Centrality and subcentrality in cities with low regulation, the case of Antofagasta and La Serena in Chile

Abstract

This work seeks to identify labor and service sub-centers in the area, using information from the surveys of origin destination of the Chilean Ministry of Transportation, and to analyze the building activity and housing market in each of them. The identification methodology will be followed, established in Marmolejo and Aguirre (2011) regarding the density peaks and the use of worker density, its version of composite density and validating by means of an appropriate version of time density.

There is still a clear relationship between the agglomeration of uses and segregation in the city and the low regulations in the land and housing market. In Chile, there is a low regulation of the housing markets and in particular both cities have regulations at the municipal level, which, given their complexity of approval, once they were approved they are already surpassed by reality and become obsolete.

Under this premise, the cities of Antofagasta and La Serena-Coquimbo, located on the coastal plain of northern Chile, are analyzed, seeking to identify urban patterns and their impacts on the housing and land markets. Antofagasta (380 695 inhabitants, Census 2017) and La Serena-Coquimbo (412 586 inhabitants, Census 2017) are cities that receive the greatest benefits from mining and therefore during the copper super cycle, (from 2003 to 2016), both cities grew in inhabitants and buildings in an unprecedented way. In this sense, its complexity, as well as its average income, were observed on the rise. In addition, both communes are capitals of their region, they are coastal, linear and are constrained by the coastal range to the east,

It is possible to identify an incipient subcenter in Antofagasta and two agglomerations in La Serena, these being of an industrial and / or services nature, however, when analyzing a clearer analysis, but it is not possible to determine their impact on prices, nor in building activity. In both cities, agglomerations of workers are identified, but they are far from structuring the territory, or contributing to a competition of other types of travel with the center.