Currently, over 75% of the Chilean population lives in urban areas; and over 50% lives in metropolitan sectors. These establishments form cities, and within cities, population tends to gather and identify themselves with certain sectors called neighborhoods. These groupings respond to a series of historic, cultural, economic and geographic factors, among others.
Urban entities denominated cities neighborhoods offer a variety of advantages for development and life quality of people, such as education and work opportunities, business, services, communication, cultural and recreational offers. Nevertheless, they also involve problems that attempt against the community desired development. For example, marginality, poverty, insecurity, social disintegration, pollution and health loss, which effects are experienced by all of the population on different degrees, but that affect the poorest ones with no doubt.
It is also necessary to assume that the cities and neighborhoods are evolving entities, which not always change towards renewal, progress and integration. Sometimes, they produce deterioration, poverty and segregation. Within this context, cities and neighborhoods are a great opportunity for social development, but at the same time, they are a challenge and demand a great effort, responsibility, solidarity and respect among every inhabitant.
Regarding Urban Development, the Housing and Urban development Department has among its goals to generate policies, propose laws and norms, design and apply investment programs and materialize the projects and urban works that encourage balanced development in cities and their neighborhoods. So conjugating particular and common interests, increasing access levels to basic services, diminishing the urban infrastructure shortage, rescuing and valuating natural elements and public spaces. It gives priority to the use of public resources in the most needed sectors and, at the same time, coordinates investments from different sources, to achieve spatial and temporal complementation and even activation of other investments.
In this section, we give out information concerning the different investment programs in urban works that are currently being impelled by the Housing and Urban Development Department, and also the conception, design and, in some cases, materialization of integral urban projects.