Impact of Land Use Diversity on Daytime Social Segregation Patterns in Santiago de Chile

Luis Fuentes,Ricardo Truffello,Mónica Flores

doi:10.3390/buildings12020149

Luis Fuentes, Ricardo Truffello + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings12020149

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Abstract

Latin American cities are known for their high levels of marginality, segregation and inequality. As such, these issues have been the subject of substantial discussions in academia, with the predominant approach being the study of residential segregation, or what we call “nighttime segregation”. Another dimension of urban sociability, related to labor, is what we call “daytime segregation”, which has been far less studied. This article makes an original methodological contribution to the measurement of non-residential or daytime segregation based on data from mobility surveys. It seeks to explain this segregation measurement according to the diversity and distribution of land uses, as well as other characteristics of the built stock, such as land price and built-up density. We measured daytime social mix in urban spaces, and we show how it highly relates to land use diversity in a Latin American megacity, such as Santiago, Chile. We found that land use diversity plays a key role in enhancing the daytime social diversity of urban spaces, contributing to generate a more heterogeneous city and social gatherings during working days. This research is not only a contribution to the understanding of sociability patterns in cities but is also a contribution to public policy and the work of urban planners, as it informs the development of more diverse and integrated cities, which is a key tool for strengthening democracy, the exchange of ideas, the economy and social welfare.

Highlights

Segregation, marginality and urban inequality are topics that have dominated theoretical discussions on urban issues in Latin America [1], especially after the first few years of the turn of the century
This study focuses on studying the roles that diversity of activities, land uses, built-up density and land prices play in enhancing socioeconomic diversity during the day, and how they contribute to generate a more heterogeneous city with spaces for social gatherings
Based on the statistical analysis (Table 1), we found that land use diversity significantly reduced daytime segregation in the five models evaluated

Summary

Introduction

Segregation, marginality and urban inequality are topics that have dominated theoretical discussions on urban issues in Latin America [1], especially after the first few years of the turn of the century. It was at this point when the spatial dimension of urban poverty began to be highlighted, focusing on spatial concentration, the reproduction of inequalities and the isolation effects on the most vulnerable social groups [2,3,4]. Residential segregation (RS) is the degree to which two or more social groups live separately from each other in an urban space [5]. The debate has focused on the definition of the concept and on the methodologies used to measure and represent it [8,9]

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