Privately Operated Highways: a new form of segregation

Margarita Greene Z and Rodrigo Mora V

1. Introduction

Santiago de Chile, is currently experiencing dramatic changes, which will profoundly trans-
form its urban structure, and hopefully will convert it into a “world class city”. With this
challenge in mind, the government has prompted a modernization plan of the public and
private transport systems based on the implementation of the Transantiago Plan and the
building of several urban highways throughout the city.
The Transantiago Plan considers the improvement and rationalization of Santiago’s
buses and underground system, involving a public investment of nearly USD 1.3 million
from 2004 to 2010. On the other hand, the construction of the highway system involves
a private investment of USD 1.8 million and includes the construction of six privately
operated highways over a length of approximately 215 km.
From the beginning, the highway system plan has been highly controversial. Basically
it has been attacked from three perspectives. The first concerns the amount of money
invested by the Government in guaranteeing a private business. The second, headed by
transport engineers, questions the efficiency of building highways for tackling the con-
gestion problem. Finally, from the urban-architectural point of view, criticism has been
centred on the effect that these highways will have on the neighbourhoods and places
through which they pass. Although we share these apprehensions, in this article we sug-
gest that there is an even more important effect that has not been identified or studied
until now: that is, the structural changes on the city that will affect the way it is perceived
and lived in.
The highway system proposes a double internal crossing of the city; the first in the
north-south direction (Autopista Central), and the second in the east-west direction
(Costanera Norte). These will be complemented by a circular ring road highway (Americo
Vespucio), which surrounds the city, and links them with other privately operated high-
ways that connect the capital to the rest of the country (Figure 187).
The entire system of highways is far from being a novel idea; in fact, it was initially
proposed by the urbanist Juan Parrocchia (1979) as “fundamental corridors” and was
incorporated in the first inter communal Master Plan for the city (Plan Regulador Inter-
comunal para Santiago - PRIS 1960). Between 1950 and 1975 it steered many of the road
system improvements (roundabouts, boulevards and the like) built in Santiago (Figure
188).
The main difference with the present project is the fact that the users will have to pay
directly every time they use the highway. This may carry some serious implications that
need to be considered. In the first place, it might intensify social segregation, by creating a
new and isolated vehicular system for well-off neighbourhoods, which are already very well
equipped. In the second place, such “first class” arteries will tend to generate a circulation
system from one part of the city to the other, with no relation to the neighbourhoods it
404 Margarita Greene Z and Rodrigo Mora V

Figure 187: Privately operated highway system.

crosses, increasing social segregation. In the third place, the free urban fabric might lose
continuity and integration with the city globally, especially because some of the presently
most integrated streets of the city (i.e. Avenida Kennedy), currently available free of
charge, will now be part of the tolled system.

2. The road network in the city

The street network plays a crucial role in the city by allowing for the interchange of goods
and services, as a place of encounter and social interaction, and to a great extent as a
vital requirement for the development of an urban society. As Cerdá pointed out, referring
to the recently born urbanism discipline, “... its constituted elements are the shelters, its
object the reciprocity of services and its means the public roads, that is, of public use”
(Soria y Puig, 1996; p.98). These ideas would soon after take form on the celebrated
“ensanche” of Barcelona at the end of the XIX century, which even today is considered
a brilliantly achieved urban intervention. By that time, Baron Hausmann, with similar
considerations, was implementing major changes in Paris through the construction of the
great avenues and boulevards that still frame the city today.
More recently, experts like Panerai (1983) and De Solá Morales (1997), among others,
have underlined the importance of the street network as the carrier of the memory of
the city, and as crucial instruments for the urban project. Koolhaas and Mau (1995) as
well as Allen (1999), have stressed the importance of the street network for the entire
development of a city. Allen, for instance, considers that street networks form “systems
of continuity”, that ultimately create “artificial ecologies” which trigger deep changes in
the city, which in turn modify the network and generate more infrastructure.
In the case of Santiago, by the end of the XIX century, Benjamin Vicuña Mackenna,
influenced by the European urbanists, modified the original street network of the city
profoundly. His modernization scheme can be traced even today in some of the main
 Privately Operated Highways: a new form of segregation 405

Figure 188: Fundamental corridors plan for Santiago, source: Parrochia, 1979.

avenues defined in his plan, and in the definition of a hierarchy of local, semi local and
global roadwork. At that time, the improvement of the city’s connectivity was seen as
a mechanism for modernisation, insofar as it permitted further expansion towards the
periphery.
Nearly thirty years later, at the beginning of the XX century, the Austrian urban-
ist Karl Brunner modified Santiago’s foundational grid by allowing for the construction
of a dense system of pedestrian passages and arcades in the town centre (Figure 189).
Such a network has created a “pedestrian realm” in Santiago’s downtown, which modified
the existing regular grid inherited from the colonial era. Through the implementation of
Brunner’s regulation norms the commercial perimeter of the downtown area increased con-
siderably, contributing to the dynamic commercial and institutional activities that subsist
still today in the centre of the city.
More recently, since 1975, the urbanist German Bannen has used a similar strategy
for maintaining the commercial dynamism of the Providencia area, which since the 60’s
had been developing as a sub centre of the city. Through a careful negotiation with the
land owners, architects and other actors involved, he has succeeded in creating passages
and pedestrian connections so that the original urban structure has been partitioned and
densified, increasing the possible routes and actual pedestrian use of open space (see Figure
190).
On the other hand, in the last 30 years, Chile and Santiago have experienced dramatic
growth. In fact, the city has doubled its population, reaching 5.2 million inhabitants
in 2002, while each year it consumes nearly 40,000 hectares of farming land. This has
increased the number of daily trips, producing nowadays more than 16 million trips per
day, a third of which have the CBD as destiny. As in many other big cities around the
world, congestion in Santiago has become a routine, prompting the Government to look
for innovative answers, in this case Plan Transantiago, which involves the construction of
privately operated highways.
In order to study the effects that the privately operated highways will produce on
406 Margarita Greene Z and Rodrigo Mora V

Figure 189: Pedestrian passages and arcade system in the town centre, source: Rosas,
1985.

Figure 190: New pedestrian routes in Providencia.

Santiago’s structure, syntactic models of the city were built and compared. These included
the city’s spatial configuration before and after the highways were incorporated. The
model after the highways was analysed separately, considering the entire system (the
highways over the existing city), and the remaining free-of-charge city (excluding the
tolled highways). Therefore there are three situations to compare: the city before the
highways, the city with the highways, and the city of those that do not use the highways
(the “free of charge” city of the future).

3. Analysing Santiago’s urban structure

The analysis was based on three syntactic measures: global integration (Rn), local in-
tegration (R3) and synergy (R-square of R3 and Rn). As can be seen in Table 19 the
introduction of the highways has contradictory effects on the integration patterns of the
city that were not easy to predict before the modelling. Although these results are not
statistically significant (variations of about 1%) it is interesting to note that while global
integration tends to diminish, local integration tends to increase (Figure 191 shows the
effect that the new system will have in the syntactic values in comparative terms to the
situation before the highways system is built). This can be understood because although
the new highway system enhances the connection between far away parts of the city, it
is isolated from the smaller more local roads that are not part of the system, and there-
fore tends to decrease the city’s global integration. Nevertheless, as the highway system
 Privately Operated Highways: a new form of segregation 407

Figure 191: Comparative syntactic values in Santiago: before the highways are built, after
they are built, and with built highways but not using them.

Table 19: Comparative syntactic values in Santiago

requires entrances and exits to and from the local fabric, it also considers several new ur-
ban connections that previously were not there, therefore adding connectivity to the local
roads. An example of this are the nine new bridges built over the Mapocho River, that
will improve the urban connections of some local areas previously isolated from the rest of
the city by the river (Figure 192). Such improvements will make the crossing of the river
easier, although in other areas of the city, the highways will divide and disrupt the existing
fabric. Thus, the main change produced by the introduction of the new road system is a
drop in the city’s synergy, to 87% of its present value. This drop is showing the loss of
coincidence between the highway system with its rapid and fluid network operating at a
global level, and the local system that works fairly isolated in each of its neighbourhoods.
The third situation shows the syntactic values of the “free of charge city” of the future.
This illustrates the situation of a person that does not want (or cannot afford) to pay for
using the highways. It also depicts the situation on a weekend, in which the willingness
to pay for moving rapidly in the city probably diminishes. Here we can see that, while
the city’s global integration value decreases significantly (88% of its actual value), local
integration remains at the level existing before the construction of the highways. The fall
in global integration can be explained because the highways will occupy part of the grid
of the present city. In fact, some of the most integrated and well-connected roads will now
be excluded from this system. Therefore, for a person who will not use this new system,
the grid has lost continuity. Lastly, although the synergy value is higher than the previous
example, it does not achieve the levels of the present city (97%).
There is extensive literature that describe Santiago as a “divided”, “fragmented” or
“shredded” city from its foundation until today, and there is enough social and economic
408 Margarita Greene Z and Rodrigo Mora V

Figure 192: New connections produced by the highway system.

data to sustain that the social segregation still subsists and worse, that it has been in-
tensified (CED, 1990; Dockendorf et al, 2000). Based on the idea that Santiago was not
working as one social and spatial system, but that at least the richer area - Oriente - was
working as an independent system, Hillier at al (1998) built separate syntactic models
for the richer groups. The syntactic maps of Oriente as independent systems proved that
Santiago, spatially, was also working as a divided city.
Based on this exercise, the second part of the study we are presenting here analysed the
effect that the new highway system would have on the city’s most affluent area -Oriente-
as an independent system. The proposition was that the new highway system would have a
greater impact in this sector, since one of the presently most integrated streets -Kennedy-
will now be part of the tolled highway system.
The results show that the area’s global, local integration, and synergy values will be
affected by the construction of the highway system. In this case, global integration will
decrease - although again not significantly - and local integration will not vary. However,
the third Oriente model, that is the “free city” of the future, will be deeply affected
by the construction of the highways. In this case, the global integration will drop to
88% of the existing system, while synergy decreases to 86% of the actual values (Table
20). This phenomenon is due to the privatization of some of the previously integrated
streets of the area, which imply that those that do not want to pay will have to choose,
instead, alternative streets when moving around the Oriente area. Figure 193 shows the
implications of this graphically, by showing 10% of the most integrated streets (both global
and local) of the area before and after the highways. Here we can see that some streets that
initially linked the Oriente area with the CBD (towards the left) have disappeared. The
result is, then, a more autonomous structure, which revolves around itself and does not
facilitate the connection with other areas of Santiago. Such a phenomenon could intensify
Santiago’s strong urban segregation, because it increases the difficulty (or the expense),
of moving through more distant areas.

4. Conclusions

Although governmental policies consider that private highways are mechanisms for mod-
ernizing the city, this analysis depicts that their main effect could be an intensification of
 Privately Operated Highways: a new form of segregation 409

Table 20: Comparative syntactic values in Oriente

Figure 193: Comparative syntactic values in the Oriente area: before the highways are
built, after they are built, and with built highways but not using them.

Santiago’s social and spatial segregation. Moreover, the projected highways not only will
divide the city, but also will make it harder to move and to find their way in the city. In
fact, the syntactic models show that, while the people who use the highway system will
loose contact with the urban context, the people who will not use it will loose connectivity
with the entire city.
This brings some implications for social interchange in the urban realm: on the one
hand, using the highways will allow us to move along the city without making contact
with the inhabitants of the other areas we would normally pass by and, on the other hand,
it will be more difficult (or more expensive) to move from one part of the city to another,
which could affect non compulsory trips (leisure trips, for instance). In both cases, the
concept of the city as a space of social interchange is weakened, favouring the idea of
isolation in well-defined and socially stratified neighbourhoods.
Privately operated highways seem to be opposed to the former Chilean philosophy of
urban space (Vicuña Mackenna, Brunner, Parrocchia, Bannen), in which the idea was to
integrate the city and make it available to the entire population. Thus, Ildelfonso Cerda’s
idea of the street as a dual space, that comprises connectivity and social interchange,
published nearly 150 years ago, seems every day more difficult to achieve in Santiago.

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410 Margarita Greene Z and Rodrigo Mora V

Figure 194: Global and Local integration before the highway system and after, but without
using it (the “free city” of tomorrow). (i) Global integration before the highways. (ii) Local
integration before the highways. (iii) Global integration after the highways, without using
them. (iv) Local integration after the highways, without using them.
 Privately Operated Highways: a new form of segregation 411

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