urban plans is that the first ones are urban policy guidelines that direct the activity of a municipality.¹⁶⁵ District urban plans, on the other hand, are legal rules elaborated by a municipality, which are mandatory for every activity in the corresponding jurisdiction.¹⁶⁶ Because elaborating urban plans is a very complex process, district development plans are more important because of their flexibility.¹⁶⁷

Another administrative power in the hands of municipalities comes from public redevelopment projects.¹⁶⁸ Some local governments have an annual investment plan to promote developments aimed at improving the quality of life of their residents.

Finally, another administrative power used, which can greatly influence the way that the life in a district is organized, involves the negotiations with real estate developers.¹⁶⁹ Each developer has to go to the corresponding municipality to obtain the authorizations required for an urban project. When the project has a big impact on the life of the district, some municipalities start a process of negotiation to establish conditions that would diminish the impact of the project, or that would increase the value of the project and of the surrounding areas.¹⁷⁰ This is not regulated by Chilean law, but takes place in practice.

The negotiation power also applies to the organization of the demand of social housing in the case of municipalities that host housing projects in their territories. Since housing assistance programs rely on individual subsidies that are delivered to eligible households, they allow to the beneficiaries strong control of future projects. Municipalities, through negotiation with the beneficiaries of subsidies, can achieve important goals in the neighborhoods under construction. As the beneficiaries of social housing projects require the collaboration of municipalities, these institutions are able to influence the character of future housing projects. Through this influence, individuals participate in the urban development of their districts the same way they do with the developments projected in their jurisdictions.¹⁷¹

A very important aspect of this regulatory environment is that municipalities within Santiago face very different scenarios, so the exercise of these regulatory powers varies dramatically. On paper, each municipality can use all these multiple mechanisms, but in reality, their use depends on the budget, professional capacity, and priorities of the mayor, among other factors. Indeed, as Figure 3¹⁷² shows, there are big budget differences between municipalities in Santiago,¹⁷³ which implies that investment possibilities, for example, vary widely among Santiago’s different jurisdictions.

Also, the practice of these administrative powers will depend on the different needs of each district. Some are able to focus on improving the urban needs of their communities. Others are only able to take care of basic social services for their population.¹⁷⁴ Therefore, the regulatory scenario of each municipality in Santiago depends not only on the institutional capacity, political priorities, and budget available, but also on the social needs of each municipality. Here, as a result of social segregation, Santiago’s metropolitan area presents a significant level of fragmentation. The social services that a low-income municipality is required to provide are quite different from what a high-income municipality is obliged to offer.¹⁷⁵ This seems to have an important impact in the realm of land use and urban development. The possibility of finding a rational process of urban planning and intervention by a municipality is higher in high-income districts than in low-income districts.

Figure 3: Municipal Income per Resident

When using their regulatory powers under the constraints imposed by the social needs and institutional resources of the district, municipalities have strong incentives to maintain the character of their district. Wealthy districts want to keep their character as an area for high-income people. Middle-income districts want to improve their neighborhoods in order to attract wealthy people. This scenario clearly affects the level of social heterogeneity within the city. The following quote from a public official of a high-income municipality is a good example:

So, municipalities, their mayors, when creating their urban plans, have the chance to establish a district under their requirements, but the crucial issue is to keep the characteristics of the district. Here . . . we are a residential district, of high-income status. And, what do the people want? They want to maintain the characteristics of a garden city, which means that, even if we would like to establish big heights for certain areas, the residents do not want it.¹⁷⁶

This fragmented scenario is reinforced by a municipal legal structure that promotes the distinction between residents and nonresidents, in the sense that local authorities have strong incentives to benefit the residents of their jurisdictions and exclude nonresidents from the services they provide. Those incentives are explained partly because the election of municipal authorities depends on the vote of the people living in the district. These incentives are also strengthened by the fact that an important part of a municipality’s budget comes from the property taxes that each local government collects from its residents. This explains why municipalities that concentrate high-income residents try to keep the status quo.¹⁷⁷

B.  Interest Groups Behind Land Use Governance

Land use regulation is not a neutral regulatory mechanism. On the contrary, politics and other social factors strongly affect the outcomes of these administrative actions. Indeed, the actors involved in the process of land use regulation usually have to balance technical and political interests.

The lack of balance between technical and political considerations may provoke strong political conflicts.¹⁷⁸ An interesting example of urban conflicts occurred recently in a wealthy district in Santiago between the residents of a neighborhood and the district’s mayor concerning maximum building heights.¹⁷⁹ The mayor wanted to increase the height, but a group of residents objected. The residents demanded a plebiscite, but the mayor opposed it. Finally, the independent agency in charge of controlling the executive power and municipalities (Contraloría General de la República) intervened and forced the mayor to organize a plebiscite, which was decided in favor of the residents.¹⁸⁰

This case shows that even with strong technical justifications to impose a regulatory decision in the city, public officials are obliged to consider the interests of those affected by the decision. Indeed, there are political mechanisms through which these interest groups can influence the regulatory practice. Thus, land use regulation cannot be described only as a legal and technical process, as legal scholarship often understands it. It is highly contextual and highly political.¹⁸¹

The level of political pressure depends on the type of regulatory mechanism that is under elaboration or review. For example, interviewees generally recognized that when there is discussion about extending the urban boundary in Santiago (under the jurisdiction of the metropolitan plan), there is strong participation by real estate developers through their lobby organization. In these kinds of cases, interviewees affirm that important political negotiations between public institutions, mainly the MHU and powerful interest groups, affect the outcomes of those regulatory processes.¹⁸² Nothing similar, however, occurs for small and routine decisions that municipalities have to make.

Three clearly identified interest groups influence the regulatory and administrative processes governing the city by lobbying in favor of their particular benefits: real estate developers, landowners, and resident organizations.

Developers’ interests are driven by business opportunities. Thus, their pressure is stronger when the value of the land is high or decisions could affect high-profit projects. Generally speaking, they work under the existing rules. Only when a change in the rules may affect their projects in important ways do they intervene, mostly through their lobby organization, the Chilean Chamber of Construction (Cámara Chilena de la Construcción). As a public official noted:

Concerning that [deciding a maximum building height under an urban plan], we had strong opposition from the Chilean Chamber of Construction, and from the Ministry. They wanted to stop the urban plan, to declare it illegal. We had to go through many efforts and negotiations, because the investors did not want the new rule. They produced terrible reports about how this decision would paralyze all the building projects in the district, trying to scare the mayor. It was very difficult to defend this.¹⁸³

The way this official described developers’ lobbying — reaching out to high political authorities to promote certain legal and policy outcomes — is consistent with what another official noted concerning the negotiation process through which developers usually try to change land use rules to build development projects:

I can tell to you that, in all attempts that take place regarding changing land uses, where housing is prohibited by a manner of speaking, the feature has been interested parties going, first, to the Ministry of Housing and Urbanism, at the highest levels, and, second, to the legislators of this jurisdiction, including important house representatives and senators. Results on changing land use will largely depend on whether or not the corresponding congressman supports the particular case. Only then, will the parties come to the Municipality to execute the process, but only if necessary.¹⁸⁴

A second interest group is landowners, who might be strongly affected by the regulatory decisions of a municipality. Through urban plans, redevelopment projects, and other administrative actions, the value of a piece of land can change dramatically. Thus, it seems plausible that this interest group exercises a strong pressure on certain regulatory decisions. Here again, the pressure will also depend on the actual or potential value of the land, which explains why this issue came up more frequently in the interviews with officials in high-income municipalities.

An interesting phenomenon that has occurred in recent years is the organization of residents in some districts to defend certain characteristics of a neighborhood or of the whole district. Some of these organizations operate throughout the whole city and others have more local claims.¹⁸⁵ Some emerge temporarily to address specific problems; others are permanent. However, all of them have pushed for more civic participation in the regulatory processes that shape the city. This is clearly identified by officials working in urban planning, either in a municipality or in the Ministry of Housing, and it involves a new regulatory scenario not specified by law.¹⁸⁶

The success of these resident organizations varies across the city and relies strongly on their ability to manage resources and lobbying. The level of income is an important factor as well. To the question about the factors that influence the success of these organizations, a public official responded:

First, it depends on how organized they are, and what is the relationship that they have with the Municipality. Some of them are very polarized. In this neighborhood . . . the organization sometimes expelled us from the meetings, and they did not let us talk. But in the other neighborhood . . . we have a peaceful relationship with the resident organization. They are different, one is a low-middle income group, and the other one is a high-income group, very aggressive, people with clear agendas.¹⁸⁷

It can be concluded that the organizations formed by high- or middle-income residents get better results from the lobbying process. Indeed, from the interviews with nongovernmental officials (“NGOs”) representing communities petitioning for social housing projects, and with public officials working in social housing projects, it was not re- ported that the communities were very active in lobbying for better rules and projects for them. Therefore, the political and social pressure seems to be stronger in higher-income municipalities.

These interest groups are, of course, not the only social forces behind land use regulation. There are other factors that induce the actions of public officials in this field. One example is money. The process of developing an urban plan is very expensive. It is necessary to hire a team of trained professionals and a consulting firm. Also, it is necessary to do extensive research on the district’s urban requirements and go through significant bureaucratic stages. This explains why the Urban Development Department of the Ministry of Housing has spent considerable resources assisting municipalities with their urban district plans, rather than establishing a national urban policy. This factor applies to many of the projects, regulations, and administrative actions that shape the city. The reality is that Santiago shows a high level of fragmentation, as was described above.¹⁸⁸

Another visible factor is the development of the urban land market. Under a set of rules, the market grows in certain ways that often require legal adjustments. Even in a highly regulated market, such as the market of urban property rights, there are some spontaneous movements that oblige the regulator to react. According to the interviewees, the pressure to update old rules that are not responsive to the new market trends drives many regulatory decisions made in the city today.

C.  Institutional Attitudes and Incentives Towards Residential Segregation

There is a wide public acknowledgment in Chile that residential segregation is both a reality and a problem in Santiago.¹⁸⁹ Although this phenomenon has not become an area of real concern for the most important political actors in the country, it seems that with varying approaches, the officials concerned with urban planning and social housing are very aware of this issue. However, the mix of institutions and interests that shape land use legal practices in Santiago, Chile, affect the way the main actors involved in these practices perceive their role regarding this problematic phenomenon.

The common perception is that the MHU, through its social housing policy, is the main public agency in charge of addressing this phenomenon.¹⁹⁰ Historically, the Ministry is responsible for designing and implementing social housing policies in Chile.¹⁹¹ The current version of the housing policy relies on demand side subsidies and includes the participation of private institutions (“Entidades Patrocinantes”) that are the responsible for the organization of housing projects and intermediating between families, central and local governments, and construction companies. These reforms to the market-oriented housing approach have improved the targeting of the housing programs for the poorest and increased the quality and location of housing solutions.¹⁹² The problem of this regulatory approach, however, is that with only a subsidy system it is difficult to face the price dynamics of the urban land market, especially in well-located neighborhoods where it is impossible to compete with the preferences of higher-income families. Except for a few cases that had no major impact in the city’s pattern of residential segregation, the Ministry has not established regulatory instruments that incentivize socially integrated housing projects.¹⁹³ In other words, the MHU’s main approach to social housing policy has been the subsidies programs. The MHU has not experimented with land use mechanisms to incentivize the inclusion of affordable housing units in high or middle-income municipalities.

Municipalities constitute the other public actor involved. Some municipal officials perceive that the role of local governments in addressing segregation is very constrained. However, there are mechanisms through which municipalities could have a more active role in promoting integration. As an official from an NGO noted:

As always, [social housing projects] depend on the approval and support of a municipality. A project with support will succeed and last the time that it has to last, and a project without support can take so long that it may not be doable. There are municipalities that seek social housing solutions for the people of their district, . . . and there are municipalities, which decide not to organize projects, or to place obstacles to any social projects. . . . ¹⁹⁴

How could municipalities contribute to the promotion of inclusionary affordable housing projects? First, municipalities are the closest institutions to the communities looking for affordable housing in their corresponding districts. Moreover, in many cases they assume the responsibility of organizing the demand for social housing and planning housing projects in their jurisdictions. This, as described above, can constitute a strong power in terms of establishing and negotiating the conditions under which a project should be localized and integrated with other residents of the district, because here, the municipality has more control over the development of the project.

Second, municipalities have the power to invest in development projects, and there are interesting experiences in some municipalities that have complemented the government subsidies to achieve better social housing projects.¹⁹⁵ This, of course, will strongly depend on the financial capacity of each municipality, which in Santiago’s metropolitan area, varies dramatically. Indeed, the only cases in which a social housing project has been placed in a wealthy district in Santiago has been when the municipality decided to organize the project and to use part of its budget to invest in it.

Third, as was also reported in some interviews, municipalities are able to negotiate with real estate developers the conditions under which a development project may be placed in a certain neighborhood. The general view about this possibility is that all the actions of municipalities are constrained by the law. There is no room for negotiation; the role of local governments is to authorize all the projects that comply with the law. This is what the legal doctrine provides and what some of the interviewees noted. However, another story can be told. Sometimes municipalities do negotiate certain conditions for development projects; this is an important source of influence over a district’s urban development. One of the instruments that municipalities use, which exemplifies this discretionary power, is time. An interviewee provided the following example:

Not long ago, there was a development project, with a significant level of density .... The project involved the creation of social housing condominiums. So, based on a technicality, we opposed the project, and our Director of Municipal Works did not approve it. The SEREMI [the regional agency of the Ministry of Housing] instructed the Director of Municipal Works to approve the project, but he decided not to. Thus, the SEREMI went to the Comptroller [Contralor´ıa, the independent agency that controls the executive power and the municipalities], and the Comptroller, understanding the situation, did not prosecute the Director, but instructed him to give approval. However, so much time passed before the approval that finally the project was not done; the real estate company desisted.¹⁹⁶

There are many ways in which a municipality can negotiate conditions for development projects. It is not always necessary to create a conflict such as the one described in the quotation above, and negotiations with developers proceed along more peaceful paths. But sometimes, this is not possible, and municipalities employ their discretionary power.

Finally, municipalities can use their urban planning instruments to promote more socially integrated housing projects. This has not been the general policy in Santiago, although it is not clear whether this idea would be legally possible or not. An attorney specialized in this field suggested:

A municipality could elaborate an urban plan stating that, for social housing projects, the density shall be 250, and, for non-social housing projects, the density shall be 150. Yes, a municipality can do this. . . . This would be interesting, and would generate a big debate in Chile, I think.¹⁹⁷

However, except for some particular cases, municipalities in Santiago have not deployed this kind of legal incentive. On one hand, municipalities have a significant degree of regulatory discretion that could favor the provision of well-located social housing projects, but on the other hand, the political and legal structure governing the land use power of municipalities does not provide incentives for them to do so. Furthermore, amending the political and legal structure is something that goes beyond the municipalities’ scope of authority.

The legal structure governing urban development in Chile promotes the political fragmentation of land use powers among municipalities, which impacts the way public officials perceive the role of land use governance in addressing residential segregation. In this research, three different approaches on how to deal with socioeconomic residential segregation in the city were identified.

The first is the perception that the law establishes obstacles to residential integration. According to this view, even if officials and developers would like to promote inclusionary projects, there are legal constraints hindering that process. One of the obstacles mentioned was land use regulation. As an NGO official noted:

Today, urban plans are big instruments for segregation . . . there is a set of rules that appears to be very simple, but accentuates segregation. These rules, for example, include the establishment of minimum land divisions in high-income districts. If the minimum land division is 1,000 square meters, this immediately prohibits middle or low-income families living there, because the land is going to be very expensive. Thus, when defining low densities, you prevent middle or low-income sectors of the population from having access to places with a predominance of middle and high-income people.¹⁹⁸

In this view, the legal structure explicitly or implicitly prevents residential integration. Thus, public officials who want to achieve more integration within the city are constrained by a legal structure that promotes social fragmentation among classes.

Excessive bureaucracy, budget constraints, and professional capability are also factors that were identified as obstacles for promoting inclusionary social housing projects. The interviewees noted that public officials do want to create more integration within their districts, but they do not have the money to complement the government subsidy or the human resources to implement these policies. Indeed, as Figure 4 shows, using data from 2009, the municipalities where most of the social housing projects are located include those with lower budgets.

Figure 4: Subsidies per Average of Municipal Income per Resident (2009)¹⁹⁹

The second approach is related to the first one, but the emphasis is placed on the incentives behind the legal structure that governs Santiago’s land use. The vast majority of the interviewees were in this position. Here, it is necessary to distinguish between incentives for developers and incentives for public officials. Concerning developers, some of the interviewees affirmed that there are no clear incentives for them to design integrated housing projects. Developers do not receive remuneration for generating well-located social projects. Moreover, this kind of project would face more problems due to the political and cultural sensitivities associated with these developments. Thus, from the perspective of a private developer, it is not worthwhile to promote integrated projects.

Regarding public officials, the question is: what are the incentives for municipalities to promote inclusionary housing in their districts? From a political perspective, a mayor and a municipal council depend on the votes from of a district’s residents. Thus, the question is whether the development of inclusionary housing projects may have political gains. In wealthy districts, where there are practically no slums and homeless people, promoting residential integration cannot translate into political gains. Also, social housing projects do not pay property taxes, which reduces the incentives to host that kind of project. Only those districts with strong political pressure for social housing may have an incentive to promote integrated projects. However, this will not necessarily change the segregation pattern, especially if only low-income families live in those districts.

Finally, the third approach emphasizes the perception of the problem. For some officials, socioeconomic residential segregation is beyond the scope of their sphere of concern. The opinion of a municipal official interviewed is representative of this view:

No, here we do not discuss that issue [socioeconomic integration within the city], because the capacities and resources available for each district are the factors that promote segregation. The populations of wealthy municipalities have to con- tribute with 10% of their incomes to poor municipalities, through the municipal fund. We help our neighborhoods [by] improving the public infrastructure . . . public parks, paving the streets, etc., but we do not have problems of poverty and social segregation here.²⁰⁰

From this perception, social segregation is not a problem — at least for that district. Municipalities contribute a percentage of their income to other districts, and that is all they can do to improve the life of the urban poor. It is not that this type of public official does not recognize the extension of the problem of residential segregation. They do recognize segregation, but not as a problem that involves them. That seems to be happening in the districts with high concentrations of high-income residents. Segregation is not in their range of concern.

How each of these approaches has contributed to the pattern of residential segregation is an empirical question beyond the scope of this research. What can be said, in light of the findings, is that these approaches play a role in the segregation phenomenon, and that any legal reform on the topic should consider how the law shapes these institutional attitudes.

V.  Conclusion

The growth and development of urban areas is not only a spontaneous process, but also a calculated and significantly regulated one. Public institutions at all levels make policy decisions and use legal instruments that affect the way cities develop. This regulatory scenario impacts the way a city’s residents live, affects how people are distributed within a metropolitan area, and influences their access to the opportunities a city offers. This study explores the institutional dynamics affecting residential integration in Santiago, Chile. Its focus is on the legal practices shaping the city’s urban development, and the implications of these regulatory decisions for social integration, which increasingly has been a challenge for urban policy in the country.

The Chilean legal framework governing urban land use, like every legal structure, reflects certain institutional choices based on a structure of incentives for all the actors involved. Through the analysis of the regulatory practices shaping Santiago by the perception of leading figures involved in these processes, it is possible to conclude that although the MHUD and its regional agency (SEREMI) play a crucial role, each of the fifty-two municipalities into which Santiago is divided also have relevant regulatory powers to guide the urban development of their districts. Their role is growing in importance, which is exemplified by the fact that the number of new urban district plans has increased in the last years. This means that municipalities are starting to increase the use of their power to define the character of their territories.

Along with the ability to elaborate urban plans, municipalities also use other regulatory and administrative actions to influence the urban development of their districts in a highly discretionary way. Depending on the availability of budget, local governments invest in redevelopment projects for the benefit of their residents and negotiate with real estate developers to include certain urban conditions in development projects.

The regulatory decisions shaping Santiago are not politically neutral. On the contrary, they are influenced by political agendas. The Minister of Housing and Urban Planning is a political authority, elected by the President of Chile. Local authorities are also political actors, elected every four years by the vote of the residents in the corresponding districts. As political institutions, when they make important decisions affecting the city life of Santiago’s citizens, they balance technical and political considerations. The lobby of interest groups, mainly real estate developers, landowners, and residents’ organizations, influences these political considerations. The latter interest group has become an influential actor in Santiago in the last years.

One of the findings of this research is the lack of national urban planning mechanisms to promote the inclusion of social housing in well-located districts. This leads to an even more important role of municipalities. The land use legal framework creates strong incentives for local governments to keep the character of their districts, especially for those that concentrate high-income residents. Along with this incentive, municipalities’ budgets, the social needs they have to cover, and urban market trends also influence the regulatory activity of local governments.

Today in Santiago, everyone recognizes the extension of the problem of socioeconomic residential segregation. However, the way public officials perceive this problem varies according to their perception of the relationship between the legal structure and this social phenomenon. Some observe that the law establishes strong obstacles to residential integration. Others emphasize the lack of incentives to produce inclusionary housing projects. Finally, a third group considers that segregation is beyond the scope of their concern. According to this latter group, there is nothing they can do to solve the problem. This is especially observed in high-income districts.

How each of these approaches has contributed to the pattern of residential segregation is an empirical question that remains to be solved and requires further research. What can be affirmed is that there are land use legal dynamics affecting the achievement of more residential integration.

Enrique Rajevic has argued that Chile’s land use law is still in an immature stage of development because it does not provide adequate solutions to contemporary problems like class-based segregation.²⁰¹ The main argument of this article is that the problem is not only that land use law is underdeveloped, but also that its current institutional design reinforces the pattern of social segregation. The relationship between the institutions, interests, and incentives that give reality to land use law in Santiago make social integration implausible.

The findings of this paper support the idea that social housing policy based on subsidies cannot be the only remedy for socioeconomic residential segregation. Without addressing the institutional choices and incentives created by Santiago’s land use legal framework and how this institutional structure operates in practice, social integration within Santiago’s metropolitan area will remain an unattainable ideal.

1. The conflict of “La Toma de Peñalolén,” got a lot of media coverage. See Francisco Aguila, Toma de Peñalolén: Una Historia, Muchos Actores, EMOL CHILE, (Feb. 25, 2004), http://www.emol.com/noticias/nacional/2004/02/25/139660/toma-de-penalolen-una-historia-muchos-actores.html. The conflict also motivated some academic research on the relationship between urban policy and housing integration. See Rodrigo Salcedo, The Last Slum: Moving From Illegal Settlements to Subsidized Home Ownership in Chile, 46 URB. AFF. REV. 90 (2010) (arguing that La Toma de Peñalolén represents the fact that quality and localization are becoming more relevant for Chile’s urban policy).
2. In Chile, slums are called “campamentos,” and they are defined by the Ministry of Housing and Urbanism as urban settlements of more than eight families, that inhabit irregularly a piece of land (without holding property rights), that lack at least one public service (either water, electricity or sewage system), and with houses that are contiguous. See generally Mapa Social de Campamentos, MINISTERIO DE VIVIENDA Y URBANISMO, http://www.minvu.cl/opensite_20110523144022.aspx (last visited Feb. 16, 2015) (describing the results of a census of slums conducted in Chile).
3. See Toma de Penalolen supra note 1.
4. See id.
5. See id.
6. See id.
7. See id.
8. Id.; see also Ana María Álvarez Rojas, La Segmentación Socioeconómica del Espacio: La Comunidad Ecológica y la Toma de Peñalolén, 34 EURE 121 (2008) (assessing the conflict between the people of La Toma de Peñalolén
    and the families that were living in the neighborhood where part of “La Toma” was supposed to be relocated).
9. See generally Rojas, supra note 8.
10. See Salcedo, supra note 1; see also Lucas Sierra I., Urbanismo por Decreto: Centralismo y Confusión Institucional en la Ciudad Chilena, in SANTIAGO: DÓNDE ESTAMOS Y HACIA DÓNDE VAMOS 299-328 (2006) (analyzing the different regulatory options that were available to profice a solution to the conflict).
11. See Karen González T., La “Toma” que Terminó en Parque, LA TERCERA, (June 16, 2014), http://www.latercera.com/noticia/nacional/2014/06/680-582637-9-la-toma-que-termino-en-parque.shtml (last visited Feb. 16, 2015).
12. MINISTRY OF HOUSING AND URBANISM (MHU), POLÍTICA NACIONAL DE DESARROLLO URBANO: CIUDADES SUSTENTABLES Y CIUDAD DE VIDA 8 (2013) [hereinafter MHU] (Now having legal authority, since it was approved by a Supreme Decree, which is the type of legal rule enacted under the regulatory power of the President of Chile).
13. Id.
14. See generally Andrea Tokman, El Minvu, La Política Habitacional y la Expansión Excesiva de Santiago, in SANTIAGO: DÓNDE ESTAMOS Y HACIA DONDE VAMOS 489 (Alexander Galetovic ed., 2006); Dionysia Lambiri & Miguel Vargas, Residential Segregation and Public Housing Policy, the Case of Chile (Facultad de Economía y Empresa, Universidad Diego Portales, Working Paper No. 29, 2011) (presenting research on what causes residential segregation based on income).
15. See Tokman, supra note 14; Lambiri & Vargas, supra note 14.
16. See sources cited infra note 42.
17. For the purpose of this paper, the social housing policy and land use law should be understood as different institutional practices within the Chilean context. Social housing policy refers to the governmental assistance program that provides subsidies (vouchers) to homeless people to get access to housing. Land use law refers to the set of rules and practices that govern city land use. One way of distinguishing both types of urban policies is that through the delivery of subsidies the government acts as financer, whereas land use law refers to the government acting as regulator of the urban development process. I will use the term “legal dynamics” to refer to how agencies and officials actually implement that law.
18. In the United States there has been more academic discussion on this dimension. See generally Vicki Been, Residential Segregation: Vouchers and Local Government Monopolists, 23 YALE L. & POL’Y REV. 33, 35 (2005) (“[M]anaging diversity in the context of [residential housing poses a special challenge because] . . . it engages our federalist system of government - our delegation, or reservation, to local governments of the power to control the use of land.”); Sheryll D. Cashin, Localism, Self-Interest, and the Tyranny of the Favored Quarter: Addressing the Barriers to New Regionalism, GEO. L.J. 1985, 1988 (1999) (“Localism, or the ideological commitment to local governance, has helped to produce fragmented metropolitan regions stratified by race and income.”); Richard Thompson Ford, The Boundaries of Race: Political Geography in Legal Analysis, 107 HARV. L. REV. 1841, 1844 (1994) (“I assert that political geography—the position and function of jurisdictional and quasi-jurisdictional boundaries—helps to promote a racially separate and unequal distribution of political influence and economic resources”); Jerry Frug, The Geography of Community, 48 STAN. L. REV. 1047, 1081 (1996) (“City control over land use has contributed more to the dispersal and separation of metropolitan residents than any other city activity.”). One of the few exceptions in Chile is the work of Enrique Rajevic. See Enrique Rajevic, El paulatino pero insuficiente desarrollo del Derecho urbanístico en Chile: entránsito de la Adolescencia a la madurez, 9 FORUM DE DIREITO URBANO E AMBIENTAL 61, 61-70 (2010) (arguing that land use law in Chile has had an insufficient development with regards to problems like social segregation and contrasting with the large body of literature in the United States that has analyzed the relationship between land use law and racial segregation).
19. All interviewees were promised anonymity. To quote them, I identify them by a general description of their role. Interviews were conducted in Spanish, so I translated all the quotes used. More information is on file with author.
20. See OBSERVATORIO HABITACIONAL (MINVU), http://www.observatoriohabitacional.cl (last visited Feb. 16, 2015); OBSERVATORIO-URBANO MINISTERIO DE VIVIENDA Y URBANISMO, http://www.observatoriourbano.cl (last visited Feb. 16, 2015); SISTEMA NACIONAL DE INFORMACIO´ N MUNICIPAL, http://www.sinim.cl (last visited Feb.16, 2015).
21. See generally NICO CALAVITA & ALAN MALLACH, INCLUSIONARY HOUSING IN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE: AFFORDABLE HOUSING, SOCIAL INCLUSION, AND LAND VALUE RECAPTURE (2010) (documenting different policies used by the United States, Canada, England, Ireland, France, Spain, and Italy to promote affordable housing with social inclusion).
22. See generally Francisco Sabatini, La Segregación Social del Espacio en Las Ciudades de América Latina, BANCO INTERAMERICANO DE DESARRO, Mar 2006 [hereinafter La Segregación del Espacio] (stating that most common explanation for residential segregation in Latin American cities is due to social inequalities).
23. See DOUGLAS S. MASSEY & NANCY A. DENTON, AMERICAN APARTHEID: SEGREGATION AND THE MAKING OF THE UNDERCLASS 3 (1993) [hereinafter AMERICAN APARTHEID] (“Segregation is the missing link in prior attempts to understand the plight of the urban poor.”).
24. See Sonia Arbaci, Ethnic Segregation, Housing Systems and Welfare Regimes in Europe, 7 EUROPEAN J. OF HOUSING POL. 429 (2007) (“[F]oreign groups are likely to be associated with high levels of social segregation.”).
25. See generally CALAVITA & MALLACH, supra note 21 (illustrating the methods used by the United States, Canada, England, Ireland, France, Spain, and Italy).
26. Douglas S. Massey & Nancy A. Denton, The Dimensions of Residential Segregation, 67 SOC. FORCES 281, 282 (1988).
27. See ELIZABETH ANDERSON, THE IMPERATIVE OF INTEGRATION 10 (2010) (“Segregation typically leads to group inequality when the group practicing social closure controls the allocation of goods critical to securing power or advantage.”).
28. See id.
29. See La Segregación del Espacio, supra note 22; AMERICAN APARTHEID, supra note 23; Arbaci, supra note 24; CALAVITA & MALLACH, supra note 21.
30. See, e.g., La Segregación del Espacio, supra note 22; Francisco Sabatini, Gonzalo Cáceres & Jorge Cerda, Segregación Residencial en las Principales Ciudades Chilenas: Tendencias de las Tres Últimas Décadas y Posibles Cursos de Acción, 27 EURE 21, 21–42 (2001) [hereinafter Sabatini, Cácerces & Cerda]; Francisco Sabatini & Isabel Brain, La Segregación, Los Guetos y la Integración Social Urbana: Mitos y Claves, 34 EURE 5, 5–26 (2008) [hereinafter Sabatini & Brain]; Francisco Sabatini et al., Residential Segregation in Santiago: Scale-Related Effects and Trends, 1992-2002, in URBAN SEGREGATION AND GOVERNANCE IN THE AMERICAS 121, 121–43 (Bryan R. Roberts & Robert H. Wilson eds., 2009) [hereinafter Residential Segregation in Santiago].
31. See La Segregación del Espacio, supra note 22, at 3.
32. See Residential Segregation in Santiago, supra note 30, at 134-37.
33. See id.
34. See id. at 137-39.
35. See generally Francisco Sabatini, Reforma de los Mercados de Suelo en Santiago, Chile: Efectos Sobre los Precios de la Tierra y la Segregación Residencial, 26 EURE (SANTIAGO) 49–80 (2000) (arguing that the radical deregulation of Santiago’s land use has affected the pattern of residential segregation).
36. Id.
37. Id. at 50-51.
38. See RODRIGO HIDALGO, LA VIVIENDA SOCIAL EN CHILE Y LA CONSTRUCCIÓN DEL ESPACIO URBANO EN EL SANTIAGO DEL SIGLO XX 382-384 (2005).
39. Id.
40. See La Segregación del Espacio, supra note 22; Sabatini, Cácerces & Cerda, supra note 30; Sabatini & Brain, supra note 30; Residential Segregation in Santiago, supra note 30.
41. See La Segregación del Espacio, supra note 22; Sabatini, Cácerces & Cerda, supra note 30; Sabatini & Brain, supra note 30; Residential Segregation in Santiago, supra note 30.
42. See Ana Sugranyes, La Política Habitacional en Chile, 1980-2000: un Exito Liberal para Dar Techo a los Pobres, in LOS CON TECHO, UN DESAFIÓ PARA LA POLÍTICA DE VIVIENDA SOCIAL, 23-27 (SUR ed., 2005).
43. See id. at 35-39.
44. Id. at 39.
45. Id. at 36-37.
46. Lucile Richard, et al., Guetos en Chile 23 (Nov. 2010) (unpublished manuscript) (on file with the author).
47. See id.
48. Id. at 24.
49. José Miguel Simian, Logros y desafíos de la política habitacional en Chile, 117 ESTUDIOS PÚBLICOS 269–322 (2010). These reforms improved the focus on the lowest income sector, under a new regulatory approach. It required a lower amount of savings to obtain the subsidy, which was an obstacle for the poor in their access to the housing vouchers. The new policy also diminished the role of the MHU in building the projects. Due to the low quality standards and the segregation phenomenon, the policy has endorsed public-private partnerships for housing projects targeting better locations and higher standards. A new type of institution, “EGIS” (Entidades de Gestión Inmobiliaria Social), was also established. EGIS are institutions in charge of organizing the demand for social housing, developing housing projects for that demand, and applying the corresponding subsidies. In general, their role is to intermediate between the families, the central and local governments, and the construction companies. The policy provides that both for-profit and non-profit organizations may act as an EGIS. Also, municipalities can be EGIS if they have demand of social housing within their jurisdictions.
50. See Claudio Agostini, Pobreza, Desigualdad y Segregación en la Región Metropolitana, 117 ESTUDIOS PU´ BLICOS, 219 (2010).
51. Id. at 242-44.
52. Id.
53. Id. at 248-49.
54. Id.
55. See generaly ANDERSON, supra note 27, at 23-66 (2010) (summarizing the social science literature suggesting negative effects of social segregation).
56. David M. Cutler and Edward E. Glaeser, Are Ghettos Good or Bad?, Q. J. ECON., 828 (1997) (“Using a variety of economic and social outcomes, we find strong, consistent evidence that black outcomes are substantially worse (both in absolute terms and relative to whites) in racially segregated cities than they are in more integrated cities. As segregation increases, blacks have lower high school graduation rates, are more likely to be idle (neither in school nor working), earn less income, and are more likely to become single mothers. Further, the quantitative effects of segregation are large. A one standard deviation reduction in segregation eliminates approximately one-third of the difference between blacks and whites in most outcomes.”); id. at 463 (“[G]reater average distance from work for blacks is associated with an increased probability of being idle and lower wages conditional on working.”).
57. See Osvaldo Larrañaga & Claudia Sanhueza, Residential Segregation Effects on Poor’s Opportunities in Chile 3-55 (Departamento de Economía, Universidad de Chile, Working Paper No. 259, 2007).
58. See SABATINI ET AL., SEGREGACIÓN DE LA VIVIENDA SOCIAL: OCHO CONJUNTOS EN SANTIAGO, CONCEPCIÓN Y TALCA (Francisco Sabatini, Guillermo Wormald & Alejandra Rasse eds., 2013).
59. See IRIS MARION YOUNG, JUSTICE AND THE POLITICS OF DIFFERENCE 237-40 (1990).
60. See Cashin, supra note 18, at 2002.
61. Iris Marion Young’s proposal of city life as a normative ideal, and as an alternative to the ideals of communitarian life and of liberal individualism. By city life she means a form of relationship that promotes interaction among strangers. Under this theory, it is legitimate for groups of people to seek differentiation. However, this differentiation cannot mean exclusion. Thus, neighborhood borders are allowed, but they should always be open to others. Additionally, this theory assumes a multiuse differentiation of social space, meaning that urban spaces have a neighborhood identity, but are open to others and serve as “public places and forums where anyone can speak and anyone can listen.” See YOUNG, supra note 59 at 237-40. But see ROBERT NOZICK, ANARCHY, STATE, AND UTOPIA 310-22 (1974). This is a much contested issue in political theory. In an opposite position, we look to the libertarian vision of Robert Nozick. He claims that “there is no reason to think that there is one community which will serve as ideal for all people and much reason to think there is not.” Id. at 310. Thus, under this view, people should be allowed to build the communities they desire, under the rules that they wish to establish. People would have the freedom to choose among communities, and these communities would be able to set up restrictions that libertarians would not accept if they were established by the state. As we see, the atomization of city life is not a problem for Nozick´s theory; actually, this fragmentation would be encouraged. Nozick advocates for the primacy of the individual and the community over that of the state. Id. at 310-22.
62. See Frug, supra note 18, at 1047-1108.
63. See id. at 1052.
64. Id.
65. See id.
66. Id. at 1056.
67. Id. at 1063-64.
68. See generally id. at 1069-75 (highlighting the role that government and urban policy plays in isolating minorities).
69. See id. at 1075-76.
70. See id. at 1075.
71. See generally id. (highlighting the role that government and urban policy plays in isolating minorities). See also Ford, supra note 18.
72. The United States is an interesting example of metropolitan fragmentation. According to data from 1987, the average United States metropolitan area was divided into 114 local governments, with strong urban regulatory powers. See Richard Briffault, The Local Government Boundary Problem in Metropolitan Areas, 48 STAN. L. REV. 1115, 1120 (1996).
73. I use the term “governance” to emphasize the necessity of understanding land use regulation as institutional practices that are shaped by relationships between the government (national and local), the private sector and the civil society. Although the main focus of this paper is on public institutions, it also refers to their relationship with non-public actors. See generally John Minnery, Stars and their Supporting Cast: State, Market and Community as Actors in Urban Governance, 25 URB. POL. RES 325, 325-45 (2007) (defining “urban governance” as a conceptual framework that incorporates both the private sector and the community into the traditional notion of state policy making).
74. See generally Cashin, supra note 18, at 1998-2002 (discussing the justifications for localism).
75. See generally id. at 1998-2000 (discussing the “citizen participation” argument for localism).
76. Id. at 1998.
77. Id. at 1998-99.
78. See id.
79. See id.
80. See generally id. at 2000-01 (discussing the efficiency argument for localism).
81. See generally Charles M. Tiebout, A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures, 64 J. POL. ECON. 416, 416-24 (1956) (expanding on Tiebout’s theory mentioned in the Cashin article).
82. Cashin, supra note 18, at 2000.
83. See id.
84. Id.
85. Id.; see also James M. Buchanan, Principles of Urban Fiscal Strategy, 11 PUB. CHOICE 1, 13 (1971) (“The objective for rational urban fiscal strategy is the maximization of per capita fiscal dividend or surplus. This translates directly into the requirement that all persons who contribute positively to the generation of fiscal surplus be kept within the club. To the extent that persons or groups who do make net contributions are observed to migrate to the suburbs, urban fiscal strategy has failed.”).
86. See Cashin, supra note 18, at 2001 (discussing the “community” argument for localism).
87. Id. at 2001.
88. Id. at 2002.
89. See id. at 2002.
90. See id.
91. Even though these arguments have been made for the urban scenario that United States cities face, they can be applied broadly, and are particularly appealing for the case of Santiago, Chile. See id. at 1996 (“[T]he localist ideology . . . is not normatively justified, inter alia, because of the manner in which it perpetuates interlocal wealth disparities in metropolitan regions.”).
92. See Cashin, supra note 18 at 2015.
93. See id.
94. See id. at 2016 (“But beyond economic differentiation, race seems to be one of the strongest factors in the process of locational sorting that has occurred in metropolitan America.”).
95. See id. at 2003-04.
96. See id. at 2025-26.
97. See Briffault, supra note 72, at 1132-33.
98. Id. at 1133.
99. Id.
100. Id.
101. See id. at 1134.
102. See id. at 1134-35.
103. Id. at 1141.
104. Id.
105. See id. at 1142.
106. See id. at 1143-44.
107. See generally Briffault, supra note 72 at 1164-71; Cashin, supra note 18 at 2027-48 (summarizing the benefits of governing a metropolis as a whole rather than in smaller fragments).
108. See generally Briffault, supra note 72, at 1164-71; Cashin, supra note 18, at 2027-48 (summarizing the benefits of governing a metropolis as a whole rather than in smaller fragments).
109. ROBERT ELLICKSON ET AL., LAND USE CONTROLS: CASES AND MATERIALS 31 (3d ed. 2013) (“The central issue of land use policy is how power over physical space should be apportioned between private landowners and government regulators.”); RUTHERFORD H. PLATT, LAND USE AND SOCIETY: GEOGRAPHY, LAW, AND PUBLIC POLICY 29 (1996) (“Law is concerned with the process by which land is allocated for various purposes through the recognition and exercise of private rights and public powers to influence the use of land.”).
110. Sheila R. Foster, The City as an Ecological Space: Social Capital and Urban Land Use, 82 NOTRE DAME L. REV. 527, 534 (2006).
111. Id. at 528.
112. Id.
113. See DAVID L. CALLIES ET AL., CASES AND MATERIALS ON LAND USE 1 (6th ed. 2012) (“Land use law deals with the way in which society processes and implements governmental plans in order to regulate the use and reuse of land. . . In the 21st century [goals, objectives, policies, and strategies] include containing sprawl, providing transit oriented mixed use development, and building green, walkable traditional neighborhoods to reduce traffic congestion, greenhouse gas emissions, and global warming while addressing the need to provide affordable housing for low and moderate income families, supplying jobs and housing together in a balanced manner to improve the quality of life.”).
114. There are a number of provisions that are related to the exercise of the power of land use in Chile’s Constitution. Probably the most important one is the provision establishing “the social function of property.” This rule establishes that private property can be limited and regulated for the promotion of its social function. This has been the historical constitutional foundation for the exercise of the power of land use law. See JOSÉ FERNÁ NDEZ & FELIPE HOLMES, DERECHO URBANI´STICO CHILENO 23-32 (2008).
115. General Law of Urban Planning and Construction, DECRETO CON FUERZA DE LEY (D.F.L.) No. 458, December 18, 1975 (Chile).
116. Rajevic, supra note 18, at 62.
117. Id.
118. Law No. 47, Abril 16, 1992, DECRETO (D.S.) (Chile).
119. Rajevic, supra note 18, at 63 n.15.
120. FERNÁNDEZ & HOLMES, supra note 114.
121. Id.
122. See Law No. 458, supra note 115, at art. 27. The concept “urban plan” refers to the product of the exercise of the urban planning power in a certain territory. The technical name in Spanish, used in Chile, is “plan regulador.” As there are different territorial levels in which this power is exercised, the corresponding geographical level is added to the concept for clarification. For example, the urban plan elaborated by a municipality for its districts is called “municipal urban plan” or “district urban plan.” Since urban plans include zoning, the concepts “urban plan” and “zoning plan” will be used synonymously in this paper.
123. Id. at art. 28.
124. Id. at art. 29.
125. Id. at arts. 30-33. Chile has a unitarian government, which is divided into fifteen regions. Each region has regional councils, elected by popular vote, which intervene in the government of some of the regional affairs, including land use issues.
126. Id. at arts. 34-40.
127. Id.
128. See id. at arts. 41-51. Municipal councils are institutions that intervene in the governmental affairs of their respective districts. They intervene mainly by approving the most important decisions taken by their municipality’s mayor. Like the municipalities’ mayors, the members of the municipal councils are elected by the districts’ residents.
129. See id. at arts. 52-71.
130. Id.
131. See id. at arts. 116-25.
132. Id. at art. 116.
133. Id. at art. 146.
134. Id.
135. See id. at arts. 83-99.
136. Id. at art. 83.
137. CONSTITUCIÓN POLÍTICA DE LA REPÚBLICA DE CHILE [C.P.] art. 19. No. 24.
138. Chart was created based on the provisions of the General Law of Urban Planning and Construction. See Law No. 458, supra note 115.
139. See generally Sierra, supra note 10, at 311-21 (describing all the authorities involved in Chile’s land use regulation and their political dependencies).
140. See generally id.
141. See generally OECD, OECD URBAN POLICY REVIEWS CHILE, 158-62 (2013) (discussing fragmentation in urban governance). A recent report from OECD on Chile’s urban policy provides a critical assessment of the institutional and administrative fragmentation of the urban governance framework in Chile. In this article I focus on the fragmentation within urban areas that is produced by the division of powers between MHU and all the municipalities that intervene in urban development. I excluded other authorities that also have regulatory powers that impact Chilean urban development on specific areas, such as transportation, infrastructure, and environment, among others. This makes the regulatory scenario even more complex and fragmented.
142. See id.
143. See generally Sierra, supra note 10. Lucas Sierra has provided an interesting assessment of the institutional choices behind the legal structure governing Chilean cities. In his view, this legal framework is highly vertical, centralized, and confusing. He also affirms that this legal structure is hostile to the idea of property rights, because they are very vulnerable to regulatory interventions. He says this legal framework is highly vertical because it relies on “top down” rules imposed by public institutions. In Chile, the government, at different levels, establishes the rules governing urban land. There is no space for horizontal rules created by the residents of a city using contractual mechanisms. He also affirms that Chilean land use regulation is highly centralized, because it gives a strong power to the central government (executive power), through its MHU. In his perception, most of the rules governing Chilean cities come from the MHU, and not from the Congress or municipalities. Finally, Sierra argues that this legal structure is a “regulatory jungle.” Multiple actors with multiple regulatory powers intervene in the regulation of Chilean cities. There are constitutional, legislative, administrative, local, and judicial rules governing Chilean urban land. For the author, this scenario creates an extremely complex regulatory situation, which also includes other pieces of legislation that affect land use, such as environmental law, transportation law, and infrastructure law. For Sierra, this is a very confusing scenario for real estate developers and landowners, and allows broad discretion on the hands of public institutions, especially the MHU. His analysis is based mainly on a description of the Chilean land use legal framework, and not on how this system operates in practice, which is the main focus of this paper. The emphasis on the land use regulatory practices helps to broaden the picture described by Sierra.
144. See generally GERALD E. FRUG ET AL., LOCAL GOVERNMENT LAW: CASES AND MATERIALS 620-54 (5th ed. 2010) (providing an interesting discussion of United States legal doctrine about the power of cities to control their community character).
145. See OECD, supra note 141, at 94 (“The Regulating Plans separate municipalities into distinct land-use zones . . . each with their own set of land-use rules, including density and building height restrictions.”).
146. Telephone Interview with Public Official #1, from a high-income municipality (Jan. 7, 2011) (“In that respect [referring to the level of discretion of administrative authorizations], the directors of municipal works have their hands tied.”).
147. See OECD, supra note 141, at 78-83.
148. See id. at 79.
149. See id. at 80.
150. See id.
151. See id. at 80-81.
152. See id. at 83.
153. See id. at 94.
154. See Pablo Trivelli y Cia. Ltda., Urban Structure, Land Markets and Social Housing in Santiago, Chile 63-66 ( Jan. 2010), http://www.cafedelasciudades.com.ar/imagenes109/012411%20Informe%20final_PTrivelli.pdf (“There has not been a rigorous evaluation of this policy, but taking more than seven years for their approval is not reasonable if this mechanism is to operate fluently.”)
155. General Law of Urban Planning and Construction, supra note 115, at art. 55. Article 55 establishes the general prohibition of construction outside the urban boundaries, but it has some exemptions, one of which involves the development of social housing projects. Id. This is another legal mechanism that incentivizes affordable housing units to be located in the periphery of Chile’s urban areas.
156. See sources cited supra note 20.
157. See sources cited supra note 20.
158. Telephone Interview with Public Official #8, Ministry of Housing and Urbanism (Feb. 2, 2011). The public official from the MHU interviewed for this research said that the process of helping municipalities to establish urban plans has concentratedlargely on the work of the urban planning department at the MHU.
159. Telephone Interview with Public Official #1, from a high-income municipality (Jan. 7, 2011) (“[Municipalities] have a strong power, but, always, this power, and the level of investment or management, is subordinated to a higher urban plan, which is the metropolitan urban plan for Santiago, established and directed by the Ministry of Housing and Urbanism, through its regional agency. Each Municipality that has more than 50,000 residents has the duty to have an urban plan, and, in this plan, they establish the conditions they want for their district, i.e. land uses, amount of equipment, health services, education services, etc. This is done, always, under the rules of the higher plan, so the municipality, when elaborating a plan, creates the district it wants, but always maintaining the actual characteristics of the district.”) (emphasis added).
160. Telephone Interview with Public Official #2, from a low-income municipality (Jan. 12, 2011) (“I think that municipalities’ power is limited; urban district plans are subordinated to the metropolitan plan, therefore, the powers are constrained.”).
161. Telephone Interview with Land Use Attorney (Feb. 23, 2011) (“Municipalities are the institution with the strongest [urban planning] power, because they elaborate their urban plans with complete autonomy. The SEREMI [regional agency of the Ministry of Housing and Urbanism] only checks if the district plan does not contradict the general law in the matter . . . . So, if the municipality takes a decision, and this decision does not violate the law, the SEREMI may not claim anything. Thus, urban plans are the first legal framework that governs the city, and each municipality defines its own plan.”).
162. Telephone Interview with Public Official #3, from a low-income municipality (Jan. 14, 2011).
163. OECD, supra note 141, at 83-84.
164. See id.
165. Id.
166. General Law of Urban Planning and Construction, supra note 115, arts. 41-51.
167. See OECD, supra note 141, at 83-84.
168. See generally OECD, supra note 141, at 16-22, 152 (discussing the dynamic relationship between urban planning framework and urban development policies).
169. See id. at 19-20.
170. See id. at 84-86.
171. Telephone Interview with Public Official #3, from a low-income municipality (Jan. 14, 2011) (“If you have contacts with the neighbors, beneficiaries of a project, and are able to explain to them, in a pedagogic way, why the project requires characteristics going beyond what is required by law, characteristics that will make their quality of life better, you have a very powerful weapon. The committees of homeless people have a very strong influence on how their money will be spent, because, in the end of the day, they are the ones with the subsidy.”).
172. See sources cited supra note 20.
173. See infra Figure 3.
174. Telephone Interview with Public Official #3, from a low-income municipality (Jan. 14, 2011) (“Of course, neither Vitacura, neither Providencia and Las Condes [the wealthiest municipalities in Santiago], care about municipal public education. On the contrary, the schools that depend on these municipalities are excellent in comparison to other public schools. These municipalities have a low demand for public education and health, because their residents go to private schools and private hospitals; thus, they may worry about [other] urban needs more than a low-income municipality in which the mayor is worried about more urgent matters.”).
175. Id.
176. Telephone Interview with Public Official #1, from a high-income municipality (Jan. 7, 2011) (Although it can be said that the pressure by residents varies according to the level of income, the same incentives apply to middle or low-income municipalities); see also Telephone Interview with Public Official #2, from a low-income municipality (Jan. 12, 2011) (“The objective [of this district] is to assimilate to the neighbor districts . . . to consolidate residential neighborhoods, to keep industrial neighborhoods only if they are not offensive and if they do not pollute, and to consolidate an urban development that implies keeping the population or increasing the density of the district.”).
177. It can be argued more generally, that to a considerable extent, local government law is based on the distinction between residents and nonresidents. Indeed, residents have a strong power to shape the municipality governing their district. In a sense, residents are the source of the power of local governments. This is an institutional decision, embedded in our political and cultural understanding of local power. Local governments are created to represent a group of people that wants to defend their interests. This group has the power to elect its officials and to promote decisions about the organization of the territory under their jurisdiction. Therefore, local government law is based on the distinction between insiders and outsiders, which is very similar to the distinction between citizens and noncitizens in the political structure of a whole country. See generally FRUG, supra note 144, at 373-412 (discussing “the distinction between residents and non-residents”).
178. Telephone Interview with Public Official #1, from a high-income municipality (Jan. 7, 2011) (“When the political authority [the mayor], whoever it happens to be, does not balance properly politics with technical solutions, conflicts arise.”).
179. See Rajevic, supra note 18, at 69.
180. See id.
181. Telephone Interview with Public Official #2, from a low-income municipality (Jan. 12, 2011) (“In the approval of an urban plan, there are, of course, political factors involved . . . . I am not sure whether it is always clear, even for those promoting a normative change . . . but I repeat, political factors are present when plans are elaborated.”).
182. Id. (“[B]ut I can tell you that all attempts that have happened here to change land uses, where the construction of housing is prohibited, to put it in that way, all attempts have had the characteristic of interest groups going to the Ministry, to the higher authorities of the Ministry, and in second place to the legislators of the area . . . .”)
183. Telephone Interview with Public Official #4, from a high-income municipality (Jan. 19, 2011).
184. Telephone Interview with Public Official #3, from a low-income municipality (Jan. 14, 2011).
185. MANUEL TIRONI ET AL., Organizaciones emergentes, participación ciudadana y planificación urbana: una propuesta de política pública, in CAMINO AL BICENTENARIO: PROPUESTAS PARA CHILE 275, 275-76 (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile ed., 2010) (“In the last decade, Santiago has undergone a multiplication in citizen organizations, which have emerged in reaction to urban interventions of different kinds, either modifications to municipal urban plans, new infrastructure, or urban equipment transformation.”).
186. Id.
187. Telephone Interview with Public Official #4, from a high-income municipality (Jan. 19, 2011).
188. See supra Figure 2b.
189. All interviewees had a similar perception about this issue. See generally Salcedo, supra note 1.
190. See OECD, supra note 141, at 104-17.
191. See id.
192. See id.; see also Simian, supra note 49.
193. The mechanisms that have been implemented to promote residential integration, mainly involve the increase of housing subsidies to purchase well-located land (subsidio a la localización), and subsidies for families that decide to buy a house in areas that incorporate social housing. See Residential Segregation in Santiago, supra note 30 at 137.
194. Telephone Interview with NGO Official #2 ( Jan. 12, 2011).
195. One interesting case is a high-income municipality in Santiago, called “Lo Barnechea,” whose authorities have been very active in providing access to affordable housing within the district to low-income families living in irregular settlements located in that same district. See Construyen Viviendas Para Familias Del Campamento Mas Antiguo De Lo Barnechea, EMOL CHILE (Sept. 13, 2011), http://www.emol.com/noticias/nacional/2011/09/13/503139/construyen-viviendas-para-familias-delcampamento-mas-antiguo-de-lo-barnechea.html.
196. Telephone Interview with Public Official #3, from a low-income municipality (Jan. 14, 2011)
197. Telephone Interview with Land Use Attorney (Feb. 23, 2011).
198. Telephone Interview with NGO Official #3 ( Jan. 13, 2011).
199. The relationship between the number of subsidies received by each municipality and the average of municipal income per resident was calculated using information from government websites. See sources cited supra note 20.
200. Telephone Interview with Public Official #1, from a high-income municipality (Jan. 7, 2011).
201. See Rajevic, supra note 18.