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In 1975, private and social housing production in Chile started to become increasingly privatized, in parallel with capital switching into the secondary circuit due to severe deindustrialization of the country. Since then, housing demand has largely drawn on state housing subsidies aimed at middle- to low-income demand, but more recently, a growing financialized mortgage market has increased demand even further, enlarging the mortgage debt burden on Chilean households. Private housing producers achieve higher profits by increasing sales prices, whilst production costs are kept relatively stable by purchasing and developing the cheapest land available, both on the fringes and within the inner sectors of the main metropolitan areas, as a form of accumulation by dispossession in hitherto underexploited, non-commodified land. However, low purchase prices of land create housing unaffordability for numbers of original owner-residents who sell land to redevelopers but cannot then afford replacement accommodation given the soaring housing prices in the main metropolises. It is for this reason that some central areas become gentrified. Focusing on the case of high-rise redevelopment of inner-city areas in Santiago, Chile, this paper addresses the extent to which demand and private developers’ profits increase alongside the risks of a generalized growing level of household debt and the displacement of low-income communities from inner areas. The continuous expansion of the extremely privatized housing market of Santiago responds to the needs of capital expansion rather than to the people’s needs.

Sustainable transport is often defined according to energy efficiency and environmental impacts. With global approval during Habitat III, however, a set of Sustainable Development Goals have become the focus for human development until 2030, underlining the relevance of health, equity and other social issues.

These goals raise the challenge of achieving significant progress towards ‘transport justice’ in diverse societies and contexts. While exclusion occurs for different reasons, discrimination, based on cultural roles, combines with sexual harassment and other mobility barriers to limit women’s mobility. This makes gender an area of particular interest and potential insight for considering equity within sustainability and its social components.

Using data from Metropolitan Santiago to ground a conceptual exploration, this chapter examines the equity implications of women’s travel patterns and sustainable transport. Key findings underline the importance of considering non-work trip purposes and achieving better land-use combinations to accommodate care-oriented trips. Moreover, barriers linked to unsafe public transport environments limit women’s mobility and, therefore, their participation. Women account for a disproportionately high number of walking trips, a situation that can be interpreted as ‘greater sustainability’ in terms of energy use and emissions, but suggests significant inequalities in access. Environmental and economic sustainability gains may be achieved at a high social cost, unless specific measures are taken.

Purpose – The vulnerability and adaptive capacities of cities in Latin America have received relatively less attention compared to other regions of the world. This chapter seeks to address these gaps by (a) examining vulnerability to the health impacts from air pollution and temperature, and exploring whether socioeconomic factors between neighborhoods differentiate these risks within the cities of Bogota, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, and Santiago and (b) assessing the capacity of urban populations to perceive and respond to vulnerability and risk.

Design/methodology/approach – Because of the complex nature of vulnerability, we combined a set of quantitative and quantitative methods and data to determine whether and under what conditions the people in these cities are vulnerable (e.g., Time Series Analysis, Generalized Linear Model, and statistical correlations of exposure and human mortality with socioeconomic vulnerability).

Findings – We found high levels of PM10, ozone, and other criteria air pollutants in three cities for which we had data. However, the pattern of their impacts on health depends on the particulars of pollutant levels and atmospheric and weather conditions of each city. Our results reflect the varied facets of urban vulnerability and shed light on the nature of the associated human health risks. Although wealthy populations have access to education, good quality housing, and health services to mitigate some environmental risks, overall the data show that health impacts from air pollution and temperature in the study cities do not necessarily depend on socioeconomic differentiations.

Research limitations/implications – Although we sought to use quantitative and qualitative methods, given the complexity of the research, it has proven difficult to fully explore these issues across scales and with a full accounting of local context.

Practical implications – Our findings show that wealthy and educated populations may be equally at risk to the health implications of air pollution. Policies designed to mitigate these risks should not use socioeconomic characteristics as predictors of a population's risk in relation to air pollution.

Originality/value – This research contributes valuable insights into the dynamics of vulnerability to air pollution in Latin American cities, a region that has been historically underrepresented in empirical studies of urban risk. We have also combined a range of methods and approaches to improve our understanding of the multifaceted nature of urban vulnerability to global environmental change.

The article offers a study of the central food marketplace in Santiago, Dominican Republic. The purpose of the study is to explore how changes in the marketplace reflect transformation of urban food systems resulting from neoliberal restructuring during the final decades of the twentieth century.

Drawing on long-term qualitative research conducted during the late 1990s and early 2000s, including ethnographic and survey methods, the article illustrates how central urban marketplaces offer a window into transitions in both international and domestic food economies.

Research findings illustrate that the marketplace in Santiago operated in a state of economic hybridity, intermixing long established regionally produced domestic crops such as yuca, plantains and pigeon peas deeply rooted in Dominican agrarian culture with products dervived from liberalization of the Dominican economy such as imported rice, beans and eventually numerous Dominican food staples.

The study is limited by the scope of analysis which is one urban marketplace. More sites for researching marketplaces could be added for more comparative analysis.

The research findings have implications for how governments define social and economic policy that impacts domestic food producers and intermediary brokers that aggregate and debulk food to feed cities.

The scholarship raises questions about how the social and economic organization of urban marketplaces in the Dominican Republic and elsewhere reflect historical transitions in local, national and global economies.

This study aims to question the fact that density has been considered only as an instrument of calculation to be used on regulation mechanisms, without taking into consideration other variables related to density. The paper proposes a framework consisting of four determining factors for urban analysis that have to be considered before starting a densification process: connectivity and permeability of network, mixture of uses, relation to urban morphology and public spaces for each district. The methodological analysis was carried out for the case of the district of Gruta de Lourdes, Quinta Normal, located in northwest Santiago, which has started a densification process the recent years.

The present discussion aims to obtain objective parameters to determine if urban development allows livability and a balanced relationship with actual urban form and diversity. There appear to be four determining factors of urban analysis: connectivity and network permeability, the mixture of uses, public spaces and urban form development. The district of Gruta de Lourdes will be used to delve into these parameters to place the debate around density in objective terms. To look in depth at each of the criteria for evaluating densification processes, various methods were selected for quantifying the observed variables: to evaluate connectivity and integration of a neighborhood with the rest of the city, the spatial configuration analysis “Space Syntax” will be used; to evaluate mix of uses, mixed-use index, or ratio of non-residential use will be used; urban morphology, plot size, housing density (dw/ha), lot coverage and floor area ratio will be used; public spaces, the percentage dedicated to each of these in m²/inhab.

The results allow us to conclude that it is necessary to plan densification processes via an analysis that promotes connectivity, mixture of uses, urban morphology and the available public spaces to understand density as a multivariable phenomenon. In addition, we conclude that the case study district, Gruta de Lourdes, can withstand greater demand for housing as long as the context is taken into account. A possible option to asset the densification potential could be the “infill” strategy, which aims to be a type of intervention that does not change the structure of the neighborhood as new buildings are positioned among existing ones, maintaining the form of the streets and the structure of plot divisions.

The value of the paper is to contribute to the discussion on how to renovate central areas in Latin American cities looking at variables such as connectivity, mixture of uses, urban morphology and public spaces, which are directly related to density. Moreover, the paper contributes to discuss new ways to analyze and measure densification, toward planning a district’s renovation. In addition, the quantitative methodological approach to the densification processes gives a new understanding of how to determine density. Finally, the paper reveals an opportunity to rethink the inner city toward new approaches to renovation developments.

Purpose — New methods of measuring user satisfaction in transport services have been proposed and applied in the literature. In this paper, we compare three alternative measures for estimating user satisfaction: the numerical rating, the ordinal rating and the choice.

Approach — We analysed these measures considering their differences and limitations and the models that use these measures as dependent variables. We developed and applied a methodology to build these models. It comprises a preliminary qualitative analysis and a quantitative survey to identify the most relevant attributes of the satisfaction function, and a stated preference survey to obtain information of the alternative satisfaction measures for modelling purpose.

Findings — The ordinal rating may be a better user response to estimate satisfaction than score and choice based on its characteristics. The results obtained in the application reinforced this approach.

Research limitations — It is assumed that choice, score and ordinal valuation depend upon a latent stochastic satisfaction function of the same attributes. Further research is needed to analyse this assumption and how these responses vary according to the context for decision and exogenous factors, including the response scale of ratings.

Practical implications — Gathering alternative satisfaction responses simultaneously from users allowed for the consistency analysis and filtering of data, which greatly benefited the model estimation process.

Originality/value — The paper provides a methodology to estimate user satisfaction models in transit services, which can be applied in other transport services. The conceptual analysis and the application suggest that ordinal ratings are key user responses to uncover the underlying satisfaction function.

The purpose of the paper is to analyze the development of business angel networks (BANs) in emerging countries such as Chile and Colombia to understand how institutions affect their development.

This is a qualitative, exploratory, and descriptive study based on a comparative analysis between countries, with the BANs in Chile and Colombia as the unit of observation. The comparative analysis was made in relation with the creation, operation and sustainability of the BANs. The study interviews the partners/managers of the active networks in each of the countries, as well as key informants, totalling 12 interviews.

BAN activity in Chile and Colombia is quite recent, and the countries are on a similar level of development. However, in the long term, depending on how the cultural aspects evolve in both countries and the interest that the State may have in developing business angel activity, the results could be indeed different.

Business angel activity in Latin America is quite recent; nevertheless, this activity is increasing in the region. In that sense, this comparative analysis between Colombia and Chile contributes to a better understanding of business angel markets in Latin America and also to obtain better insights into the core challenges that these markets face in emerging countries due to the existence of institutional voids. This paper is a contribution for further knowledge of BANs in emerging countries’ economies from an institutional perspective.

Cities have been exposed to a variety of natural disasters such as flooding, extreme temperatures, storms, earthquakes, and other natural shocks, and have had to respond and adapt to such pressures over time. In the context of global climate change, natural disasters have increased across the globe. Apart from climate change, many urban environments in Latin America are experiencing significant transformations in land use patterns, socio-demographic change, changing labor markets, and economic growth, resulting from recent decades of globalization. Such transformations have resulted in the internal fragmentation of cities. In this context, the purpose of the present chapter is to demonstrate the importance in both theoretical and methodological terms, of integrating the concept of socio-environmental fragmentation into urban vulnerability research in order to make progress toward higher degrees of local sustainability in those areas of the city that suffer natural disasters and fragmentation.

A mixed methods approach is used in order to combine different technical issues from urban and climate change studies.

The findings are related to the importance of an integrated approach, regarding the complexity of urban life, and the relationship between the urban, the social, and the environmental phenomenon.

This chapter relates to the revisit of the current state of preparedness and to determine whether further adaptations are required. The authors understood that these kinds of mixed approaches are necessary in order to understand the new complexity of urban processes.