GEOG 3515

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GEOG 3515

• The Geography of South America

Class 22 Economic GeographyDemography and the
Demographic Transition
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South America Population Topics

• The next sequence of classes up to Thanksgiving
  are about various aspects of South Americas
  population.
  
• Firstly we will tackle the geographical aspects
  of the regions demography and its demographic
  transition over time.
  
• Secondly we will look at patterns of migration
  and urbanization within the region.
  
• Finally, we will examine the geographical
  characteristics of South American cityscapes and
  the particular aspects of squatter settlements.

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Demography and Transition

• Demography is a very complex subject that looks
  at geographical and temporal variations in
  population and the shifts caused by migration,
  fertility, births and deaths, and differential
  age structures (which are the historical legacies
  of these variables).
• South America has seen two principle population
  transitions.
  
• Demographic - from high crude birth and crude
  death rates, to declining crude birth and low
  crude death rates.
  
• Geographic - from largely rural and agrarian to
  largely urban.
  
• There are some considerable differences between
  the countries of South America with respect to
  geographic and demographic population
  characteristics.

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The Demographic Transition
(sources Wright Nebel, 2002)
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The Demographic Transition
Phase IV Chile (18/6) Argentina (19/8) Uruguay
(16/10)
Phase II/III Bolivia (32/9) Paraguay (31/5)
Later Phase III Colombia (22/6) Venezuela (24/5)

Guyana (24/8) Suriname (24/7)
Earlier Phase III French Guiana (26/5) Peru (26/
7)
Ecuador (28/6)
(sources Wright Nebel, 2002 Clawson 2004)
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Actual Demographic Transition
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Population Distribution (UNDP 2002 2000 data)
8
Age Distributions

• Many South American nations, due to relatively
  high fertility levels in previous decades, have a
  population age structure that is wide at the base
  and narrows over each consecutive 5-year age
  cohort (e.g. Paraguay and Bolivia).
• Thus they have a built in engine for continued
  growth and can expect a lag time before social
  factors that cause declining birth rates kick
  in.
• In Latin America and the Caribbean, the median
  age i.e. middle person from youngest to oldest,
  in 2000 is thought to be 24.4, up from 20.1 in
  1950 in North America it is 35.6.
• The median age in 2050 is expected to have risen
  in Latin America and the Caribbean to 37.8 i.e.
  the population is expected to age considerably
  as fertility falls, life expectancy at birth
  increases and youthful populations age.

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UN Population Projections
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Fertility Factor is Fundamental

• Latin America and the Caribbean will grow to over
  one billion by 2050 if fertility rates remain
  unchanged.
  
• Medium predictions are that population will
  stabilize at around 800 million (about 550
  million for South America), some 60 higher than
  current levels.
• Replacement rate fertility (RRF) for South
  America is somewhere around 2.2-2.3 to account
  for pre-maternal/paternal age mortality.
  
• Actual fertility varies from a low of 2.2 in
  Suriname and a high of 4.2 in Paraguay.
  
• Most nations have a total fertility (TF) between
  2.6 and 3.0 leading to a steady growth in the
  younger age groups, although this should drop in
  most countries over time to the RRF.
• Fertility corresponds closely with GDP/cap and
  the degree of urban living, and is closely
  related to female education.

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Modernization and Birth Rates

• Modernization and shifts to urban living has
  profound social consequences that influences
  demographics.
  
• Children are no longer needed for farm labor and
  have reduced economic value to the family unit,
  especially if social security and pension
  programs are made available to the newly urban
  workers.
• Girls are more widely and comprehensively
  educated, which generally results in their
  marrying later, having children later, entering
  the workplace, and spacing their children more
  thus it has an inverse correlation with
  fertility.
• Educated, working women in combination with a
  population that is mostly only nominally Catholic
  and increasingly Protestant means that birth
  control is more widely practiced over time.

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Geographic transition

• The Geographer Wilbur Zelinksy suggested that as
  societies develop, they experience five phases of
  migration or mobility transition within their
  territories.
• Phase I wholly agrarian or small town, minimal
  population movement.
  
• Phase II onset of modernization a great
  shaking loose of migrants from the countryside
  and the beginning of the rural-urban
  transformation.
• Phase III modernization matures, cities well
  established rural-urban migration slows.
  
• Phase IV urbanization completed - most
  migration now occurs between and within urban
  areas (known as residential mobility).
  
• Phase V increasing importance of emigration to
  more advanced countries.
  
• South American nations seem to be in Phases III-V
  to differing degrees.

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Migration Tendencies

• Most migrants are young adults.
• Rural-rural migration usually comprises young
  families (e.g. to the Brazilian Amazon or
  interior Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador) whereas
  rural-urban migration involves single
  individuals, mostly males in the early Phase II,
  and then more females later on.
• Women frequently migrate to become domestic
  servants or work in light industry (e.g. the
  maquilas) due to the lack of rural employment.
  
• Urban migration frequently attracts those from
  the rural populations who have had more schooling
  (e.g. through third grade).
  
• International migration is often male and a
  sizeable portion from Latin America has been in
  the form of brain drain.

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Population Patterns

• South America has been called the hollow
  continent because population is predominantly
  located around the exterior.
  
• Within that periphery, the majority of South
  American population 80 on average is urban
  with many cities growing at 7-8 per year (São
  Paolo is thought to gain 300,000 new residents
  each year!).
• Some 17 cities now have more than 2 million
  inhabitants, the biggest being São Paolo at
  around 18 million.
  
• Several cities in South America have more than
  25 of their nations population, some over 50
  (e.g. Paramaibo, Montevideo) the primate
  cities.
• Rural to urban migration accelerated over the
  last century with a depopulation rate averaging
  around 1 per year from 1950-90.

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Rural Trends

• Rural population levels have been in absolute
  decline in South America because out-migration
  rates have been in excess of birth rates.
  
• This trend is more marked in South America than
  in the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean.

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Push-Pull Factors

• According to Clawsons estimates, some 150
  million Latin Americans moved to cities in the
  last 100 years.
  
• Dating back to the work of Ravenstein in the late
  1800s, geographers have considered rural-urban
  migration as having push and pull forces, which
  obviously work in conjunction.
• Push factors large families to be supported
  from limited land resources, absence of cash-wage
  opportunities, limited educational, cultural or
  health care conditions, involuntary displacement
  (e.g. due to guerilla war, drug militias,
  environmental deterioriation, etc.)
• Pull factors - urban life is romanticized
  better jobs, education, health care, housing and
  social opportunities seem possible the biggest
  objective is betterment of economic
  circumstances.

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Interregional Migrations

• All scales of migrations can be witnessed in
  South America.
  
• Migration of nationals from one country to
  another in South America is common, usually for
  economic opportunities.
  
• Significant has been the movement to Argentina by
  Chileans, Bolivians and Paraguayans to work on
  farms and factories, and Uruguayans to work in
  the cities (well over 1 million in all).
• Also significant has been the move of Colombians
  and Ecuadorians to the Venezuelan oil industry.
  
• Peruvians can be found in significant numbers in
  Chile, working in mines and on farms.
  
• Significant numbers of these migrants are
  undocumented e.g. around 1 million undocumented
  Colombians are thought to be working in
  Venezuela.
• Professionals from Argentina, Chile and Uruguay
  can be found all across the regions cities,
  emigres from earlier political repression.

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Residential Mobility

• Many new migrants to South American cities live
  in shanty towns, although female domestic workers
  may live in the homes of their middle or upper
  class employers.
• As or if economic fortunes improve, migrants will
  seek to move from squatter to more formal housing
  in planned neighborhoods.
  
• A key goal is to secure access to higher quality
  living conditions and public services, from
  electricity and water to schools.
  
• Frequently, squatter settlements are on the
  periphery of economic zones requiring migrants
  who find employment to travel long distances each
  day to work.
• A modern phenomenon is the export of US Latino
  gangs to South American slums as tougher
  immigration policies export convicted
  non-citizens to their country of origin.

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Urbanization

• Spanish colonization centered on the city from
  which the conquered subjects could be governed.
  
• Some 225 cities had been established in the
  Americas within 50 years of the arrival of the
  Spanish and Portuguese.
  
• An internal core-periphery model developed in
  which cities would suck in all the produce,
  minerals and raw materials from the rural areas
  and invest them in expanding and aggrandizing
  those urban areas, doing little to raise
  standards in the rural areas.
• This was facilitated by the tradition of allowing
  cities to extend their dominion over the
  surrounding lands up to the point at which they
  met another city coming the other way.
• The concept of defining urban city limits at the
  actual edge of a city was not applied.

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Types of Cities

• Unlike the colonization of North America which
  took the form of growing clusters initially along
  only the Eastern seaboard, Spanish South American
  colonization involved the founding of isolated
  cities across the region.
• Developed in isolation across the different
  viceroyalties, cities were more like city-states
  than mere cities, lacking much regional and
  economic integration.
• Within their broad regions, however, specific
  cities did tend to develop around specific
  functions which supported that city and the
  colonial empire within which it existed.
• The cities can be characterized by one of five
  general types agricultural center cities,
  mining center cities, industrial center cities,
  commercial center cities and administrative
  center cities.

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Important Colonial Cities

• Agricultural cities producer and supplier of
  foodstuffs to the cities of the region it served
  e.g. Santiago, Chile
  
• Mining cities organized and supplied mine
  laborers from the citys territorial lands e.g.
  Potosí, Bolivia
  
• Industrial cities built on traditional craft
  regions (weaving) or were selected for new
  industries e.g. Quito, Ecuador respectively.
  
• Commercial cities usually key transport nodes
  at seaports or main overland route junctions e.g.
  Mendoza, Argentina.
  
• Administrative cities seats of the
  viceroyalties, captaincy-generals or capitanias,
  these were the political, educational and
  ecclesiastical capitals of the colony e.g. Lima,
  Peru.
• Many of these traditional dominant functions and
  characteristics persist today although diluted a
  little by improved transport and technological
  change.

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Portuguese urbanization

• In the Capitanias of Brazil, urban development
  was much later in coming than in the Spanish
  colonies although Brazilian cities are now many
  of the biggest in South America.
• Portuguese settlers and slaves were mostly
  located on the sugar and cattle plantations
  whereas the cities were relatively small ports
  serving each Capitania e.g. Recife, Rio de
  Janeiro.
• Urbanization took several centuries to become
  significant, only Rio, Recife and Salvador
  gaining any significant size by the late 1800s.
  
• The only significant inland city during the
  colonial period was São Paolo, the base for
  west-ward moving pioneers into the interior of
  the Southern plateau lands in search of mines and
  ranchlands.

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The Rise of Urbanization in the Republican Era

• Immigration and improvements in living conditions
  lead to an increase in populations and
  urbanization.
  
• The process of mestizo-ization, in which
  indigenous peoples achieved higher social status
  by becoming more European frequently required a
  move to an urban center, thus swelling the ranks
  of the urban population.
• Urban populations went from 3-13 of the total
  population in 1850 to 60-90 of the population
  150 years later in the various South American
  countries (see graph).

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Modern Urban Populations

• Data on the actual size of South American cities
  today is hampered by poor data collection.
  
• Census data is frequently inaccurate, shanty-town
  populations hard to count, and definitions of
  what actually constitutes a citys geographic
  limits are nebulous.
• For example, South Americas largest city, São
  Paolo, is estimated by some (World Gazeeter) to
  be 18.5 million, and others (Demographic
  Yearbook) to be only 9.9 million.
• Regardless, South American cities are now three
  of the top 20 largest in the world and growing
  fast.
  
• South American cities, in several regions, are
  starting to coalesce to create what is termed a
  megalopolis a massive, unbroken swath of
  largely urban land use in which cities and their
  suburbs expand to fill the space between (like
  our own BosWash and ChiPitts)

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South American Megalopoli

• The dominant two are in Brazil, centered around
  Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, and
  Argentina/Uruguay, centered around Buenos Aires
  and Rosario.
• Candidate megalopoli include the Caracas-Valencia
  region in Venezuela, the Medellín-Cali region in
  Colombia, and the Chilean Central Valley,
  centered around Valparaíso and Santiago.
• The geographic footprint of the South American
  megalopolis will be smaller than the North
  American megalopolis of a similar population
  size.
• South American cities are much more densely
  populated than North American ones, usually
  boasting 3-4 times the number of residents per
  square mile/km (7,800-18,200 per square mile
  compared to 1,800-5,200).

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Sources of Information

• United National Population Division, 2001. World
  Population Prospects The 2000 Revision. Document
  ESA/P/WP.165, Population Division, Department of
  Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations, New
  York, NY.
• United National Population Division, 2001. World
  Population Monitoring 2001 Population,
  environment and development. Document
  ST/ESA/SER.A/203, Population Division, Department
  of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations,
  New York, NY.
• UNDP 2003. Human Development Report 2002. http//hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2002/en/, New
  York, NY United Nations Development Program,
  (April 14, 2003).
• World Resources Institute, 2003. World Resources
  2002-2004 Decisions for the Earth Balance, Voice
  and Power. Washington D.C. World Resources
  Institute. (available online at
  64)
• Caviedes C. and Knapp G. 1995. South America.
  Upper Saddle River, NJ, Prentice Hall.
  
• Blouet W.B and Blouet O.M., 2002. Latin America
  and the Caribbean. New York NY, John Wiley
  Sons.