HOUSING: Dense, high-rise buildings with green, low carbon solutions. Case study: Santiago, Chile.

Abstract

Abstract Considering the international relevance of sustainability, Chile has implemented several regulations in the housing area during the last years through the Ministry of Housing and Urbanism. The goal of these regulations is to improve the performance of Chilean cities regarding the three pillars of sustainability (social, economic and environmental). Santiago, as the capital of Chile and the focus of this research, has defined different methods to apply these regulations. However, this city still has challenges to implement them, such as environmental pollution, social segregation and the lack of economic and natural sources. There are different alternatives to overcome the challenges to implement the new sustainable housing guidelines in Santiago, one of them is to rethink the current density, high and sustainable solutions that the buildings have. The main objective of this paper is to describe and analyse the situation of the housing in Santiago considering the density, high-rise buildings with green guidelines and low carbon solutions as analysis parameters. The methodology established to achieve this objective is exploratory-descriptive with the literature review technique. The partial results illustrate that despite the benefits that represent the incorporation of new guidelines related to the increase in density and high-rise and low carbon solutions in housing projects of Santiago, it is important to consider that not all of these are applicable to this city. Each territory has its features (weather, culture, resources and norms), which determine the requirements that the projects need and the real possibilities to implement changes.