Territorial invisible barriers: socio-spatial and multi-temporal residential segregation of Calderón parish

Abstract

Urban growth is a process that invades rural areas lacking basic and public services. In the case of the city of Quito, many of its inhabitants made the decision to move to the Calderón parish, generating a significant division of the territory, grouping into areas lacking in planning, generating spatial segregation.
The purpose of this articule is to determine the evolution of the spatial segregation phenomenon over a period between the 1990 and 2010 censuses, making use of quantitative and qualitative information collected from various public sources, with which a mapping and tabulation in a matrix of categorization of variables whose score was weighted based on their importance in the quality of life of the population, which allowed to construct a cartography of the space with the clear identification of socioeconomic zones.
From the present investigation, it was possible to determine that the urban expansion process responded to a phenomenon of socio-spatial segregation that had the objective of guaranteeing the new inhabitants of the territory, a place to live, safe and accessible to their socioeconomic reality. The political-administrative reality of Calderon allowed this phenomenon to be reproduced until the point of multiplying the number of inhabitants in a very short period of time, defining a great variety of sectors with diverse socioeconomic characteristics, forming invisible barriers that enhance a social differentiation, affect its urban dynamics.