The concept of urban vitality indicates that certain attributes of the built environment (density, land use mix, accessibility, porosity, among others) influence the daily use of the neighborhood and the social interactions between inhabitants (Gehl, 1987; Jacobs, 2011), encouraging what some authors call public familiarity, weak social bonds of recognition that contribute to the sense of neighborhood community (Blokland, & Nast, 2014; Felder, 2020). _x000D_
On the other hand, in recent decades, Santiago de Chile has experienced an important process of verticalization, promoted by the financialization of the real estate sector (De Mattos, 2008) and by neoliberal urban policies (López-Morales et al., 2012), which has radically transformed the built environment of its central areas (Vicuña Del Río, 2020), negatively affecting the public space of the neighborhoods (Pumarino, 2014). _x000D_
This paper asks how such transformations of the built environment affect the sociability patterns of the inhabitants of vertical urban areas, based on the analysis of three neighborhoods in Santiago, Chile through secondary data of the built environment and primary data collected through surveys and focus groups._x000D_
The results show that, although verticalization inhibits social interaction at the building level and hinders the formation of strong ties at the neighborhood level, in some cases, the daily use of public space and local commerce, as well as neighborhood organization, favor the emergence of ties of public familiarity, transforming the traditional idea of neighborhood community._x000D_
Based on these results, we seek to discuss the social impacts of verticalization processes in relation to daily practices in the formation of communities, investigating how an urban development process that prioritizes urban land profit ends up hindering the urban vitality of the city and the formation of communities on a neighborhood level._x000D_

Felipe Link, Andrés Señoret & Christian Matus
Instituto de Estudios Urbanos y Territoriales, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

 
ID Abstract: 629