The idea, politics and housing: route to enter the neoliberal crisis from urban space in Chile

Abstract

The present work proposes to enter through different routes to explain the current crisis of urban space in Chile. It exposes theoretical elements based on the possible ruptures of the so-called Chilean model, originally designed at its outset as a hegemonic project of the geopolitics under the active influence of the United States in Latin America, that can contribute understanding the fragility of capitalism in the subcontinent and shed light on how this system has tended to accumulate income wealth quickly and safely in real estate businesses. At the same time, reflections on Political Geography are exercised to recognize the construction of new urban borders amidst the transformation of nature as a value on itself. To such effect, two case studies are considered: La Serena and Valdivia, both cities with exceptional morphological characteristics, which locations were dynamized from the interaction between the positions and construction of borders triggered by the urban intervention processes of the 20th and 21st centuries. Finally, political tools, based on housing subsidies that allow the State to obliterate violent protest outbursts, are considered, even when the model screams for its salvation.