Spatial Accessibility to Local Public Services in an Unequal Place: An Analysis from Patterns of Residential Segregation in the Metropolitan Area of Santiago, Chile

Abstract

The study of the relationship between the provision of local public services and residential segregation is critical when it might be the social manifestation of spatial income inequality. This paper analyzes how the spatial accessibility to local public services is distributed equitably among different social and economic groups in the Metropolitan Area of Santiago (MR), Chile. To accomplish this objective, I use accessibility measures to local public services such as transportation, public education, healthcare, kindergartens, parks, fire and police stations, cultural infrastructure, and information about housing prices and exempted housing units from local taxes by block, as well as quantile regressions and bivariate Local Indicators of Spatial Association (LISA). The main results confirm the accessibility to local public services is unequally distributed among residents. However, it affects more low-income groups who are suffering from significant deficits in the provision of local public services. In this scenario, poor residents face a double disadvantage due to their social exclusion from urban systems and their limited access to essential services such as education, healthcare, or transportation. In particular, I found that social residential segregation might be reinforced by insufficient access to local infrastructure that the most impoverished population should assume.