Living in High-Density Towers: Ghetto, Precariousness, and Becoming Other

During the last decades, Santiago de Chile has witnessed a profound renewal of its urban morphology. The intense implantation of a high-density tower typology plays a central role in the emergence of new modes of construction, perception, and experience of the contemporary city. This chapter focuses on the reception of this new architectural typology. Therefore, a key element in the investigation is the media episode that linked the highly densified towers with the image of a vertical ghetto in 2017. Our hypothesis proposes that the association between the towers and the ghetto activated a production process of otherness. Concretely, we will discuss how the imaginary set in circulation around the towers intensifies the precarious conditions of those living there. An intensification that we will approach from the symbolic and epistemological spheres. Concerning the symbolic sphere, we consider that the link between the towers and the ghetto implies the introduction of a sign of alterity that could easily derive into processes of stigmatization. From the epistemic perspective, we will discuss to what extent this link between a new architectural typology and an old and highly connoted analytical category such as the ghetto supposes a difficulty in recognizing the singularities of this particular form of precarious housing inscribed on the modes of production and reproduction of the neoliberal city.