Towards a comprehensive urban-housing regeneration model with densification in 9×18 neighborhoods.

Hacia un modelo integral de regeneración urbano-habitacional con densificación en barrios tipo 9×18.

Chile faces a complex housing scenario. Although the housing deficit has been reduced in recent decades, a significant portion of households still do not have access to decent and adequate housing. Increasingly, families without housing are showing strong preferences for good locations, ideally in the same neighbourhoods they live in. Our proposal suggests guidelines for a public policy that addresses this challenge, taking advantage of the opportunity presented by hundreds of urban neighbourhoods created several decades ago by the same public policy, many of them known as 9×18 neighbourhoods, and which today are well located in the city, have an adequate urban fabric, good public spaces and have land with potential for densification. Our proposal suggests guidelines for an institutional model whose principles and strategies are radically different from those that have inspired the housing policy of the last four decades. In this model, the targeting criteria do not focus on vulnerable households but on supporting communities in neighbourhoods demanding regeneration processes, which may include low and middle-income people. The basic characteristics of such a model include at least medium-scale residential densification and substantive improvements to the urban environment through a participatory plan between the municipality and the resident communities, which become not only beneficiaries but also agents in the implementation of public policy.