ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests how a more comprehensive public housing policy and a multidimensional approach could ensure socioeconomic inclusion in many urban areas. The empirical data from Santiago exposes how the differential exploitation of the ground rent is ultimately a political/class-based process. High-rise redevelopment in Santiago rests on the big amount of landownership among low-income population, the extremely unequal economic power relations between the original population and the redevelopers, and the dominance of high-rise construction in the redevelopment process, all of which are drivers to class-led residential displacement. Three politico-economic issues co-exist in this redevelopment process. First, this method of gentrification is probably the most efficient device for amplifying capital within the secondary circuit of the built environment, multiplying the return in the form of profit once high-rise redevelopment has occurred. Second, it responds to the production, uneven accumulation. Third, the gentrification of Santiago responds to what has come to be called 'urban entrepreneurialism'.
