Abstract

The spatial progression of subsidized housing in Valparaíso and Santiago is described in this article based on the mythical figure of the Kraken and its ability to illustrate the formation of megaregion built between the two metropolises in central Chile. Driven by the expansion of housing projects from both cities, the subsidy policies that have existed since the return to democracy in 1990 to the present day have marked the territory from different and adjacent political orientations. To a certain extent, the convergence of right and left does not alter the outcome of housing ownership as a device to produce the social welfare of Chilean neoliberalism. Following the above, the main focus of this manuscript resides in the spatial conditions generated by the subsidiary policies of the so-called Neoliberal State, which in Chile has survived between the different poles of the ideologically spectrum. This has allowed the construction of a residential subsidiary structure that is effective as well as agile in terms of the regulatory updating and sophistication. The case study describes the residential dynamics between the metropolises of Santiago and Valparaíso based on intercensal data between 1992, 2002 and 2017, allowing us to survey the subsidiary impacts on the consolidation of this new figure of the Chilean Urban Kraken. © 2025 Voltaire Alvarado Peterson, Rodrigo Hidalgo Dattwyler, Federico Arenas Vásquez, Leonel Pérez-Bustamante.