Residential real estate financing and urban form in Latin American medium-sized cities: Comparative study between Concepción (Chile) and Mendoza (Argentina)

Abstract

The financialization process, understood as the growing influence of financial actors and financial institutions in the domestic economy, has left an important trace on the development of the great capitals of Latin America. Indeed, in the last thirty years Latin America has reached the highest degree of urbanization on the planet and its large megacities are important attractors of financial capital, whose investment capacity far exceeds that of traditional local actors. Over the last two decades, financialization has increasingly influenced the real estate market, making housing take on a growing value as a financial asset rather than as a fixed asset. This new condition has largely marked the physical transformations of these large cities both in terms of expansion of the urban sprawl and location of new urban developments as well as residential building morphology and public space. However, the way in which this process affects medium-sized cities in the region has hardly been studied. This paper makes a comparative analysis of the recent development (2010–2020) of two medium-sized Latin American cities, Concepción (Chile) and Mendoza (Argentina), observing the way in which it has happened (both in terms of distribution of urban growth and housing typology) and trying to stablish links with local regulations and the way in which real estate developers and their investment capacity favour the emergence of differentiated residential types.