577 HOUSING POLICY DEBATE VOLUME 18 ISSUE 3 © 2007 METROPOLITAN INSTITUTE AT VIRGINIA TECH. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Gated Communities and the Poor in Santiago, Chile: Functional and Symbolic Integration in a Context of Aggressive Capitalist Colonization of Lower-Class Areas Francisco Sabatini and Rodrigo Salcedo Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile Abstract In Santiago, Chile, the number of gated communities has increased sig- nificantly during the past few years. Although these communities are aimed at the elite, they are often located on the fringes of low-income neighbor- hoods and thus change traditional segregation patterns in the city. In many cases, gated housing communities for the upper classes are accompanied by nonresidential development, such as shopping centers and office complexes, which bring jobs into the neighborhood. We analyze case studies of lower-class neighborhoods located near upper-class gated com- munities to study the effect on the poor. We find that the spatial dispersion of real estate developments for the elite promotes some forms of social inte- gration and provides advantages to poorer residents by bringing jobs into the neighborhood, triggering improved public services, and even sparking a renewed sense of pride among lower-class residents. Keywords: Chile; Gated communities; Neighborhood Introduction In Santiago, Chile’s capital city of 5 million inhabitants, the number of gated communities for the elite has increased dramatically over the past decade. The city is becoming fenced and walled, as are many other cities around the world. The negative consequences of this international phenom- enon in terms of exclusion and social inequality seem obvious, and many scholars have highlighted them (Caldeira 2000; Judd 1995; Low 2001, 2003). As the so-called L.A. school of thought argues (Dear and Flusty 2002; Soja 2000), the vision that aligns economic globalization with the unavoid-