Gated housing cooperatives and socio-residential differentiation. The case of Viña del Mar community

Abstract

This article presents the urban intervention of gated housing cooperatives in the city of Viña del Mar (Chile) during the last decade of the twentieth century, which are compared and contrasted with urban processes in this territory. By means of conceptual approaches that address the neoliberal city and the study of the socio-residential differentiation of urban space, it is sought to understand the reach of these cooperatives. Through a descriptive and multivariate quantitative methodology that aims to describe the cooperative housing construction and account for the spatial distribution of the respective population, the development of cooperatives is characterized as to location, morphology, constructed area and investment, and then its situation is discussed in the light of some of the main urban approaches to socio-residential differentiation. Findings show that the trajectory of the housing cooperatives is blurred and is confused with the establishment of private real estate offer. That is, despite their different mechanisms for attaining housing regarding land management and associativity, both forms have several similarities such as the presence of private public spaces, the establishment of physical borders, fragmentation of the urban space and controlled access.

Keywords:
cooperatives; housing; cluster; fragmentation; gated neighborhoods