Abstract

The paper presents the urbanization process lived in Chile, and in much of Latin America, associating the demographic changes to the housing and urban needs, and the public policies addressing them. The resulting unequal provision of services and equipment in our cities, among other social problems, resulted in what was considered an «unexpected» social explosion in October 2019, followed closely by the sanitary crisis brought by COVID-19. The paper ends with five propositions regarding the cities of today in light of both crisis: the social and the sanitary crisis.