Browsing by Author "Salcedo, R"

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    Gated communities in Santiago: Wall or frontier?
    (BLACKWELL PUBL LTD, 2004) Salcedo, R; Torres, A
    It is a widely held notion, disseminated in particular by the LA school of urban studies, that gated communities are enclaves, which not only maintain segregation but also help increase it. In Chile a more benevolent interpretation has arisen. Sabatini, Caceres and Cerda argue that gated communities help out the poor communities that surround them. If the spatial scale of segregation is reduced - from city to local or neighborhood level - social disintegration should slow, according to their analysis. This article seeks to empirically complement and expand on Sabatini, Caceres and Cerda's position, which seems to be a better interpretation of Chilean reality than the grim picture presented by the LA school. The article is an ethnographic work based on in-depth interviews in gated communities and a surrounding shantytown in the Huechuraba district, a lower socio-economic class area in north-west Santiago: The research concludes that, despite the existence of a wall that promotes community integration among so-called equals, in conditions of spatial proximity sociability between inside and outside groups is not diminished. Thus, in Huechuraba there is no impenetrable wall separating poor and rich; equally, the walls do not seem to promote community integration within. Spatial proximity has encouraged relations mainly in the realm of functional exchange, making the creation of gated communities in poor neighborhoods a socially desirable experience, at least in the case of Santiago.
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    When the global meets the local at the mall
    (2003) Salcedo, R
    The last 20 years have completely changed the image and function of the mall as developed in the 1950s by Victor Gruen and other pioneers. The mall has been transformed from a Fordist space that encourages mass consumption and sameness to a post-Fordist space that attempts to create social distinctions. Urban scholars have assumed that the mall is an outpost of the globalized economy that diminishes locality and human agency. In this article, the globalizing view of the mall is questioned, arguing in favor of "glocalization" processes that combine the post-Fordist capitalist logic of the mall industry with local characteristics that affect mall development.