Neoliberal Lakeside Residentialism: Real Estate Development and the Sustainable Utopia in Environmentally Fragile Areas

Abstract

This article exposes the central role played by neoliberal real estate development in the transformation of two lakeside cities in southern Chile. The concept of neoliberal lakeside residentialism addresses the ways in which commercialisation of the natural world in tourism hotspots is comprehensively reshaping the environmentally fragile Andean lake district. Specifically, we hypothesise that this green utopia is rapidly becoming a dystopia as a result of the aggregate effects of real estate development on environmental sustainability. In order to analyse these tensions, we conduct a case study in the districts of Villarrica and Pucón, both located within the Lake Villarrica watershed. There is evidence of territorial metamorphosis of the Araucanía Region as areas popular with tourists are increasingly being closed off by large-scale real estate operations. We find that this “anomalous” rate of urbanisation is indeed affecting sustainability in the territory, both environmental and social, concluding that regulation of these processes is needed in order to preserve both the natural and cultural wealth of the study area.

1. Introduction

The Andean lake district of Chilean Araucanía receives a large number of visitors throughout the year. The cities of Pucón and Villarrica, with their lakeside situation and proximity to the volcano that also bears the name Villarrica, provide an ideal base for winter skiing and summer water sports. Other local attractions include extreme sports along the River Trancura and the zone’s varied gastronomic offering [1,2].

These characteristics go some way towards explaining the wide-ranging transformations that have occurred in the study area since the middle of the twentieth century, such as the emergence of a tourist enclave, amenity migration, touristification, and a new form of rurality. In the context of these transformations, the role of the real estate developer is gaining in relevance, and there is an increasing need to address the environmental effects of this neoliberal form of space production, especially in a territory as fragile as the Andean lake district of southern Chile. During the second half of the twentieth century, typical rural ways of life in the area gave way to a focus on tourism, aided by the development of infrastructure and the promotion of a tourist imaginary by the Chilean state [3]. A number of studies have exposed the subsequent relevance of amenity migration in the territorial transformation of lakeside districts during the early twenty-first century [4,5,6].

In the context of these various processes, the present work proposes the need for a move away from the notion of the tourist city and towards a state that we term urban-rural neoliberal lakeside residentialism. We position the key concepts of this discussion within the international scientific literature with a view to formulating an explanatory category with which to analyse the collision of the natural world with the tangled urban complex on the shores of Lake Villarrica. Specifically, we seek to highlight (a) the relevance of the longer-term presence of new residents in the study area; (b) the role of real estate developers in the creation of this offering through the commercialisation of nature; and (c) the effects of these processes in terms of the territory’s environmental sustainability.

With these aims in mind, we approach the subject by means of the case study analysis technique. This approach enables us to gain in-depth knowledge of those processes that are active in the territory and determined by the spatial relationships between its actors, the political structure, and the natural world. We will also identify the environmental effects of these processes. The latter is an important focus of study, as work conducted to date on the subject leads us to hypothesise that the socio-spatial changes taking place now pose a threat to the same green utopia that has been driving this territorial transformation [7].

The present article is divided into five further parts. In the first, we address the conceptual elements that enable us to interpret territorial transformations in light of capitalist processes of contemporary tourism space production. In the second part, we define the proposed methodology, which consists of a case study to describe the territorial transformations of the two districts. The empirical results are presented in the third part, where we describe activities associated with real estate development in urban and rural contexts, along with their environmental effects. Finally, we offer a discussion and conclusions, highlighting how current trends in the transformation of these two cities are shaped by economic decisions that contradict and indeed threaten the very sustainability that attracts new residents to the area.

2. Conceptual Framework

2.1. The Nature-Tourism Fit

According to Swyngedouw, the natural world represents a power cleavage when it ceases to be considered a common good and becomes the property of a given social group, thus producing space and class [8]. Within the relationship between society and nature, it is technology that has defined the limits of the appropriation and transformation of the natural. In the theoretical framework presented in Engels’ Dialectics of Nature, humanity’s potential as a creative force is derived from our capacity to twist the dynamics of energy and material within natural systems and to convert them into commodities, regimes of property and possession, and space [9,10]. The latter is key to understanding the foundation of geographical and environmental studies on the relationship between nature and tourism, as exploitation of the “natural” resource invokes its conversion to space and the concomitant loss of the natural basis that ultimately constitutes its value.

In the tradition of nineteenth-century explorers, nature was not space, as it was free from the influence of modern technology. As such, the natural world was perceived as a pristine earthly unit—a slice of Eden. These naturalists, among whom we find the renowned Germans Humboldt, Ritter and Ratzel, defined as natural populations those communities who had not established a relationship of dominion and control over their surroundings and thus had not embarked upon the transition towards a higher civilising state [11,12,13]. This episteme breaks down, however, with Reclus’ work on nature and its relation to the human being, told in three works: History of a Stream [14], History of a Mountain [15] and Subterranean Forces [16]. In these, he describes the processes of destruction, production and reproduction of morphological units by natural, endogenous and exogenous factors and elements. The results of these observations define, in part, that which today is understood as landscape: that section of space caught in a given period of time [17]. At the same time, Vidal de La Blache establishes the notion of lifestyles, offering a comprehensive framework covering this relationship between nature and the social, although not in terms of dominion and pure technology, but through the positioning of the human being as just another of the systems that govern earthly dynamics, the formation of landscapes, and the trajectory of humanity vis-à-vis the medium of their existence [18].

To a certain extent, tourism-related studies within the broad spectrum of Geography [19], Economics [20], Anthropology [21] and Sociology [22] reflect a reform of the relationship between society and nature. By addressing a variety of criteria, these works helped to re-establish emphasis on the relationships that exist between space production and the production of nature, which is, ultimately, what tourism generates within the natural medium.

This association between nature and tourism constitutes a dimension of space production termed the production of nature. Neil Smith develops part of this theoretical apparatus in his work Uneven Development [23], emphasising an element of the modern interpretation of the difference between nature and space: the natural is produced when its dynamics are modified, packaged, delimited, and thus deprived of their own mechanics, while space is the socialised version of nature, inhabited by a series of objects that are bound together by everyday operations. Within this production, tourism lays down a soft border between the contemplative exercise of entering into the natural, as reflected in studies of the sound of the mountains [24], and the reduction of nature to a publicity artefact—a sequence of experiences based on a session of exploration [25]. In neither case is it a black-and-white issue; rather, it concerns the classification of the levels of intervention and immersion that the amenity visitor exercises upon entering tourism spaces.

2.2. The Shoreline Industry and Production of the City

Amenity experiences focus on the shorelines of lakes, rivers and the sea. According to experiences of working on the Spanish Costa del Sol, the coastline is configured as a point of articulation for transport networks, hotel services, AirBnB accommodation, touristification and gentrification within the circuit of spatial transformations associated with leisure in the summer season [26]. This is compounded by the large-scale sporting events hosted by tourism-focused cities, such as the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona [27]. The Balearic Islands, Gran Canaria, the Catalan coast and other cases studied in Spain exhibit critical attitudes even referred to as a “phobia” of tourism used by the resident population to contest the situation [28].

Inland water bodies also commonly present a move towards the tourism amenity industry. The conversion of the Peñol de Guatapé, originally a reservoir supplying water to part of the Antioquia Region of Colombia, has been followed by a proliferation of second homes and hotels catering to weekend amenity visitors from the nearby Medellín metropolitan area [29]. A similar process has been taking place around Lake Rapel in Chile which, created as a reservoir for hydroelectric power generation and agricultural irrigation, soon became an important tourism circuit for the country’s central zone and maintained its popularity despite being empty of water for a decade following the drought of 1999 [30]. Lake Nahuel Huapi in Argentina exhibits similar patterns of tourist occupation, as do other destinations in Argentine north Patagonia such as Esquel, El Calafate and El Bolsón, settlements dotted around a circuit of lakes and rivers that attract large numbers of tourists, both national and international, throughout the calendar [31].

These examples raise two questions that constitute the theoretical basis of the present article. The first concerns the role of amenities in those urban contexts that extend onto shorelines and thus convert economic and everyday activities into subsystems of the tourism industry. The coast of Valencia is an example of such tensions, where criticism of the lack of regulation by the local government led to direct action against the unregulated rental sector, including AirBnB. However, these less formal rental activities have helped entire communities to survive in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent changes to salary structures and high rates of unemployment among the Spanish population, with the letting of personal properties offering an attractive source of income [32]. This condition twists the socio-spatial dimension of everyday life in shoreline cities by subjecting the life paths described by Hågerstrand to fluctuations in tourism activity throughout the year [33]. These life paths expose the time–space flows that people cover over the course of a day, a month or a year, and which are altered by increased traffic; scarcity of food, medical and other supplies; the multiplication of demand; and other critical elements [3].

The second question concerns the friction between the tourism industry and the demands of citizens for access to the city and to housing in lakeside settlements. If nature is reduced to a mere system of tourist experiences, does this go hand in hand with the stifling of calls for decent housing and access to the same water bodies that originally influenced the location of the cities in which people aspire to live? This is no trivial question, as it supposes the production of nature as an artificial system that involves the elimination of the alternative through demand for emerging rights that today are even included among the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 [34]. These rights to the city, to the housing of a quality that affords human dignity, to an unpolluted environment, and access to nature together form a new frontier of socio-spatial segregation whereby the natural aspect of common goods such as lake shores is subtracted from supposedly green alternatives for urban justice [35]. Checker has been a critic of the harnessing of this green wave by urban industries to generate new enclaves of real estate investment and thus trigger processes of expulsion and segregation in environments beyond the boundaries of big cities [36].

Both of these conditions reflect the sophisticated reality of the production of nature. If the modern question of the technology-driven transformation of the natural world into space equated to the control of the cycles of natural systems, in the case of the tourism industry, nature becomes corralled within a technological circuit designed to generate a dimension of experience that goes beyond the scope of sophisticated technology. The relevance of tourism as a force for space production lies in its exclusion of a segment of the population from participation in the natural world, the latter being viewed as a higher common good from a perspective of urban justice.

2.3. Is It Simply a Problem of Use Value Versus Exchange Value?

According to traditional Marxism, use value and exchange value are mediated by the capacity for change and the technology employed in converting nature into a commodity [37]. This convention long dominated critical thought, turning a deaf ear to Reclus’ notion of social ecology which, for example, promoted a perspective contrary to Darwinian evolutionism and Marxist productive metabolism, installing ideas of solidarity with and conservation for future generations—ideas that had not yet been studied in the context of the connection between the natural and the human [38]. Schumpeter’s idea of creative yet destructive capitalism reinstated the idea of technology as a dominant element, presenting it as an inexhaustible productive force based on its potential to, for example, generate earnings and boost the labour market [39]. Finally, with Henri Lefebvre, the relationship between exchange value and use value reached a point of accord within the central currents of Human Geography, Urbanism and other disciplines through recognition that real monetary capital is not capable of independently sustaining itself outside urban circuits, requiring instead an invisible circuit of financial accumulation in which neither work nor production is relevant, but where speculation based on abstract instruments is king [40]. However, from the heritage perspective, exchange value has the potential to break out of this evolutionary dynamic by constructing a distinct valuation scale that, rather than monetised, is visible and exploitable as an urban asset [41].

These three currents share a general problem. None of them anticipated the specific significance of the touristified economies of the twenty-first century, in which the threat to income post-2008 was addressed by means of a strong rise in amenity activities. In Spain, for example, tourism accounted for 16.11% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2019, while in 2006 the figure was 17.65%, not counting associated diversification. In other words, tourism alone was responsible for this percentage and did not directly involve other productive sectors or sub-sectors. This situation changed in 2019, with transportation, information and communication technology, and insurance becoming more closely associated with and influenced by tourism [42]. In Chile, tourism alone accounted for 1.80% of GDP in 2006, rising to 2.98% in 2019. However, accounting for associated transportation and unspecified goods, the 2019 figure stood at 3.83% [43]. Considering the time, transportation and location costs incurred in Chile compared to those in Spain, these figures are not truly comparable. Separately, however, they speak of a sustained reinforcement of capitalism in which the production of capital goods—the conventional secondary sector—has contracted to focus productive efforts in those areas that will generate maximum wealth through minimal investment and training of the workforce.

Tourism provides that theoretical opportunity for reconsideration of the notion of exchange value versus use value. The rule of nature that is produced and thus governed through the imposition of boundaries within which to sell it as a tourist attraction involves at least three dimensions of this exchange-use balance in tourism hotspots.

(a)

Tourism spaces generate a portrait effect: they package a landscape configured by natural and socio-cultural site conditions (morphology, hydrography, vegetation, fauna, historical populations, indigenous cultures), without renouncing the use condition beyond the path of its own history. The commercial groups interested in these spaces generate a hedonic projection of their use value, offering the experience of sharing a part of that packaged landscape, but within a pre-established framework in which the natural world is limited and delimited according to subjective boundaries.

(b)

A second critical level can be added to exchange value, in which demand for subsidised housing cannot be satisfied. The location of tourist cities on lake shores, a morphology that defines their expansion dynamics, does not erase obligations to those inhabitants deprived of housing. In Latin America, the right to housing remains a complex subject in terms of both discussion and resolution. In the cases of Brazil and Argentina, for example, the property access model is similar to that operating in Chile, with housing allocation based on socio-economic vulnerability [44]. In Ecuador, successive governments have promoted subsidy-based opportunities such that remittances sent home by Ecuadorians living abroad are directed towards housing acquisition, while in Colombia, the selection criteria include rural people displaced by guerrilla and drug-related conflict [45,46]. All of these are metropolitan solutions that address a dimension of the right to housing but are not suited to the issue of residential demand in tourism spaces.

(c)

Interaction between real estate operations and nature always leads to exclusion. Residential projects such as apartment blocks, leisure plots or condominiums are designed to increase proximity to the lake shore, in some cases preventing the free access to water bodies that should be guaranteed in accordance with their normative definition as public goods. If real estate development bears any specific weight within the production of exchange value, this is brought to an end with the sale of an entire project, many of which contain up to 200 apartment units. The accumulation of residential clusters of this type has two critical effects: complete exclusion of the right to housing from any form of integration involving shared use of the water body; and the rendering of sustainability an impossible criterion under regimes of exclusionary occupation of the shoreline. Sustainability tends to lead to the formation of complex systems—rather than simply promoting recycling—because it constitutes a larger act of organic solidarity involving the spatial integration of class and rights. In cases such as Barcelona, the price friction triggered by the tourist accommodation market affect productive matrices that had remained robust prior to the 2008 real estate crisis, rendering the relationship of proximity between homes and the shoreline a topological asset in its own right [47].

3. Methodology

In order to analyse spatial effects in regard to the cases studied and the conceptual background covered above, we conduct a three-phase case study. The first phase involves a geohistorical description of the study area, addressing its characteristics and main transformations. The second phase consists of the collection of quantitative and commercial real estate data, and identification of the main areas of tension between the natural world and the use of land for development in relation to the residential typographies identified. In the third and final phase, we conduct an in-depth study of socio-spatial issues relating to environmental sustainability in the territory.

3.1. Phase 1: Geohistorical Overview of the Study Area

Pucón and Villarrica are two of the twenty-one districts within Chile’s Araucanía Region. The region is part of the so-called Southern Macrozone, an area that stretches from the south of the Biobío Region to the north of the Los Lagos Region. The study area, a landscape of mountains and lakes, is one of the most popular tourist destinations in southern Chile and boasts many attractions, including the Villarrica lake and volcano, national parks of temperate rainforest, and an alpine sports centre. The area’s natural beauty is recognised both locally and around the world.

Until the late nineteenth century, the study area was populated primarily by the Mapuche, the largest indigenous group in Chile. In fact, the word Pucón comes from the Mapuche language, Mapuzungun, and means “entrance to the mountain”. Beginning in the early twentieth century, the area began to see the arrival of colonisers from elsewhere in Chile and abroad, and these new inhabitants engaged primarily in forestry activities and livestock rearing, shaping the space according to the rural way of life [48]. Martinez [3] indicates that towards the second half of the twentieth century, the territory became a tourist enclave promoted by the Chilean state through projects to improve accessibility and infrastructure. This has now given way, as has been the case in so many other parts of the world, to so-called touristification [19]. Touristification consists of a surge in individual tourism-related activities implemented by non-local neo-rural actors [49]. The concept of neo-rurality has emerged to describe, from a cultural perspective, the new type of inhabitants arriving in the study area and their engagement in activities associated with a new form of rurality [50].

Closely linked with the above-mentioned processes, a number of studies have highlighted the significance of the phenomenon of amenity migration in the study area [4,5]. These works propose the existence of two types of migrants: existential amenity migrants and green amenity migrants [4]. Hidalgo and Zunino [5], drawing on Moss [51], indicate that amenity migrants tend to have a high level of education and aspire to a lifestyle that differs greatly from typical urban existence. This migration has also been linked to real estate development both within and beyond the urban limit [4,52].

We have captured the technical and political aspects of these transformations using quantitative data provided by the Chilean Population and Housing Census, specific studies conducted by the local and central government, and by the Ministry of Housing and Urbanism, which has measured their progress within the study area and across the region as a whole. These measurements reveal that both Villarrica and Pucón present relative growth rates above the regional average. The district of Pucón saw the most intense growth, with its urban area almost doubling in size over the course of only 20 years (

Table 1. Accumulated growth, 2002–2017.

Locality	Area (Hectares)				Built Area (Hectares) 2002–2017	Growth
	2002	2006	2011	2017		2002–2017
Pucón	389.4	412	434	771.4	382	98.1%
Villarrica	469.7	508.7	555.3	681.4	211	45.1%
Araucanía Region	11,228.9	12,644.7	13,777.2	15,566.4	4337.5	38.6%

Source: compiled by the authors using data from the Urban Observatory, Ministry of Housing and Urban Development.

).

The evidence gathered at the local level has revealed that urbanisation has not only been occurring around the area’s urban centres, but also expanding across the countryside and along the lake shore in particular (Figure 1 and Figure 2). The instrument that makes this form of development possible is Decree Law No. 3516, which concerns the subdivision of rural property. The legislation was implemented under the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990) and permitted the fragmentation of rural land outside the metropolitan areas into plots of 5000 m² [53].

These urbanisation processes are reflected by the increase in the housing stock and the number of inhabitants within the study area. Of particular note is the increase in the number of residences used only at certain times of the year in line with the seasonal nature of a tourism hotspot (

Table 2. Population and housing data for the districts of Pucón and Villarrica, 1992–2017.

District	1992		2002		2017
	Population	Housing	Population	Housing	Population	Housing
Pucón	14,356	4886	21,107	9494	28,523	17,357
Villarrica	35,867	10,356	45,531	17,352	55,478	28,289

Source: compiled by the authors using census data from 1992, 2002 and 2017.

). For example, in the space of 15 years, Pucón’s residential capacity almost doubled from 9486 to 17,357 homes (Table 2). Hidalgo and Zunino [5] also point out that tourism-related real estate development has been a permanent feature in the district of Pucón since 2002. This is evidenced by the construction of a dozen residential complexes and the spread of other tourist developments. Thus, Villarrica and Pucón present rates of population growth that are higher than both the regional and national averages. The rate in Pucón is 2.18% annually, twice the national average and considerably higher than that for the region. The rate in Villarrica is lower than that of Pucón, but nevertheless above the regional and national averages (Table 2).

Urbanisation of the lake shore has been regulated by the current Plan Regulador Intercomunal (PRI, Inter-municipal Regulatory Plan). However, urbanisation of rural areas involves specific instruments that go beyond the scope of local government, limiting the latter to the management of urban land development by means of the Plan Regulador Comunal (PRC, Municipal Regulatory Plan). However, in the case of Pucón and Villarrica, these plans were developed prior to this period of accelerated urbanisation and, as such, do not necessarily include measures to ensure sustainability within the territory.

In sum, the study area has been subjected to a rapid process of urbanisation in which the real estate sector plays a central role in both urban and rural areas. Despite this, few works have addressed the diverse urbanisation processes in motion within the territory. This subject is particularly relevant in terms of revealing the environmental impact generated by a form of capitalist development driven by a strictly economic rationale that fails to guarantee environmental sustainability in aggregate terms.

3.2. Phase 2: Real Estate Data Collection

We will collect and analyse both commercial and quantitative data, the latter provided by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development’s Urban Observatory [54]. The institution offers historical and up-to-date information concerning the number of residential units and square metres built in the study area. Commercial information is obtained from the country’s leading housing sales website, PortalInmobiliario.com, which, unlike its competitors, allows advertisements to be published for free and thus has secured the greatest market share. The above data are complemented by others obtained from the most recent Population and Housing Census, conducted in 2017, concerning demographic and residential evolution within the study area [55]. The real estate information is spatialised using ArcGIS.

3.3. Phase 3: Assessment of Environmental Effects

In order to address the social and physical effects of the urbanisation of the districts studied, the information assembled in the previous phase will be combined with environmental data on land use provided by the Chilean National Forest Corporation (CONAF). Specifically, we superimpose the urbanisation trend data onto the land use vegetation survey of 2014 [56]. This provides an initial overview of the types of land use transformation that are driven by the spread of urbanisation.

With regard to social sustainability, we assess how these transformations affect access to housing by members of the lower socio-economic strata. This element of the study is motivated by the fact that in other areas of Chile such as the capital, Santiago, urbanisation of peri-urban spaces has been associated with the exclusion and precarisation of the residential conditions of these groups [57]. For this, we review background information provided by the Ministry of Housing and Urbanismo regarding land value trajectories and levels of social housing construction within these districts [54].

4. Empirical Results

4.1. Real Estate Development in Pucón and Villarrica

Since the last census, conducted in 2017, the three districts of the Araucanía Region that have experienced the greatest growth in housing stock are Temuco, Villarrica and Pucón. In absolute terms, the largest number of units are concentrated in the former, the location of the region’s largest city, also called Temuco. However, analysis of the total number of homes added to the housing stock since the beginning of the census period reveals that, although Pucón and Villarrica have fewer houses in absolute terms, the relative stock incorporated is in fact greater than that in Temuco. This dynamism reveals “anomalous” behaviour associated with external residential demand that surpasses local housing requirements (

Table 3. Districts with the greatest number of homes built in the period 2017–2021, Araucanía Region.

Districts	Number of Homes Built 2017–2021	Total Homes, Census 2017	% Homes Incorporated into Existing Housing Stock 2017–2021
Temuco	15,015	91,687	16.4%
Villarrica	4047	18,256	22.1%
Pucón	3003	9261	32.4%

Source: compiled by the authors using data from the Urban Observatory, Ministry of Housing and Urban Development.

). This demand is related, on one hand, to the presence of a highly developed real estate market based on what may be referred to as a form of monopoly land rent associated with the area’s scenic attributes, primarily the Villarrica lake and volcano. On the other, it is driven by a number of contemporary cultural phenomena, such as amenity migration and the associated transformation of rural spaces [4,5]. These processes lead to socio-spatial transformations that are of particular relevance in environmentally fragile contexts such as the lake district.

This anomalous behaviour can also be seen in Figure 3. The graph shows the average number of homes built in recent years in the various districts of the Araucanía Region per 1000 inhabitants. Here, again, Pucón and Villarrica present the greatest number of houses built, confirming that these districts have the most dynamic real estate markets in the region.

This trend is also expressed in the sustained increase in the number of square metres built over the past 10 years in the districts studied. Going further back, Figure 2 and Figure 3 illustrate a change in the trend in the two districts between 2009 and 2010, with an increase in the number of square metres built during the second half of the period. This upward trajectory peaked in 2014 in Pucón and in 2015 in Villarrica. Since then, figures have remained higher than in the previous decade and were not significantly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, the opposite appears to be the case, with home-working leading to an increase in demand for housing in the lakeside districts of southern Chile [58].

Figure 4 and Figure 5 also reveal how this change in the trend has been accompanied by the rise of another residential typology, with apartments becoming increasingly common in the study area, and particularly in Pucón. The arrival of this style of living points to a change in the type of land rent sought by developers, with a move towards differential rent II, which involves intensification of invested capital and the use of a pre-existing differential rent. This leads us to suggest that the increase in units built could be accompanied by the entry of other types of real estate developers from outside the region and with greater capital resources.

Part of this increase in the number of square metres built is linked to the emergence of a housing stock associated with a type of resident who is not present in the territory on a day-to-day basis—a resident who is not “born and raised” in the territory, but who originates instead from the urban areas of other regions. Figure 6 presents the number of homes occupied on a seasonal basis. Primarily holiday homes, these residential units account for around 35% of the stock in Villarrica and around 21% in Pucón, figures that far exceed the regional average.

4.2. Modelling the Lakeside Phenomenon at the Virtual Scale

With the emergence of seasonal rental smartphone applications and greater emphasis on those that promote the purchase of new and existing housing units, residential booking has begun to shape a new real estate development scenario in the study area. It is based on the exploitation of the topological qualities of new-build residential projects and existing units in order to configure concrete and exclusive spaces that, preferably, are isolated from the city. The Portal Inmobiliario platform, for example, uses a hedonic land pricing model adapted to the needs of each unit on sale, acknowledging the idea that it is the vendor who ultimately sets the value of each property. This adaptation is based on the fact that the data that shape the offer—but do not determine the price—fall into at least three of the model’s traditional dimensions: neighbourhood type (heritage, under renovation, etc.); location (central, peri-urban); and purpose (residential, commercial, rental) [59].

In order to spatialise the effects of these dimensions on residential development in the districts studied and thus gain an understanding of the potential environmental implications of this anomalous housing offering, we begin by studying the commercial information available concerning the residential typologies currently for sale. The typologies obtained are presented in Figure 7, which shows that in addition to new homes there is an active market for existing housing, and another focused on the sale of plots and land divisions in rural areas.

Figure 8 presents the spatial distribution of new house and apartment construction projects, indicating their concentration on the periphery of the two cities and, in some cases, even beyond the urban boundaries. Construction projects of this type are converting rural land to urban through the generation of a residential offering aimed at buyers from outside the area, not only on the urban periphery but also along the section of the lake shore that lies between the two cities.

Figure 9 presents the current spatial distribution of existing houses and apartments for sale. The map shows that, unlike new projects, these units are scattered across the existing urban areas, along the portion of the lake shore between the two settlements, and across rural areas, especially along local main roads.

Another residential market present in the study area covers the sale of leisure plots and plots in new land divisions. Land divisions are a form of urbanism resulting from the subdivision of large rural properties into plots of at least 5000 m². The resulting subdivisions are termed leisure plots, a name used to differentiate them from regular plots that originated from other processes, such as Chile’s Agrarian Reform of the 1960s, or from subdivisions as part of inheritance processes [60]. The subdivisions and plots are mainly located in rural areas and again tend to be concentrated around the lake shore. Of the total number of seasonal residences (some 27% in the study area) around 53% are located in rural areas and associated with cultural and spatial changes linked to rural territories.

4.3. Assessment of the Environmental Impacts of Neoliberal Lakeside Residentialism

The information presented so far provides evidence that residentialism associated with the commercialisation of lakeside landscape and with the seasonal residential market produces at least two socio-environmental effects. The first is an increase in land values that could impede access to the lake, a public good, by local inhabitants with less purchasing power, potentially leading to their expulsion from the territory [61,62,63]. A second effect is the fragmentation of the rural space, and especially of that situated along the shores of the lake, a process accompanied by cultural transformations. As such, these same trends associated with neoliberal lakeside residentialism are converting the green utopia upon which they are based into a dystopia riddled with detrimental social and spatial effects.

Land values in the districts of Pucón and Villarrica are as much as 23 UF and 16 UF per square metre, respectively—higher than in the surrounding area and comparable to those found in metropolitan cities such as Santiago. As a result, the number of housing projects aimed at vulnerable groups has been falling, with state subsidies available only to middle-strata groups [64]. Similarly, plots in new subdivisions in rural areas are equally inaccessible to lower- and lower-middle-class groups. As such, the current model of development of urban and rural spaces is being driven by the private sector and by individuals, who develop and/or trade lakeside property in the form of an offering aimed mainly at upper-class groups, and which excludes, both directly and indirectly by means of rising land values, those groups with fewer resources, thus forming a socially homogeneous space and triggering possible processes of social segregation.

The significance of this transaction between the real estate market and the natural world lies in the subsequent role played by the latter. If the two urban zones are being exploited due to greater commercial opportunities, this raises two questions, namely the origin of this housing demand and the alternatives available in terms of suitable housing to satisfy the needs of a population unable to pay the high prices charged in touristified cities.

The so-called residential solutions made available during the period studied fall into two verifiable categories. The first is state support allocated to private individuals, generally family heads, for the mortgage-based purchase of new or existing housing. The second is aimed at socio-economic sectors classified as vulnerable and effectively involves state purchase of low-cost housing units built by real estate developers as part of larger construction projects—a notion that could be termed “directed stock”—and their subsequent allocation to disadvantaged families in exchange for the payment of a nominal sum.

The third process concerns the provision of a range of subsidies to help fund home renovations, extensions and energy efficiency enhancements, along with the improvement of neighbourhood environments. This competitive fund, while still a subsidy, is available regardless of whether or not the initial acquisition of the property involved the receipt of state subsidies. As Pucón is a district in which the urban scenery tends to configure landscapes—at different scales to the natural world, but similarly nevertheless—the fact that investment is focused on neighbourhood improvement explains the high levels of support awarded within the district (Figure 10).

In our discussion of localisation, we take the case of Villarrica, bearing in mind that trends in the Andean lake district focus more on the outer limits of the urban zone and on the rural interior than on the city centres.

The original concentration of subsidised housing in the city was never in close proximity to the lake shore. Since 1990, successive residential projects to provide housing to lower-income sectors have been sited on the urban periphery [65]. However, in the last decade, an entire new neighbourhood called Segunda Faja has been created in the southern part of Villarrica. Various types of housing and social and territorial integration subsidy are available here, along with others promoted by housing committees. Nevertheless, data provided by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development reveal a 6% housing deficit in the study area, a figure that remained stable between 2002 and 2017, but which we judge to have increased over the past five years due to the country’s general economic situation and the COVID-19 pandemic.

More importantly than whether or not they match the profile of housing policies in tourist areas is the question of the location sacrifice made by these neighbourhood and housing projects. This is not only in regard to their distance from the lake shore, but also their conversion into a peri-urban space lacking in the instruments necessary for existence given the presence of two complex elements. The first is industrial exotic monoculture forestry operations, which pose a high risk of wildfires [66]. The second is the provision of only one access route on the outskirts of central Villarrica, a configuration that challenges any notion of road sustainability. Figure 11 illustrates these two situational dynamics.

In both cases, the environmental impacts tend to concern a reduction in the natural landscape as a result of the imposition of housing and the level of social demand for it. This issue is highly complex and challenging in terms of the right to the city and to decent housing and raises the question of the place of these rights in the context of transformations driven by climate change.

The notion of peri-urban areas refers to interface zones between residential spaces, exotic forestry plantations, and the region’s native forest. This coexistence promotes the ingress and development of tourism-related activities and, specifically, of those associated with the arrival of a new type of neo-rural amenity visitor who exacerbates the fragility of subsidy-based housing provision [67]. These new businesses open up fresh tourism circuits that take advantage of the zone’s landscapes to provide amenity services while simultaneously fixing the urban limit. The environmental problem of peri-urbanisation in Chile lies primarily in the lack of regulation in the form of planning instruments [68]. While these zones are permeable to new tourism businesses, they are also fragile in terms of their residential value, as is clear from the figures presented above in relation to the availability of leisure plots.

Although on an individual level these circuits may appear inoffensive, in aggregate terms they could become a threat to biodiversity conservation. As such, although touristification operates a core vision of sustainability, its environmental and social effects are now becoming apparent. For example, in Pucón and its foothill surroundings, a study of vegetation cover conducted between 2001 and 2020 identifies a loss of 4164 hectares of native forest and the appearance of 10,755 hectares of forestry plantations [68]. Native forests have, for the most part, been replaced with commercial plantations, leading to a drop in endemic biodiversity. In addition, the local community is raising concerns about the loss of agricultural land through unplanned expansion into rural areas in the form of leisure plots. Thus, in the absence of conservation and protection policies, urban expansion around the lake shore and scattered across rural areas is driving the destruction and fragmentation of the landscape. Current evidence shows that the study area is acquiring a new configuration. On one hand, almost the entirety of the lake shore between Pucón and Villarrica is now privately owned and under intense occupation by residential and tourism activities. On the other, the rest of the—predominantly rural—territory has also become fragmented as a result of its subdivision into leisure plots, to the detriment of agricultural lands and forests [69].

The latter also has knock-on effects for indigenous communities within the study area. For example, the privatisation of the lake shore impedes access by these groups to land whose use was previously unrestricted. Studies conducted in other Mapuche localities in the Araucanía region have already revealed processes of deterritorialisation driven by neoliberal urban growth [70]. Thus, while current expansion is not focused to any great extent on indigenous territories, this anomalous real estate development nevertheless exerts some pressure on them. In fact, the Villarrica Municipal Regulatory Plan’s Strategic Assessment [71] explicitly indicates that urban growth has assimilated indigenous lands, affecting community identities and driving a loss of cultural heritage.

Similarly, occupation of the lake shore has been a cause for particular concern since 2018, when the Ministry of the Environment declared the Lake Villarrica watershed severely polluted. This was due to an increase in microalgae considered potentially harmful to human health, driven by excess nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) in the water and exacerbated by processes of eutrophication [72]. One contributing factor is the discharge of wastewater into the lake, whether due to a lack of sewerage or leaks from septic tanks. Audit no. 60, conducted by the Comptroller General along the portion of the Lake Villarrica shoreline located in the district of Pucón, identified 195 homes built without permission, and 51 homes which, despite the granting of permission, had not been signed off and had no approved sewerage system. As such, the report concluded that the situation made it impossible to guarantee that all homes in the specified area had an adequate wastewater disposal system and that said wastewater was not entering soil layers that would lead to discharge into Lake Villarrica [73]. This clash between tourism businesses and housing demand is the perfect illustration of neoliberal lakeside residentialism.

The issue of water pollution is further compounded by the new environmental threat posed by the implementation of informal sewerage solutions in rural areas. This sanitary irregularity compounds the existing problem, with some 25% of the population of the study area lacking basic services, including sewerage [74].

In sum, the environmental impacts outlined here provide an initial insight into the consequences of commercialisation in the neoliberal tourism space, leading us to suggest that the green utopia is giving way to a dystopia. As such, this development model puts stress on the sustainability of the system as a whole and, in particular, its natural and heritage attributes, which are key to sustaining the economy in the study area (

Table 4. Levels of chlorophyll pollution, Lake Villarrica. Fuente: Plan Maestro de Desarrollo Territorial Sustentable Pucón, 2019.

Parameter	Unit	Criterion	Quality standard	Pucón Lake Shore	La Poza, Pucón	Compliance Level
Clarity (Secchi)	m	6-month average	≥7	7.5	7	Over 80%
		Minimum	≥4	4.5	5
Chlorophyll “a”	µg/L	6-month average	≤5	7.7	7.3	Result above standard
		Maximum	≤10	14.8	13.2
Dissolved phosphorus (P)	Mg P/L	6-month average	≤0.015	N/A	N/A	Regulatory compliance
		Maximum	≤0.025	0.020	0.030

).

5. Discussion

The results reveal the overarching role of real estate development in the study area and how it transcends the spatial divisions of urban and rural. However, aside from providing evidence of the production of nature in the sense set out by Smith [24], the process indicates the involvement of an external actor whose mode of life differs from that which is more typical of the study area and is manifest in land subdivisions and real estate projects. This actor takes advantage of monopoly rents that drive territorial fragmentation and privatisation, as well as those generated by the lakeside landscape in the way specified by Vidal de la Blache [18]. This mode of space production supports the idea that we are facing a process that we term neoliberal lakeside residentialism involving the attraction of actors who evolve from tourists to become seasonal or even permanent inhabitants of the territory.

As indicated by Obiol and Pitarch [75], the territory is threatened by this residentialism, which is transforming it from a tourist enclave to a space dominated by neoliberal lakeside residentialism. We include the neoliberal aspect in the term in acknowledgement of the fact that this transformation is guided by private decisions, and that local government does not have the instruments it needs in order to shape the development of its own territory. There is even evidence of the application of state instruments that promote spatial fragmentation and thus the resulting destruction of existing cultural spaces. The latter is particularly concerning within the study area given the presence of indigenous Mapuche communities and their internationally important cultural value.

Evidence of the environmental impacts of this mode of space production has now been revealed on the global scale, particularly on the social level [76]. Here, we see the collision of the tourism industry with the demands of citizens for access to the city and to housing in lakeside cities.

In the midst of these landscapes, hyper-exploited as they are by local amenity and leisure economies, what space remains for the production of city and demand for housing? What hope is there for the promotion of state-subsidised housing within the picture postcard idyll of lakes, forests and mountains?

These results warn of the risks of densification in lakeside regions that lack response capacity in terms of minimal urban infrastructure. Tourism is a territorially imposed activity that focuses on spaces with considerable potential for landscape enjoyment and experiences while paying little or no attention to the medium- and long-term effects that it can entail. It is an economically profitable activity that creates work for a cross-section of society but has the potential to become a cornerstone of generalised environmental crises that remain invisible to amenity visitors, as in the case of Lake Villarrica.

6. Conclusions

The present article illustrates that neoliberal lakeside residentialism is generating environmental externalities both within existing urban areas and in newly urbanised rural sectors. These externalities are both physical (habitat fragmentation, water pollution) and social (increase in land values, segregation). As such, action is needed to address these problems in order to safeguard the sustainability of this territory with its fragile Andean lake ecosystem. To achieve this, development in the territory must occur according to a vision that ensures sustainability and is based on policies and standards that guarantee its realisation in space.

Steps taken must include the repeal of Decree Law No. 3516 and its defence of the fragmentation of rural space. Access to land by local groups with limited resources must be guaranteed by recognising that land cannot be considered a good for sale to the highest bidder: in a space of such high natural value, this logic prevents access to land by the local population and even incentivises their expulsion. Support must also be given to strengthening economic activities associated with farming and indigenous life, as incomes associated with real estate activity tend to put pressure on these communities to sell their land, especially if their economic situation is in a state of decline.

Implementation of the proposed actions is not currently possible under the Chilean neoliberal state. However, this much-desired utopia is now a real possibility given the ongoing constituent process and its hoped-for outcome of greater priority given to the preservation of collective goods such as territory and culture, and its guarantee of land access for less economically fortunate groups. Failure to take action to safeguard the sustainability of the Andean lake district could threaten the natural and cultural wealth of the study area, which in turn would put at risk one of the central pillars of the local economy: tourism. As such, neoliberal lakeside residentialism could generate instability across the whole system, converting the utopia that originally attracted new residents into an environmental dystopia.