The thesis explores, through a qualitative research field, the foundations of residential elections and lifestyles resulting, among middle-class families, in two types of location in the city of Santiago de Chile: central and peri-urban location. Central location is understood for us as the location which is confined to the interior of the first ring of Communes and may be considered a consolidated urbanity area. These components, although they may be relatively similar in a particular social group, feed on the life history, on the process of social mobility and on the individual preferences of subjects, among other aspects. This conviction is activated when peoples make decisions about their location in the city based on the representation of lifestyle that it would be possible to reveal just in the chosen location. The results confirm changes in the sociability of proximity in both kinds of location, creating the neighborhood and the opportunity to cultivate a "neighborhood life", a key factor for the suburban residential choice. Despite of the ties to the neighborhood are less intense for the central location residents, it is seen however as a capital already acquired. The attachment and detachment, the identification and non-identification with the territory shows us different link ways of the inhabitants with the territory which is in a city in a continuous transformation process. The current context of city development, which Santiago is a good example, requires understanding mobility and stillness which are articulated differently because the urban experience of the inhabitant, largely due to the location and to the way of life that they lead. This is not only in terms of a socio-space point of view, but also in the way in which changes in Chilean society are expressed in current lifestyles. Moreover, the relative nature attributed to the distances, which is expressed in the fact that both groups consider to be in a "privileged position" makes us think about subjective perception of the distances and of the distance itself looks as a representation. Residents in central location emphasize, above all, the value of the fluidity, a principle that they extend to their consumption practices, where they prefer the freedom to choose where, when and what to buy. Also, the freedom accentuation reminds us of the opportunity to "buy time", an aspiration that would mark a particular preference in the middle class segments with more cultural capital. On this point, it is only the central location inhabitants who make distinctions between the kind of middle class and the other groups that are perceived as fractions in ascension. Finally, the paper concludes that the option for a particular place in the city is the reflection of conceptions and consolidated or emerging relationship practices with urban spaces and with those who frequent them. The chosen location is always a model city for the inhabitants; for the peri-urban ones is a fragmented city and it is proven from a spatial logic based on specific features of their social class and their cycle of life; while for the central inhabitants is a city of adjacencies and edges
