Cohousing strategies in pericentral area of santiago de Chile

Abstract

The consistent increase of the co-habitation of extended families in central areas of the city of Santiago is the consequence of the strategy used by the inhabitants of vulnerable sectors to maintain themselves in well-located sectors of the city. Facing the restrictive housing policy that expels these inhabitants to the periphery and the inaccessible prices of the housing market, cohabitation in extended families appears as an alternative that allows them to maintain their networks, location, access to the city, and labor sources. This co-habitation of extended families or co-residence induces them to generate new housing typologies that allow sustaining this lifestyle. To achieve this, they modify the houses and land in which they live, according to their interests, needs and economic capacity. In order to understand these typologies, 100 cases of extended families who live in co-habitation in the central area of Santiago were analyzed, which allowed to recognize and categorize 11 types of site occupation and 12 of housing organization. The study reveals a wide variety of residential strategies questioning the housing production model for mononuclear families based on predefined concepts and elements of architecture that remain in question for not recognizing the wide diversity of ways of living.