The distinctive character districts of Santiago

31 Mar

An interview with Carolina Sepúlveda

Like any city in the world, Santiago is home to people from a range of economic backgrounds – there are affluent residents, and there are less affluent residents.

However, what sets Santiago apart is that the city is geographically defined on these terms. Whole neighbourhoods have developed to house people of a certain socio-economic status. It is an accident of the city’s development, but one that shows up stark partitions on any map of the city’s economy, income and services.

The divide is even visible to the naked eye. From any peak in Parque Metropolitano, if one looks east, there are high-rise buildings and a grid-like street network as far as the eye can see. To the west, it is unstructured, low-rise and industrial. Hiding behind the hills of the city’s largest park, the poorer side of Santiago is, quite literally, out of sight and out of mind.

Beyond this wealth partition, the city is also sub-divided into fascinating character districts and neighbourhoods. There is the lively business district of Providencia, the laid-back charm of Bellavista, the regal beauty of the central plazas, and the residential tranquillity of Las Condes. Each as distinctive as the last.

Carolina Sepúlveda, architect, curator and urban development consultant at the Inter-American Development Bank, joined me for coffee to help me decode this partitioned sense of place in Santiago in Santiago.

Hi Carolina, thanks for joining me! Tell me a little bit about your background.

Hi! So, I’m an architect by training. I studied here in Chile as an architect, and then I studied a Masters in Art and the Public Domain at Harvard.

For my Masters thesis, I explored how gender impacts experiences of migration into the USA from Latin America. For me, it showed a new way of looking at how people interact with space. I found that female migrants tend to conduct more extensive planning and networking than men before they travel. They often migrate in larger groups, and prefer to stay in hotels rather than informal encampments. In essence, women tend to plan rigorously in advance of their trip to take the necessary precautions to stay safe. It was a different perspective on women in public space than the narrative we’re used to.

Underlying all of that is my consistent interest in how people engage with public and city spaces. This has always fascinated me, and it’s what interests me in my job today.

What does your work at the Bank involve?

Well, the Inter-American Development Bank helps to provide finance and support for social challenges across South America with an inclusive perspective. We work closely with the government to do this, and in my role, I’m combining architectural methodologies with on-the-ground research to help create better, more sustainable places to live.

So what kind of projects are you typically working on?

As an example, we just finished an urban renewal project. There are a few areas in the city that are very historic, but they need updating to make them safe and sustainable for the future. On this kind of project, we encourage the government to work closely with the community to find ways of uplifting the area while retaining the heritage.

The other big challenge in our work is in urban integration. The city is geographically divided by wealth, and we encourage governments to create infrastructure and services in the poorer areas to help bridge the gap.

The wealth divide in Santiago is really interesting. In many other cities, you definitely see a difference in living circumstances between richer and poorer inhabitants, but usually you find them mixed within the same neighbourhoods and boroughs. Why has Santiago developed on such divided lines?

It’s a very difficult question to answer. In part, the economic division started under the dictatorship. Recent circumstances, like the Pandemic, have made it worse, because people’s mobility between neighbourhoods has been reduced.

But actually, this kind of geographic division in wealth is more typical of developing countries and cities.

Because all of the wealth is concentrated in the areas where people spend the most time, it’s not obvious to everybody that Santiago is a developing city. The less affluent areas are out of sight. It’s a bit of a vicious circle: people spend more time in the richer areas because they’re nicer, which leads to less investment and less visibility for the poorer areas.

What can placemakers do to begin to tackle this?

It is a very big challenge and it won’t be solved overnight. The lower income areas of the city need improved access to many different services and facilities. We need to work on the infrastructure, but mainly it’s access to healthcare, education and transport. Even now, the newer and wealthier parts of the city enjoy a much higher quality of public services – just look at how much faster it is to get to the city centre from Las Condes than it is Recoleta!

At the moment this is being approached one step at a time, trying to find ways to support development in the poorer areas. But it will take big change.

And what about the richer areas? Thinking about Las Condes in particular, it seems like many of the wealthier people in the city are moving away from the city centre and towards into the suburbs. Is that a fair reflection?

Yes, to an extent that is what’s happening. Las Condes is a very wealthy area, and a lot of the better housing and office development has been concentrated in that neighbourhood recently.

Partly, this is because there’s more space to develop there, and when the neighbourhood first started growing, the land was relatively cheap. The interesting trend there is that the homes closest to the mountains – and furthest from the city – have started to become the most expensive.

But I personally think the future potential in Santiago is closer to the city centre. Land in Las Condes is becoming more expensive again, and meanwhile we have many beautiful low-rise residential neighbourhoods right here in the centre. With a bit of renewal and reactivation, these spaces are where the real soul of the city is.

In fact, our new president, Gabriel Boric, has chosen to live in one of these neighbourhoods, Barrio Yungay. Most recent presidents have lived in richer areas like Las Condes, but Boric is just a few minutes’ walk from his office, right here in the centre. It’s a sign of where the city’s potential is.

What can you, and other placemakers, do to harness this potential?

Well, speaking personally, I’ve founded an architectural studio with my friend Juan Carlos López, in one of these historic, city-centre neighbourhoods near Plaza de Armas. We rented a space in this beautiful, abandoned building, now turned into Sentimental Studio.

The gallery is all about understanding how humans interact with architecture, so we’re showcasing art of all kinds, and focusing on the creation process as well as the finished product. We started it from our own personal interest, but also because we felt Santiago was lacking spaces for this kind of open dialogue.

What I’ve noticed with the studio, though, is that the neighbourhood we’re in has been transforming. It starts with one place, then a few others open, and then the whole neighbourhood flourishes. Our street was even on the news! It’s great to a part of that.

Thank you so much for meeting with me, Carolina, and best of luck with the studio!

Carolina Sepúlveda is an architect and curator from Chile. She holds a Masters in Design Studies from Harvard GSD, and a B. Arch. from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. She is co-curator of Curating Architecture Across the Americas. She has researched and produced architecture exhibitions at Harvard GSD, the Inter-American Development Bank, LIGA DF, the Chilean Architecture Biennial, among others. She is Co-Founder, Co-Director and Curator of Sentimental Studio, an architecture practice based in Santiago de Chile.

Jake Hughes