Mezcla social e integración urbana: aproximaciones teóricas y discusión del caso chileno

Abstract

Social mix, in general terms, denotes the social diversity of a certain geographic area, being this economic, racial, ethnic, cultural, etc. Social mix is an old and persistent ideal of planning (marked by normative pretensions), has been achieved through different means, has been proposed to reach a wide variety of goals, and has been used interchangeably to refer to concepts like 'integration', 'mixed-income communities', 'poverty deconcentration', 'balanced communities', etc. There has been abundant literature from the 1990s, to the extent that it is one of the most researched topics in urban studies. At present, the discussion on social mix revolves around five key concepts: contact hypothesis, social networks, social control, role models, and geographies of opportunity. In Chile, from 2006 there have been social mix policies, with the expectation that physical proximity between different social groups could facilitate integration. In this article we review the concept of social mix from a historical and comparative perspective, and then we study Chilean policies under the five mentioned concepts, showing the low efficacy that these projects have had in meeting the proposed goals.