Everyday verticality: Migrant experiences of high-rise living in Santiago,Chile

Introduction

In the last decade, the ways in which urban life transpires across multiple intersecting levels has garnered increasing attention (Elden, 2013; Graham and Hewitt, 2013; Harris, 2015). For many citizens, the most formative engagement with verticality is through housing. Expanding high-rise developments intimately shape residents’ lives, daily routines and engagements with the city (Graham, 2016; Jacobs, 2006). Drawing on ethnographic research conducted with migrants in Santiago, Chile, I examine the ways in which everyday practices connect high-rise residences to surrounding neighbourhoods, public spaces and the broader city. The rhythms of life within the walls of high-rise towers and the quotidian routes, processes and paths that residents navigate dialectically shape a multidimensional city. The sometimes-onerous barriers that migrants encounter as they mediate the passage from high-rise homes to the city at large and their associated routinised practices represent a liminal step – one that articulates a banal yet crucial socio-material separation between interior and exterior spaces, and between vertical and horizontal dimensions. As migrants move through these buildings and make use of neighbourhoods, their repeated engagements bridge this separation, linking vertical urbanism to visited sites and integrating high-rises into the lived urban fabric.

The repetition of these paths and the diversity of urban engagements are part of the ‘city as a thing in the making’ (Simone, 2010: 3). Practices of inhabiting the city and potentialities of encounters between diverse people, places and things speak to the fluidity of a never fully defined or complete project (Simone, 2010). The daily practices of high-rise residents illustrate how the confines of vertical structures funnel them along certain paths, require time to navigate, facilitate inadvertent social contacts and shape their engagements with buildings, neighbourhoods and public spaces. An ethnographic approach to migrants’ experiences in high-rise residences illustrates the ways in which verticality is a lived dimension of the urban fabric.

Extending the idea of ‘verticality as practice’ (Baxter, 2017) beyond the walls of tower blocks, I explore how residents craft salient connections to the urban sphere through their day-to-day engagements. High-rise apartment towers are not merely proliferating structures reshaping Santiago’s skyline, but these buildings are home to millions of people, fundamentally shaping their experiences of the city. In turn, the ways in which individuals use these buildings and the surrounding areas continually reshape urban life. This dialectical relationship between built form and everyday experience exemplifies ‘how the vertical and horizontal are mutually implicated and produced’ (Harris, 2015: 602), such that ‘horizontal and vertical extensions, imaginaries, materialities and lived practices intersect and mutually construct each other’ (Graham and Hewitt, 2013: 74). In this article, I illustrate the ways in which migrants navigate this ambiguous multidimensional terrain framing the mundane practices that contextualise and make meaningful life in high-rises. I analyse how individual residents, through their (and others’) repeated actions, become agents of a ‘quiet encroachment of the ordinary’ (Bayat, 2010: 15) – one that crafts both building-based rhythms and neighbourhood-based patterns of use – and I chart the ways that migrants shape urban life even if they are only temporary residents.

Methods

In this article, I draw on ethnographic research examining migrant experiences with high-rise apartments. Between 2009 and 2019, I conducted more than 24 months of fieldwork detailing migrant experiences of settling in Santiago and Chilean perceptions of new migratory flows. Preliminary fieldwork took place in 2010, followed by a 16-month stay in 2012–2013 and shorter visits in 2015, 2016–2017 and 2019. While contextualised by previous research, the data presented here come from three months of fieldwork conducted in 2019. The significance of the surge in Venezuelan migration provided a focus for this fieldwork. Semi-structured interviews conducted in 2019 with migrants (n = 50) – including 28 Venezuelans – and Chilean respondents (n = 19) inform this article. Twelve interviews were conducted with Chilean directors of neighbourhood councils. These offices link municipalities to smaller districts and provide a point of contact for residents seeking assistance. Considering the growing importance of neighbourhood councils in producing documents enabling migrant access to educational, health and other services, I recruited directors to share their insights on migrant settlement in their neighbourhoods. Participant recruitment was done in-person and online through circulation of recruitment materials on migrant community and advocacy groups on Facebook. Interview data is complemented by observations as well as by insights gained through ‘go-alongs’ (Kusenbach, 2003). Accompaniment of migrants in their daily routines and movements afforded a ‘relational perspective on place and space’ (Carpiano, 2009: 263), illustrating their perceptions of buildings, their spatial practices, their social norms linked to specific sites and their relationship with the broader city.

High-rise living in the multidimensional city

In the last decade, attention to the ‘off the ground’ (Graham and Hewitt, 2013), ‘volumetric’ (Elden, 2013) and ‘three-dimensional city’ (Harris, 2015) has prompted consideration of the ways in which urban life transpires across multiple intersecting levels. Ethnographic work increasingly takes up McNeill’s (2005: 43) call to examine ‘the relationship between the tall building and the “city” as an identifiable place with its own histories, myths and collective place narratives’. Analysis of ‘ordinary topologies’, like the quotidian movements of high-rise residents as they visit family, charts the ways in which individual actors participate in the co-constitution of the city itself (Harker, 2014; Nethercote and Horne, 2016). This growing body of research explores how residents ‘shape and transform [towers] in important ways that often belie the apparently monolithic architecture of such structures’ (Graham, 2016: 191). Such work complicates enduring perceptions of high-rises as marked by stigma, disrepair and failure by analysing the social ties, connections, activism and investment that coexist with the challenges of living in these residences (Abrams et al., 2020; Jacobs et al., 2007) – thus recognising that acts of housing and dwelling are coproduced and shape the city itself (McFarlane, 2011).

Exploring the social meaning behind vertical developments, Baxter (2017) argues that the high-rise is more than merely housing – it is home. Bringing together a physical site, the emotions and practices rooted there and the connections to broader publics (Blunt and Dowling, 2006), ‘the high-rise [is] a domestic environment that is intensely meaningful to residents, and important in identity and belonging’ (Baxter, 2017: 334). Meaning is invested in vertical homes through everyday activities, such as using common areas, having short conversations with neighbours, taking in the view and personalising apartments (Abrams et al., 2020; Baxter, 2017). In this way, ‘verticality is not pre-given, but co-constructed in everyday life’ (Baxter, 2017: 335). In research with Bengali migrants in Toronto, Ghosh examines how ageing high-rise complexes can be transformed into vibrant ‘vertical neighbourhoods’ (Ghosh, 2014). Tower residents appropriated common areas, rented an apartment to serve as a mosque, played in hallways, coordinated laundry days to make them social moments and provided informal childcare. ‘More than merely being things fixed in space, residential high-rises constitute diverse and complex interrelationships between people and things – where conceived and lived spaces coexist, but not necessarily in unity’ (Ghosh, 2014: 2009). Ethnographic insights emphasise the diverse practices – sanctioned and unsanctioned – contained within apartment buildings, the contested meanings that coexist at these sites and the ways in which residents creatively appropriate and reshape these spaces.

As residents make homes in high-rise towers, everyday life is shaped by the physical dimensions of the building. At its root, volumetric urbanism ‘intensifies the diversity of everyday urban actions, sustained and mediated by myriad interfaces and in-between spaces’ (Wang, 2020: 15). Density, proximity and the built form of residential towers shape experiences in ways that differ from other housing forms. Small spaces impact everyday routines, necessitating carving out areas to work away from children, minimising consumption and seeking outdoor recreation venues (Nethercote and Horne, 2016). Proximity to other residents can manifest in sounds and smells, such that specific social norms develop, articulating what is acceptable, when and what behaviours should be avoided (Shilon and Eizenberg, 2021). The process of regularly moving between the street level and apartments crafts a specific type of material engagement within towers as well as a relationship with the city itself (Jackson et al., 2021; Shilon and Eizenberg, 2021). This repetitive technology-enabled passage provides a physical separation; an intermediary step linking home and street. The bridging of this separation is so central to high-rise residences that Arrigoitia (2014) argues that home itself can be unmade when this link breaks down. In a public housing high-rise in Puerto Rico, Arriagoita (2014) analysed how both the making and unmaking of home rely on socio-material engagements, such that broken lifts undermined engagements with others and with the space itself, sometimes even foreclosing participation in the broader community. This socio-material dialectic shapes life within tower blocks and extends to the relationships between buildings, surrounding neighbourhoods and individual users whose daily engagements link and make sense of these connections.

The impact of ‘verticality as practice’ (Baxter, 2017) spreads beyond the confines of these buildings. As high-rise constructions flourish globally, verticality has become an integral part of the urban fabric. In arguing for the participation of high-rise residents in city planning, March and Lehrer (2019: 80) note that ‘unique practices, experiences and spatial configurations of public space emerge out of the verticality of the high-rise’s built form but also out of its implications in horizontal imperatives and spaces of neighbourhood revitalisation’. As diverse individuals and groups are drawn into concentrated housing in high-rise towers, urban verticality is lived relationally, with residents weaving together below-ground spaces, street-level sites and elevated territories in a complex, interconnected and continually re-made whole. This notion of the city as a patchwork that is creatively constructed as people navigate their daily routines illustrates Simone’s (2010: 3) discussion of cityness, in which the ‘practices of inhabiting the city are so diverse and change so quickly that they cannot easily be channelled into clearly defined uses of space and resources or patterns of social interchange’. As diverse individuals are drawn into concentrated living arrangements in high-rises, they engage in spatial practices which are rooted in the building but spread beyond to sites of employment, commerce and recreation. These uncoordinated – albeit cumulatively powerful (Bayat, 2010) – practices craft the city anew, etching out spatially rooted networks, many of which are ephemeral. The coalescing of everyday movements in routines adds a further dimension of temporality to lived verticality. Daily rhythms play out within tower blocks, while concurrently shaping the ‘city heartbeat’ – the pulse of ebbs and flows of urban life (Coletta, 2017; cf. Lefebvre, 2004). In Santiago, migrants living in high-rise towers take on a role in the construction of this multidimensional urban reality – the city in the making. It is through everyday practices that discrete high-rise buildings and verticality writ large are woven into the urban fabric.

Multidimensional Santiago

Santiago is Chile’s bustling urban core. Six million residents – more than 35% of the national population – live in the metro area (INE, 2017). Urban growth has prompted both the development of peripheral areas (Ducci and Gonzalez, 2006) and the volumetric expansion of central municipalities (Contreras, 2016; Garreton, 2017). Iconic photographs of Santiago capture an agglomeration of towering buildings nestled against the Andes Mountains, positioning verticality as emblematic of the city’s modern aspirations. South America’s tallest skyscraper anchors the financial district, Sanhattan, acting as a ‘powerful signifier on a symbolic plane’ that is visible from almost all points of Santiago (Graham, 2016: 151). The city’s vertical development began in the 1920s with early residential towers positioned as symbols of modern urban life (Márquez, 2017; Vergara Vidal, 2017). High-rise construction accelerated in the 1990s, quickly becoming the norm for urban housing (Contreras, 2016). Recent expansion of developments in middle- and lower-class sectors of the city is marked by an ‘unprecedented form of housing’ characterised by mass production of large-scale, high-density towers (Rojas Symmes, 2017: 6).

Even as high-rises have altered the city, many of the metro’s long-standing structural divides have been reinscribed in new, more vertical forms. Significant research documents Santiago’s spatial segregation along socioeconomic lines (Agostini et al., 2016; Garreton, 2017; Sabatini et al., 2001). Relocation of informal settlements from central and wealthier areas of the city under the Pinochet dictatorship (1973–1988) paired with the construction of social housing projects in Santiago’s peripheries entrenched urban segregation (Garreton, 2017), making way for liberalisation of the land market and market-based redevelopment (Casgrain, 2014; Garreton, 2017). Wealthy areas are now concentrated in northern and eastern sectors (Agostini et al., 2016) and poorer areas ring Santiago’s southern and western peripheries (Rodríguez and Winchester, 2004). Adding a topographic dimension to the city’s segregation, the common dividing line between upper-class and lower-class sectors is Plaza Italia. Upper-class areas are referred to as ‘above’ Plaza Italia (east towards the Andean foothills), with lower-class areas ‘below’ (west). This division illustrates how ‘vertical and other spatial metaphors literally work to constitute and reconstitute social power: they both derive directly from the physical and phenomenological experience of social life and actively influence how people perceive and shape the social and political world’ (Graham, 2016: 15). This critical spatial segregation also has myriad impacts on the daily life of city residents, shaping access to jobs and services, as well as quality of life (Jirón and Mansilla, 2014; Link et al., 2015).

Further exacerbating urban segregation, Santiago is also administratively fragmented. Consisting of 37 separate municipalities without a metropolitan-level authority, urban development is loosely coordinated and municipal investments in public infrastructure vary greatly (Garreton, 2017; Rodríguez and Winchester, 2004). Residential high-rises exemplify the city’s fractured urban planning. Municipalities compete for these development projects which are often overseen by public–private partnerships seeking to maximise profits (López-Morales et al., 2012; Vicuña et al., 2020). Buildings taller than nine stories are concentrated in just a third of the city’s municipalities, with high-rises varying greatly in size, amenities and cost (Vergara Vidal, 2017: 36). High-rise apartments in wealthier areas are on average double the size of apartments in lower-middle-class areas and often include amenities like bike storage areas, green spaces, playgrounds, pools, rooftop barbeques, gyms and common rooms (Vergara Vidal, 2017). Between 2011 and 2016, the average size of an apartment in the lower-middle-class municipality of Estación Central shrank from 48 m² (517 ft²) to 38 m² (409 ft²), and many buildings contain few amenities (López-Morales and Herrera, 2018; Vicuña et al., 2020). Neoliberal market logics frame investments in high-rises among both developers and property owners. Apartments – particularly in central areas – are increasingly purchased as investment properties. In the municipality of Santiago, 43% of apartments are rentals and in Estación Central 36% are rentals (López-Morales and Herrera, 2018). Verticality reinscribes class distinctions as developments in poorer areas are characterised by compact spaces, limited amenities, overcrowding, a high concentration of rental occupants and frequent turnover (Contreras, 2016; López-Morales and Herrera, 2018).

Concurrent with Santiago’s volumetric expansion, Chile has become a destination for Latin American migrants. Drawn by the nation’s economic growth, over the last three decades, increasing flows of migrants have settled in Santiago. In 1992, migrants comprised less than 1% of Chile’s population, but by 2019, migrants accounted for almost 8% of the population (Godoy, 2019; INE, 1992). An initial increase in Peruvian migrants in the 1990s was followed by flows of migrants from Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic and Haiti (Rojas Pedemonte and Silva, 2016; Stefoni, 2011). The unprecedented influx of Venezuelan migrants furthered the expansion of migration after 2015, accounting for 30% of migrants in Chile (DEM, 2020). Each national flow responds to different push and pull factors, and nationality can significantly shape access to housing, employment and documentation (Correa Telléz, 2016). Framed by strong demand for an inexpensive and flexible workforce, migrants often occupy low-paid positions, working as domestic labourers, janitors, manual labourers, sales personnel, street venders, kitchen assistants, landscapers, construction workers, street sweepers, parking attendants and gig delivery workers (Stefoni, 2011). Access to specific employment sectors is often shaped by nationality, racialised stereotypes about which migrants are most apt for specific positions and an interest in flexible labour (Correa Telléz, 2016; Sheehan, 2022). For example, Peruvian women are sought for work as domestic labourers due to their perceived docility (Mora and Undurraga, 2013), and opportunities washing cars, working at petrol stations and stacking shelves are more frequently available to Haitian men (Rojas Pedemonte et al., 2017). Notably, the recent Venezuelan migrants are on average more educated and more likely to be middle class and to work in professional positions (Doña-Reveco and Gouveia, 2022; Stefoni and Silva, 2018). These distinctions position the sizeable and most recent migratory flow of Venezuelans in contrast with other groups, impacting their experiences of the city, work and Chile (Sheehan, 2022; Stefoni and Silva, 2018).

Two thirds of migrants live in Santiago (Garcés, 2015; INE, 2017), and migrant settlement is reshaping central areas of the city. In the municipalities of Santiago and Estación Central, migrants account for approximately 20% of the population (López-Morales and Herrera, 2018). Prior to 2015, migrant housing was often concentrated in centrally located historic houses that were often subdivided and in disrepair (Bonhomme, 2021; Ducci and Rojas Symmes, 2010; Garcés, 2015). Increasingly, migrants are sharing high-rise apartments as more units become available to rent, older housing stock is replaced and new arrivals mobilise greater financial resources (Contreras, 2016). Accessing rental housing presents significant challenges. In Santiago’s largely unregulated housing market, property owners can request myriad financial and documentary requirements, fostering situations of price speculation, substandard housing conditions and overcrowding (Torres and Garcés, 2013). Racism and discrimination further exacerbate bureaucratic barriers that migrants face as they seek housing, with rental prices often differing based on race, nationality and perceptions about cleanliness and responsibility (Bonhomme, 2021). Subsequently, migrants often secure housing through informal networks based on social contacts and national groupings (Sheehan, 2018).

Bureaucratic disjunctures and housing discrimination have fostered spatially rooted community settlements. In interviews with directors of neighbourhood councils, clustered settlements were a recurring theme. When nationality and housing types were raised, the connection of Venezuelans and high-rises was ubiquitous. In a 2019 lecture about migrant housing, the director of Estación Central’s municipal office of migration shared heat maps and explained how Venezuelan migrants are clustered in high-rise towers by the metro stations and Haitian migrants live in ageing housing stock in southern neighbourhoods. One council director shared similar reflections:

In the apartments, I know of [Venezuelan] families living in 32 m² with 12 people. The buildings look pretty, but the overcrowding there is worse than the Haitian community who live in historic houses, some with dirt floors and falling into disrepair …. These options are equally bad.

The association of verticality with Venezuelan migrants was routinely reiterated during interviews and clustered settlement based on nationality, type of housing and length of time in Chile is documented in burgeoning research on the topic (Razmilic, 2019).

The rhythms of vertical life

Experiences of verticality often differ from flattened perceptions of high-rise living. In the municipality of Estación Central, a series of high-rises has garnered significant attention, with highly publicised legal battles over municipal regulation. These towers illustrate growing concern over ‘vertical ghettos’ based on their density, lack of privacy, lift use, street congestion and overcrowding of nearby public spaces impacting neighbourhood life (Sabatini, 2017). Charting building size, number of apartments, number of lifts and the availability of common or green spaces, Rojas Symmes (2017) developed a measure of housing precarity, with the buildings detailed below representing very high levels of precarity. Even as public debates over the failure of these developments linger, residents continue to craft these sites as home, making do with their many limitations.

I met Sara months before I learned of the notoriety of the buildings we visited. We met for an interview in July 2019 at a small plaza. A Venezuelan woman in her mid-twenties, she had been in Chile for one month. After our two-hour conversation, Sara invited me to see where she lived, so the following Saturday I took the metro to Estación Central. I texted Sara when I arrived, and she responded that she was waving to me from her balcony. I looked up at the monolithic facade of the high-rise but I could not see her. She texted that she would come down, appearing five minutes later. Sara explained that we would go to her friend’s apartment before visiting hers. As we walked, Sara pointed out her balcony on the 13th floor, indicating that it was the one with the mattress off to one side and hanging laundry. As we turned the corner and walked down the dusty side of a narrow one-way street, five large apartment blocks – three still under construction – loomed above a row of two-story houses. I stopped to take photos and Sara talked about how the neighbourhood was still in development. Sara noted all the Venezuelan products lining the shelves of the small shopfronts, including cornmeal for arepas, and both Chilean and Venezuelan types of bread. She also pointed out a bike repair shop and shared that while taking her bike there a couple of weeks ago she had seen a friend, Julia, from her small hometown. Sara had not known that Julia was in Chile and was delighted to reconnect with her, who she was taking me to meet.

In the crowded lobby, we waited our turn to pass through a narrow entryway adjoining the attendant’s desk. Sara said a cheerful hello, noted we were visiting a friend and swept right by the desk as the attendant attempted to field two other people’s questions at the same time. Three young men with bulky food delivery backpacks were lined up to guide their bikes through the entryway. We waited as one lift arrived, discharged six people and promptly filled again. Almost immediately, another full lift arrived, everyone exited and Sara shepherded me into the lift. We got in, moving to the opposite side of two couples. A young man with a bike came in after us, manoeuvring his bike so that it stood upright – the only way it would fit. The lift door closed, with just enough space to accommodate the man’s delivery backpack. At the seventh floor, the lift stopped, the biker exited, one couple got out and the biker re-entered. At the 12th floor, the biker leaned towards the remaining couple as Sara and I eased around him to emerge into a long hallway. Sara knocked on Julia’s door, and two boys, aged nine and five, opened the door and animatedly welcomed us into the studio apartment. The space was approximately 6 m × 6 m, and half of the living space was taken up by queen-sized mattresses piled on top of each other. Julia introduced herself and explained that they pile things together during the day so that the boys have space to play.

In the interview, Julia noted that they were very lucky to have found this place. She recounted how her husband had migrated first to Chile, sharing a small space with a cousin and several other Venezuelans. After a year of saving, he had borrowed additional money to bring Julia and the boys to Chile. He had looked for housing but only found a single room of a sub-divided house in a remote neighbourhood. Julia noted in despair that the room had a dirt floor and was always damp, making the transition to wintery Santiago unpleasant. After six months with Julia working, they were able to find their current apartment. As Julia spoke, the boys went from jumping on the mattresses to knocking over a precarious tower of folded laundry, then driving trucks along the window ledge. Across the apartment’s dark interior courtyard, I could see children regularly appear in three other windows. At one point, Julia gazed at her boys, sighed and confided that she still wondered if they would be better off returning to Venezuela and their spacious, two-story house with a yard where the boys would play in the warm sun. I asked if there were common areas in the complex, noting that most buildings I visited had a small play area. Julia said that this block did not have common areas, and that there were no parks nearby. A couple of times a week she would walk the boys 40 minutes to a large city park, and they would play for several hours. She confessed that she felt guilty but that most of the playing they did was in the apartment’s confines.

As we spoke, Sara patted out cornmeal arepas from her perch in the petite kitchen corner. Sara laid out tuna and vegetables on the metre-long space that doubled as both counter and table. She heated the arepas one at a time on the single burner stovetop, stacking the completed ones on a plate. Sara placed four plates on the counter and unstacked three plastic stools. Meanwhile, the boys eagerly pointed out the apartments displaying Venezuelan flags, and Julia estimated that three quarters of the building’s residents were Venezuelan. The boys took turns playing their favourite songs on a phone, holding it above their heads next to the window to find the scant mobile signal making it through the layers of concrete. These small actions, like making a favourite food and streaming familiar songs, are integral to making new spaces a home (Bonhomme, 2013). From the displays of Venezuelan flags to the stacking of household items and tracking of limited mobile phone service, these practices of lived verticality shape the lives of high-rise residents (Baxter, 2017; Ghosh, 2014; Nethercote and Horne, 2016).

Later, as we left, Sara and I stood waiting for the lift. Two descending lifts stopped just long enough for us to ascertain that they were full. As the minutes stretched on, a caretaker was methodically cleaning the hallway, making his way towards us. Sara had speculated that he was Venezuelan and when he was within earshot, she said hello, eagerly inquiring what town he was from once she heard his accent. The two talked for a couple minutes before a lift arrived with space for us. We got in with a brief hello to the other occupants and Sara quietly commented that she enjoyed being in a place where she could meet Venezuelans. The lobby was crowded as we left, with four bike delivery workers entering the building, while two attempted to leave.

Lifts are the infrastructural underpinning of high-rise living and the passage from apartment to ground level is a ubiquitous step that mediates the connection between high-rise home and the city (Graham, 2016). This technology’s form, function and use become an integral part of daily life (Shilon and Eizenberg, 2021) such that its breakdown compromises the integrity of vertical homes and community (Arrigoitia, 2014). This in-between site also becomes a social condenser (Murawski, 2017), prompting iterative yet new daily encounters between residents. The combination of working as a bike delivery worker and living in a high-rise presents quotidian micro-frictions centred around lift use – one that Sara came to know intimately when she spent six months as a bike delivery worker. Survey data indicate that for the two main delivery companies, 70% and 40% of their respective workforces are migrants, 80% of whom are from Venezuela (Cruz and McManus, 2021: 21). Like Sara, most workers choose this position for its ease of entry, in contrast to other employment options (Cruz and McManus, 2021: 29). Given the scale of high-rises in Estación Central, the clustered settlement of Venezuelans and the significant presence of bike delivery workers residing in these towers, the ubiquitous movements of bikes and the spatial dynamics they present add further frictions to the rhythm of daily tower life.

Cumulative patterns of daily practice shape how people see and understand their vertical living spaces. In early work on verticality, Fernie (2000: 51) reflects on the cadence of a building:

The rhythms of a towerblock are made explicit by the sheer density of people living in it. I can tell the time of day by the movement of neighbours walking past my front door, by the smell of cooking drifting in through the windows (normally a mixture of curry and boiled vegetables), the sound of rubbish being deposited into the rubbish chute, and by the soft hum of the lift as it collects and deposits passengers. These rhythms are a constant reminder that there is space between me and the ground.

Sensory minutia of sights, sounds and movements frame life for tower residents, making tangible the separation from below and the proximity of other residents (Jackson et al., 2021; Shilon and Eizenberg, 2021). The textured richness of verticality is made meaningful through activities that are not reducible merely to ‘something that takes place in vertical landscapes’ (Baxter, 2017: 350) – like the smells that waft through hallways and the flags that mark apartments. Daily rearranging of furniture, utilising every inch of possible storage including exposed terraces, preparing simple meals, shopping for food daily, coordinating bathroom schedules, making the most of waiting time at the lift and taking advantage of common areas are all practices framing the rhythms of confined quarters (Nethercote and Horne, 2016).

Verticality’s connections to public space

I navigated the morning rush to meet Nico early one Monday in July 2019. In the block before Nico’s building, I passed two construction projects, one stretching into the sky amid the echoing notes of heavy equipment, and the other offering a glimpse of a multi-story hole. Nico’s high-rise overlooked the river in central Santiago and abutted a busy four-lane thoroughfare. The entryway was busy with people leaving for work, parents accompanying children in school uniforms and others entering with dogs on leads or with bags of freshly baked bread. When Nico arrived, he suggested that we talk in the park across the street. I followed him as he jogged across four lanes of traffic. When I asked if it was always an exciting crossing, he laughed and said that he had stopped even noticing it. He explained that the nearest pedestrian crossing was quite far down the street and that he came to this park daily, noting that the park offered him an escape – a break from the small apartment, and some sanity amid Santiago’s hustle and bustle.

We sat, drank maté, and Nico shared his experiences in Santiago. Originally from Argentina, he had moved to Santiago a month before to join his Venezuelan girlfriend. Nico was settling into the city, completing visa paperwork and looking for work as an agronomist. As we talked, the occasional jogger, dog walker or parent and child passed by, and two of the joggers nodded silent but familiar greetings to Nico. When I asked what it was like to live in Santiago, Nico shared:

Luckily, there is this beautiful park, [the apartment] is in a very convenient location because it’s just 10 minutes to the Plaza de Armas, it’s very central. I live on the 26th floor which has a very beautiful view […] it is calmer to live higher up because the sound from the street isn’t as loud.

He liked Santiago but imagined himself returning to the countryside in the future. For Nico, navigating everyday micro-frictions, like those posed by waiting for the lift and by street crossings, were just mundane hurdles to accessing sites that provided him with respite. Shilon and Eizenberg (2021: 132) write that ‘affective relations between bodies and sound can transform how people engage, experience, and act within the urban environments they inhabit’. For someone most at home in natural areas, the quiet perch of his apartment and the adjoining green spaces became sites that Nico inhabited, drawing them together through daily engagement. At the end of our conversation, Nico insisted that I meet his partner, Valentina, as she was tied into robust Venezuelan social networks.

That Sunday, I returned along quiet streets, passing empty office buildings and shuttered shopfronts. When I arrived, Valentina asked if we could talk in the park, and Nico accompanied us across the road before setting off for his daily jog. When we spoke, Valentina talked about settling in Santiago. She initially stayed with her sister, her brother-in-law, their three kids and two friends: ‘we were eight people in an apartment with one bedroom, but that is what must be done to support everyone’. For the first year, Valentina worked overtime to build savings, putting in 10-hour days, ‘Monday to Monday’, at a phone shop. Her 45-minute commute took her south, travelling by bus and returning home late, exhausted and hoping for a seat. She eagerly shared that her new job comes with a 19-minute walk to work, detailing her route and the enjoyment of the new commute. Quotidian movements, like commutes, are one way that residents link high-rise homes to workplaces, crafting intangible and often ephemeral ties and connections along the route. These repetitive movements articulate strong ties between frequented places and more dispersed webs of engagement for less visited sites, as in the links that bike delivery workers develop. Movements, repeat visits and daily engagements with workspaces further integrate vertical homes into multidimensional cities (Harker, 2014; Jirón and Mansilla, 2014).

After a month living with her sister, Valentina had used her connections and savings to find her current apartment. She initially shared her one-bedroom apartment with two friends to minimise the cost. A month before Nico arrived, she had asked her friends to find other housing. When I asked her about living in Santiago, she commented:

Everything is nearby, we have the farmer’s market, we have shopping centres, the park. That said, it is very stressful in the sense that on weekdays the traffic is very busy and there is the stress of the city. … The good thing about Santiago is that it has given us opportunities. It is a city that is well maintained, for example, the parks – I always see them so well maintained, the apartment buildings are in perfect order, the pavements are clean, the market, the economy – it’s all stable.

For Valentina, her life in Venezuela frames how she views Santiago. This relational perspective illustrates how ‘imaginations of an ideal neighbourhood are often seen through a dual lens – of how things are here and there’ (Ghosh, 2014: 2019). Valentina’s overtly positive view of Santiago’s public spaces was voiced in comparison to the public spaces in Venezuela, where the lack of resources and increasing insecurity often deterred the use of public spaces.

Interviewees, particularly recent Venezuelan migrants, often pointed out the accessibility of public spaces. In one interview, an older man from Venezuela shared that in his hometown, security concerns had completely curtailed his visits to public parks and even free movement on the streets. He reflected upon his daily use of a community library as a return to how he remembered the possibilities of public space. In the months that followed, I often saw him in the library, and we would chat before heading our separate ways. Similarly, I conducted many interviews at a large community centre, and several migrants noted that its central location, spaces for gathering and free artwork had brought them to the centre previously. After one interview there, a woman walked me over to the city’s information booth and made sure I got the listings of the free tours. She was waiting for her visa and living with her son’s family, so she would attend a different tour each day. She said that it was good to be outside walking and she had learned the history of the city, met several friends and got out of her daughter-in-law’s way for a couple hours each day. After another interview, the woman I had interviewed walked me out of her building and insisted on showing me the church a street away from her son’s apartment where she was staying. She led me around the different naves, explaining that it was her new ‘home’ away from home and that she had got to know several regular attendees. From using parks and plazas, to exploring bike trails, going on free tours and participating in religious communities, migrants routinely make use of myriad city spaces. In his work on urban change, Bayat (2010: 15) argues that the ‘collective actions of noncollective actors’ can power urban transformations. As individuals go about their everyday routines to meet their needs, the cumulative impact of similar efforts can lead to the ‘quiet encroachment of the ordinary’ (Bayat, 2010: 15). In this way, the accretive, albeit uncoordinated, impact of these repetitive movements between high-rise housing, workplaces and key public spaces weaves urban verticality into the broader fabric of city life.

In analysing ‘relationships between buildings, infrastructures, facilities and their urban contexts […] considered holistically’ (Wang, 2020: 1), the role of power and positionality mediate individual experiences and engagements with these sites. While the limitations of small, shared apartments often prompt migrants to make the most of ‘third places’, sites apart from home and work which are vital to individual and community well-being (Oldenberg, 1989; cf. Abrams et al., 2020), not all migrants feel welcome and safe in these spaces. Peruvian research participants routinely reported not feeling comfortable speaking in constrained spaces like lifts and buses because their accent marks them. Additionally, migrant use of public space, particularly Santiago’s central Plaza de Armas, has long been contested (Ducci and Rojas Symmes, 2010; Garcés, 2015), such that the site is often understood by both migrants and Chileans as a racialised space of migration (Sheehan, 2021). Notably, Peruvian migrants and Afro-descendent migrants of diverse nationalities report experiencing racist insults in public spaces (Garcés, 2015; Rojas Pedemonte et al., 2017). One council director shared that he had recently seen anti-immigrant posters in the neighbourhood, adding that he had quickly mobilised a group of volunteers to take them down. Contestations over migrant use of public space and individuals’ perceptions about whether they belong at these sites shape engagement in public spaces, with these interactions impacting broader feelings of belonging.

Conclusion

High-rise constructions have produced uneven impacts for Santiago’s central districts, with transformations deeply felt by long-term residents. One neighbourhood council director shared:

The biggest impact on the neighbourhood has been the cropping up of apartment blocks because if I compare the neighbourhood as it existed before, there were many old patrimonial houses, and they’ve disappeared. Then, it was a neighbourhood, it was just like a small town where everyone knew everyone.

Nostalgia, however, often obscures the structural changes that fostered verticalisation. These same neighbourhoods were shaped by decades-long processes displacing many low-income residents to the urban peripheries (Casgrain, 2014; Garreton, 2017), while prioritising market-driven high-rise development (López-Morales and Herrera, 2018). The resulting increase in rental properties and influx of young professionals and new migratory flows epitomise shifting – and ephemeral – temporalities. The patterned uses of urban sites described here are contextualised by broader structural dynamics prompting vertical development and spurring migration – all these forces coalesce, even if temporarily, in these buildings. This influx quality illustrates the ever-changing nature of urban areas (Simone, 2010).

Sara and Julia have both left Estación Central. Julia’s family relocated to a house with a small patio on the city’s western periphery following the birth of their third child. Switching schools and jobs enabled the family to stay closer to home, reducing commute times and altering their engagements with the city. At the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, Sara’s three roommates lost their jobs, and they had to give up their apartment. Sara moved in the middle of lockdown. She shared photos of eerily empty streets and of her new room in a friend’s house. Sara continued to work as a caretaker throughout the pandemic, but now her shifts follow a 50-minute commute by bike from a southern municipality to a north-eastern one. For migrants living in Santiago, layers of uncertainty often frame hopes and concerns for the future. The pandemic exacerbated the economic precarity that many migrants face, and unemployment, homelessness and food insecurity increased. Adding further uncertainty, the 2021 roll-out of Chile’s New Migration Law is enacting new, stricter entry requirements for those seeking to live in Chile. These shifts will make it harder to legally work in Chile, adding barriers to social integration (Thayer, 2021).

Rodenbiker (2019: 235) argues that the volumetric analyses of cities must combine horizontal and vertical analyses with temporal analyses, emphasising the ‘politics of continuity and rupture’. The urban rhythms (Coletta, 2017; Lefebvre, 2004) rooted in high-rise residences and the quotidian ways that residents weave these sites into the broader urban fabric contrast with the longer-term trajectory of the neighbourhood transformations. In research documenting Palestinian use of high-rises and linked mobilities, Harker (2014: 327) argues that ‘it is important to think about the various pasts that are folded into Ramallah’s present(s), and the ways in which such temporal relations are always spatio-temporal relations’. Just as multiple pasts are folded into neighbourhoods, everyday activities are shaped by an ever-present shadow of the future. These ‘futural orientations’ (Bryant and Knight, 2019) frame the ways that individuals see, understand and engage with their neighbourhoods.

As a nation, Chile is at a point of inflexion. In October 2019, what started as student protests over an increase in metro fares ignited a ‘social explosion’ (estallido social), galvanising widespread support. Under the popular refrain ‘Chile has awoken’, 1.2 million people gathered on 25 October 2019 at Plaza Italia, the spatial dividing line between wealthier and poorer sectors of the city (BBC News Mundo, 2019). Renamed Plaza Dignity by protesters, the site continues to be the symbolic focal point for mass gatherings. Protests centred on Chile’s socioeconomic inequalities, critiques of neoliberal policies and advocacy for human rights, and these concerns continue to frame public discussion. Continued protests and political pressure have prompted a constitutional assembly – one resulting in a draft of a new constitution which will be voted on in a plebiscite in September 2023. This movement, paired with the uncertainties and transformations posed by the pandemic and the new migration law, illustrate how temporal ruptures (Rodenbiker, 2019) are always one aspect at play in the continual remaking of the urban milieu. Amid these changes, hope and uncertainty coexist as migrants in Chile navigate everyday challenges and an unpredictable future.