The social dimension is the indicator used today in public policy. It includes factors such as poverty, unemployment, educational level, work informality, degree of concentration, and social homogeneity, related both to individual socioeconomic characteristics and to the project's surroundings where the housing is located. The physical dimension refers to the location of social housing projects to financial areas, which can determine the opportunities to access jobs and be a determining factor in residents' quality of life. The three corresponding employment centers Santiago, Providencia, and Las Condes are used as a reference, as the most representative and interconnected with the global economy. The functional dimension of opportunity access: refers to the analysis of the distance through the existing street network between the social housing projects and the different urban facilities and existing public services within the community, in order to evaluate the residents' effective accessibility to these resources in the local administration to which they belong. Each of these dimensions is measured through statistical tools, population censuses, and geographic information systems (GIS), which allow the creation of detailed area maps that show the areas with the greatest vulnerability within a city. Vulnerability Indicator for Residential Segregation The analysis of the data reveals significant variability in the residents´ vulnerability levels of social housing projects. The application of the multidimensional index identifies differences that are not evident in traditional unidimensional measurements. The spatial distribution of the vulnerability index in Greater Santiago highlights areas of high vulnerability in peripheral sectors with less accessibility to services and employment opportunities. Unlike conventional methods, this index visualizes spatial patterns of vulnerability that can guide more precise intervention policies. In particular, the findings suggest the need for differentiated strategies according to the specific characteristics of each area, instead of generalized approaches that do not consider the phenomenon's heterogeneity. Thus, through the incorporation of geospatial analysis, information on the degree of residential segregation of existing social housing projects in Santiago is developed. This index is a result in itself because, unlike the one-dimensional indicator commonly used, the proposed index produces a better discrimination of the vulnerability levels to which social housing residents are exposed. The wide vulnerability gradient obtained indicates an important variability between the results of the official ranking and the results of the multidimensional indicator that, in addition to social aspects, also considers proximity to financial centers and access to public facilities for the residents of different social housing projects. These findings provide a solid empirical basis that supports that the vulnerability
of a single numerical result per unit of observation, without considering the spatial dimension of remoteness from the opportunities offered by the city. The measurement of the consequences of residential segregation should be by means of a multidimensional vulnerability index, where the social housing project is the unit of disaggregated analysis of the vulnerability levels in the area. A multidimensional vulnerability index is proposed for the residents of social housing projects, which considers, in addition to the socioeconomic indicator used in the official measurement, two spatial indicators: (1) the spatial mismatch concerning employment centers and (2) an indicator of accessibility to public services and facilities. Unlike the one-dimensional indicator commonly used, the proposed index produces better discrimination of the vulnerability levels to which social housing residents are exposed, allowing better public policy design and targeting. VULNERABILITY INDICATORS: RESIDENTIAL SEGREGATION AND HOUSING POLICIES. In modern cities, residential segregation is a phenomenon that has a profound impact on people's quality of life. The way in which social groups are spread out in the area reflects not only economic inequalities, but also influences access to opportunities, services, and well-being. In this context, vulnerability indicators become a key tool for understanding the dynamics of segregation and guiding more inclusive housing policies. What Is Residential Segregation and Why Is It a Problem? Residential segregation refers to the unequal distribution of the population in urban space, where certain social groups, especially those in vulnerable conditions, are concentrated in areas with less access to basic services, education, and employment. This segregation is a phenomenon that responds to multiple historical, economic, and political factors, and the consequences are significant: it hinders social mobility, widens the gap between different sectors of society, and perpetuates poverty circles. It also limits access to quality infrastructure and creates spaces with less public investment, which aggravates social exclusion. Beyond The Traditional View: A New Vulnerability Index Until now, social housing vulnerability indicators have been based on aggregate socioeconomic data, which means that they have not considered the problem's spatial dimension, ignoring the impact that the location of housing has on people's daily lives. The proposed new vulnerability index seeks to change this situation, making it possible to measure, based on existing data, the living conditions in different urban areas from a relational perspective between three dimensions: social, physical, and functional. Within the logic of developing a territorial targeting methodology to facilitate the identification, selection, and prioritization process of territories for public management, the unit of spatial analysis used is the social housing project based on data from the National Cadastre of Social Condominiums, which allows analysis with the maximum level of territorial disaggregation (Spatial Data Infrastructure, Ministry of Housing and Urbanism [IDE MINVU], 2022), based on government information from the 633 social housing projects that exist in the metropolitan area of Santiago. They are called social housing projects or condominiums because they are units where exclusive domain and common domain assets coexist, which are identified as a spatial entity responding to a name and as a significant interaction space for the people who live there. Three dimensions were considered to obtain the index, which was used to classify the social housing projects reported by MINVU.
measurement can and should be expanded to capture the complexities inherent to the phenomenon of vulnerability.
Moving Towards a Better Social Housing Policy The research results suggest considering and measuring residential segregation as a multidimensional phenomenon, which goes beyond the population concentration in certain geographic areas. The development of a vulnerability indicator that incorporates social and spatial dimensions has enabled a more accurate assessment of the levels of residential segregation in social housing projects in Santiago. This approach has revealed that factors such as spatial mismatch to employment centers and accessibility to public services and facilities are associated with the experience of residents and their quality of life level. There is an association between residential segregation and the resident's quality of life level in the urban periphery of Santiago. It has been found that spatial mismatch in major employment
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