ABSTRACT
The seed of neoliberalism: Chapter 3 provides a global level of analysis that aims to present a baseline to contextualise and understand the historical origins of Santiago’s neoliberalisation. This chapter unveils the urban history of Santiago from a spatial dialectic view, by situating land at the centre as the object disputed by social classes. The organisation of the chapter responds to a dialectical strategy for illustrating different spatial contests on this city as the seed for the neoliberal revolution. This chapter explains the historical period that Armando de Ramón (2007) named as the city of the masses – typified by a strong role of the state in planning the city in order to alleviate urban poverty and distributing better public goods. This was an approach that clashed with the historical prevalence of private property as a means of shaping the urban form. The city of the masses ended in 1973 when the process of neoliberalisation started, after the coup d’état led by Augusto Pinochet.
