Abstract

is paper discusses research carried out in Santiago, Chile, and addresses the origin and construction of urban identities in this segregated city of the twenty-first cen-tury. Based on sociological and ethnographic evidence, urban identity-building processes are analysed by observ-ing the occupation, use and appropriation of territory. e hypothesis is that, despite evidence of segregation, modernisation and globalisation, urban people reinvent lifestyles within their territories in order to harmonise their bonds of affection and belonging by using distin-guishing markings or “brands” and by adopting typical everyday habits. e modern, segregated and global city is filled with “islands” that convey imagery and desires for a friendlier urban life. is paper analyses areas with com-munity identities, neo-community identities and borderidentities. It suggests that, just as community identities shelter nostalgia for a lost community (by finding ref-uge or reinventing ways to make the fringes of the city habitable in the background or on the “other side” of the Mapocho River and very near the historical centre of the city), border identities have also arisen and persisted; these subvert the orderly and hegemonic city, resulting in a diverse, heterogeneous and multicultural lifestyle. e result is a synthesis and an urban lifestyle