ABSTRACT
During the past half-century, neighborhoods in low-income Santiago have undergone an extraordinary transformation. In the 1960s, the vast majority of these neighborhoods were part of the so-called “informal city,” settlements without legal sanction. Today, however, they are well established, largely integrated (if inequitably) into the city’s network of services, and their residents live in homes with property titles. In 1960, only 70 percent of the dwellings in Santiago had legal recognition, but in 2002 that number stood at more than 97 percent. 1 The vast majority of low-income residents in the city, moreover, have become homeowners, helping to give Chile a somewhat high rate of homeownership internationally, hovering at just below 65 percent (for comparative data, see Angel 2000, UN-Habitat 2005: 66, Ronald and Elsinga 2012).
