OECD Urban Policy Reviews, Chile 2013

This review of Chile's urban policy finds that Chile has undergone significant transformation in the past three decades, including growth in GDP, population levels and urbanisation. This growth has been a key factor in Chile’s success in reaching an improved quality of life.  However, Chile ranks lower than many other OECD member countries on a variety of urban-related quality-of-life factors, such as income, housing, jobs and the environment.  Chile’s urban and metropolitan development practices have traditionally been sector-driven, and today the need for well-integrated approaches to urbanism are increasingly recognised among urban policy makers.  This report examines the economic and socio-economic trends in Chile’s urban areas including population growth, and mounting inequality it analyses four policy areas with significant implications for national urban programming, specifically land-use and zoning, housing, public transport, and the environment and it examines possible approaches for revitalising the urban governance structure in metropolitan and urban areas, as well as mechanisms to reinforce strategic planning and service-delivery capacity.