Four maps to better understand Santiago
More than six million people live in Chile’s capital, a loud and segregated city. I pick a few maps to visualize the city from other perspectives, those missing prospects in guidebooks.
Growin’ up (and very fast recently)
How much the city has grown in 470 years? Santiago was founded in 1541 but it was at the end of the XIX century that it started to expand its radius. In this map the yellow area frames the city’s downtown and its immediate neighbourhoods. Through the years the limits have moved towards the slopes of the mountains (Lo Barnechea, Peñalolén), up to the North beyond the mountains (Huechuraba, Colina) and to the South West (Maipú, Padre Hurtado). A comparison: Santiago’s surface is larger than New York’s (860 vs. 783 square kilometres), but its population density is almost five times smaller (2.304 vs. 10.833 people/square kilometres).
Income: from downtown to uptown
Every santiaguino knows that their city is segregated. This map shows the distribution of socioeconomic groups. As you can see, high income population (red) has moved towards uppertown (what we call “Barrio alto”). The middle class (orange and light orange) is concentrated around downtown and emerging comunas (our local government division). And low income groups tend to be in the suburbs, where services have poor quality or are non existent. Our university is located in a neighbourhood that had an aristocratic past — big houses from 1920— and that is slowly trying to regain its glory, even though architectural heritage is in disrepair.
Can you hear me!?
Big city, loud city. This maps helps to visualize the noisiest areas in Santiago using two sources: vehicles and trains on surface (not industries or airplanes). The green represents the quiet zones (most of them on the outskirts of town) and the red, purple and blue are the opposite: from 60 to 80 decibels. Just to compare these numbers: a vacuum cleaner goes up to 70 decibels. And in case you wonder, at our university the color is between red and purple.
The green zones
You may hear that Santiago suffers from heavy pollution during colder seasons. You may also hear that we don’t have enough green areas. Both statements are sadly true. The green spots in this map are either parks or “isolated hills” (cerros isla). But the grey areas are those with low — or almost nonexistent — green zones and where most of the people live or study or work. Santiago is a city made of concrete, hard and stubborn. And, to get things worse, the most common tree, the oriental plane (Platanus orientalis), is the worst enemy for those of us who are allergic during spring.
