|
Uruguay Greater Montevideo
According to the 1985 census, the population of the
department of Montevideo was 1,311,976, and that of the
neighboring department of Canelones was 364,248, out of a
total
population of 2,955,241. Thus, these departments and the
eastern
portion of San José, which together constituted the
Greater
Montevideo region, held over one-half of Uruguay's
population.
This monocephalic pattern of settlement was more
pronounced in
Uruguay than in any other nation of the world, barring
citystates . The 1985 census indicated a population density of
about
2,475 inhabitants per square kilometer in the department
of
Montevideo and about 80 inhabitants per square kilometer
in the
department of Canelones. Densities elsewhere in the
country were
dramatically lower
(see
fig. 4;
table 2, Appendix).
Montevideo was originally founded on a promontory
beside a
large bay that forms a perfect natural harbor. In the
nineteenth
century, the British promoted it as a rival port to Buenos
Aires.
The city has expanded to such an extent that by 1990 it
covered
most of the department. The original area of settlement,
known as
the Old City, lies adjacent to the port, but the central
business
district and the middle-class residential areas have moved
eastward. The only exception to this pattern of eastward
expansion is that banking and finance continued to cluster
in the
Old City around the Stock Exchange, the Bank of Uruguay
(Banco de
la República Oriental del Uruguay--BROU), and the Central
Bank of
Uruguay.
Since the 1950s, Montevideo's prosperous middle classes
have
tended to abandon the formerly fashionable downtown areas
for the
more modern high-rise apartment buildings of Pocitos, a
beachfront neighborhood east of the center. Still farther
east
lies the expensive area of Carrasco, a zone of modern
luxury
villas that has come to replace the old neighborhood of El
Prado
in the north of the city as home to the country's wealthy
elite.
Its beaches were less polluted than those closer to the
center.
Montevideo's Carrasco International Airport is located
there. The
capital's principal artery, 18th of July Avenue, was long
the
principal shopping street of Montevideo, but it has been
hurt
since the mid-1980s by the construction of a modern
shopping mall
strategically located between Pocitos and Carrasco.
Montevideo's poorer neighborhoods tended to be located
in the
north of the city and around the bay in the areas of
industrial
activity. However, the degree of spatial separation of
social
classes was moderate by the standards of other cities in
South
America. Starting in the 1970s, the city began to acquire
a belt
of shantytowns around its outskirts, but in 1990 these
remained
small compared with Rio de Janeiro or Guayaquil, for
example.
About 60,000 families lived in such shantytowns, known in
Uruguay
as cantegriles. An intensive program of public
housing
construction was undertaken in the 1970s and 1980s, but it
had
not solved the problem by 1990.
In 1990 Greater Montevideo was by far the most
developed
region of Uruguay and dominated the nation economically
and
culturally. It was home to the country's two universities,
its
principal hospitals, and most of its communications media
(television stations, radio stations, newspapers, and
magazines).
Attempts by the military governments from 1973 to 1985 to
promote
the development of the north of the country (partly for
strategic
reasons) failed to change this pattern of extreme
centralization.
In one way, however, they achieved a major success: the
introduction of direct dialing revolutionized the
country's longdistance telephone system. By contrast, the local
telephone
network in Montevideo remained so hopelessly antiquated
and
unreliable that many firms relied on courier services to
get
messages to other downtown businesses.
Until the construction boom of the late 1970s,
relatively few
modern buildings had been constructed. In many parts of
the
center, elegant nineteenth-century houses built around a
central
patio were still to be seen in 1990. In some cases, the
patio was
open to the air, but in most cases it was covered by a
skylight,
some of which were made of elaborate stained glass. Few of
these
houses were used for single-family occupancy, however, and
many
had been converted into low-cost apartments.
The middle classes preferred to live in more modern
apartments near the city center or the University of the
Republic. Alternatively, they might purchase a
single-family
villa with a small yard at the back. Many of these were
close to
the beaches running east from the downtown along the
avenue known
as the Rambla. In Pocitos, however, high-rise apartments
had
replaced the single-family homes on those streets closest
to the
beach.
Data as of December 1990
|
