Cerrillos: Santiago's Former Airport District Transformed into a Model Urban Development

Cerrillos is a small but strategically important commune in southwestern Santiago whose transformation from a former military airport district into a major planned urban development zone has made it one of the most watched neighbourhood evolution stories in the Chilean capital. The Aeropuerto de Cerrillos, which operated as Santiago's primary civilian airport until 1967 and subsequently as a military base until decommissioning in 1997, freed up an enormous tract of flat urban land immediately southwest of the city centre that city planners have spent two decades developing as the Ciudad Parque Bicentenario — a sustainable mixed-use community of residential housing, commercial spaces, parks, and civic facilities designed according to the principles of walkable urbanism that were still novel in Chilean planning culture at the time of inception. The development has gradually filled with residential towers, a central lagoon park, bicycle infrastructure, and the beginnings of a commercial strip turning former military wasteland into a habitable neighbourhood.

The surrounding commune of Cerrillos beyond the Bicentenario development retains a more industrial and working-class character, with manufacturing plants, logistics warehouses, and the commercial strips along Avenida Pedro Aguirre Cerda and the Gran Avenida serving an established residential population of Chilean working families who have lived in the commune for generations. The traditional neighbourhood around the Cerrillos commune centre has a feisty local commercial life of ferretería hardware shops, local mechanics, and the neighbourhood almacén convenience stores that serve as informal social clubs in Chilean urban culture. The recently opened Los Libertadores Metro station at the edge of the Bicentenario development has begun to connect this southwestern commune more meaningfully to Santiago's transit network, and further Metro extensions are planned that could significantly reduce the commune's historical transport isolation from the city centre.

The Bicentenario central lagoon park — the development's most distinctive feature — provides kayaking, fishing, and picnicking amenities to residents of the new towers and to visitors from the wider southwestern Santiago area who seek a waterfront experience within the city limits. The development's cycling infrastructure connects to the proposed Alameda cycling corridor that city planners envision threading east to the city centre, and when completed would make Cerrillos one of Santiago's most bicycle-accessible new neighbourhoods. The tension between the aspirational Bicentenario development and the working-class neighbourhoods that surround it creates a fascinating edge condition that urban researchers and community advocates watch closely as both sides adjust to their new proximity and the commune finds its identity in the hyphen between Santiago's past and its planned future.