Abstract

Valdivia, in the south of Chile, has privileged natural and landscape characteristics due to its rivers and wetlands, which make it an especially attractive intermediate city. This has generated pressure on the peri-urban area, a space of high interest for new residents and real estate agents, who through land traded at high prices, propitiate processes of land speculation and urban fragmentation. This paper analyzes the peri-urbanization process in Valdivia from the study of three sectors: Quitacalzon, Torobayo-Estancilla, and Cabo Blanco. These sectors demonstrate different stages of the dynamics of real estate development in the city, configuring new ways of living and relationship to nature. Through a mixed methodology, which considered analysis of satellite images, fieldwork, a real estate offer price registry, and semi-structured interviews with key informants, we describe and characterize the trajectories of change in each sector.