INTRODUCTION

When I arrived in Valparaiso, it was as if I had traveled to another world. I, being from Chicago, where everything is flat, could not believe that a city could be built upon pure hills. I find this city rather beautiful, and I dread going back to a completely planar place.

When I arrived, people warned me that there was a lot of poverty here in Valparaiso. I am staying on cerro Alegre, where there is nothing close to poverty. I wanted to know where the poor people were, and my host family told me that to find them, I had to climb high into the hills. I began to wonder why the poor lived so high up, and not at the bottom of the hills. When I found out we were to do a project over the region of Valparaiso, I was happy that I could finally answer my own questions.

In my class, entitled Regional Geography of Valparaiso, our professor assined a project in which we were to create a thematic atlas of Valparaiso, based on principal themes. The themes from which we were to choose are the natural spaces, economic activities associated with recreation and tourism, and the population (permanent or temporary) and its mobility. The atlas was supposed to be in digital format, and posted on the web. I chose to create the atlas in blog format. The theme that I chose to develop is the realationship between the poverty and the topography in the city of Valparaiso, Chile.

The atlas was to be presented in three segments throughout the semester. Each presentation required more from the atlas, and after the second presentation, there were weekly evaluations as to our progress. The final presentation contains the most requirements, and I will explain how my atlas fits these requirements, using the evaluation form given to me by the professor.

First, we were to develop an index or structure for the site. I arranged the entries of the blog to flow smoothly, like an essay, from one topic to the next. Through the blog archive on the right hand side of the page, the reader may click on whichever entry they wish, and it will come up alone. Or, they may stay on the main site to see all entries at once. The entries are arranged to take the reader from the introduction through the conclusion, in an order that makes sense, without jumping from topic to topic.

Being at atlas, there must be maps. Throughout the atlas I have arranged maps that I have created throughout the semester. The geographic are I worked with was the city of Valparaiso, focusing on the hills.

The entries entitled photos and videos contain photographs that complement the research presented, so that the reader may have a better image in his or her mind of the city. Also, I include photos and figures throughout the atlas to support my research, and so the reader may visualize what I am describing with words. I made the videos with the program ArcScene, and they are simulations of flying through the city, so that the reader will have a better perspective of the topography of the city than one can see with a two-dimensional map.

The educational purpose you see in the entry with this name, and it includes the link to the blog in Spanish.

The blog itself contains many sections. First, one can find the introduction, where I introduce the theme, the project, and explain the different requirements. Next comes a short summary of the history and formation of the city, so that those who are unfamiliar with the city have a small background knowledge. This section is specifically for the foreigners, who know little about Valparaiso and Chile. I already explained the part about the educational purpose. The blog includes an explanation of the process I followed to create the maps, to give the reader insight into the work that went into the atlas. The sections entitled Topography and Poverty in Valparaiso include maps for these themes, and appropriate information to support the research. The Investigative Conclusion draws a scientifically based conclusion based on the research completed. The personal conclusions are my personal thoughts on the research, the project, and the work involved. At the end, one can find the photos and videos, and works consulted, as well as a glossary of terms which will appear in blue throughout the blog.

I hope you enjoy the blog, and if you have any questions, feel free to e-mail me or leave comments.
akruegs629@comcast.net

EDUCATIONAL FOCUS

This blog is aimed at foreign students (non-Chileans), not only exchange students, but those around the world. The aim of the atlas is to realize a basic knowledge in foreigners of the problem of poverty in the city of Valparaiso, Chile. Therefore, this investigation is not as detailed as it would be if the audience was professional. The user of this blog does not need very much background in geography to learn from this atlas. The creator used GIS in a manner that is easy to comprehend, and there is a glossary at the end with terms with which the user may not be familiar. NOTE: THE BLUE WORDS ARE NOT LINKS. To see the terms and the blog at the same time, open the glossary in another window.

Because the audience is aimed at foreign students, this blog appears in two languages. Therefore, one may use the blog in a geography class in the United States (with the English version) or in a Spanish-speaking country. It may also be used in the home country of Chile. The creator is American, and has taken a class entitled Geography of Latin America, and she believes this blog would be a useful tool in a discussion about Chile. This blog would be very useful in a lecture class, as it is a first-hand investigation. For this reason, the user decided to include two languages.

LINK TO BLOG IN SPANISH: http://amykruegergeo.blogspot.com

VALPARAISO: the history and formation.

Valparaiso formed as a port for the capital city, Santiago. Throughout history, it has been the most important port in Chile, and also in the world. The port function is not only its main function, but the reason for its existence.

The independence of Chile opened the port to the world, transforming it into the first port and grand commercial center of the Pacific. With the war of independence came another function, the militaristic function. The first Chilean squadron formed here in Valparaiso, and the port attracted many sailors and foreigners and their ships.

The growth in the port, commercial and military activities walked hand in hand with the growth of the population. In 1810, Valparaiso had 5,500 habitants, and in 1822, 16,000, without counting the temporary population of about 3,000 foreign and Chilean sailors. After the earthquake of 1822, there was a rennovation of the colonial buildings, and the English played an important role in constructing more solid buildings.

In 1827, Valparaiso had 20,000 habitants that grouped together in the plan, and very few ventured into the valleys and hills.

The English were the first foreigners to establish themselves in Chile, and they did so in Valparaiso. They dedicated themselves to the business of imports and exports, and they were the largest group of foreigners with the most economic, social and cultural impact. They were the first to occupy the hills in an organized manner, constructing their houses on Cerro Alegre (Happy Hill), which became a true English colony. This colony iniciated the spread of the city to the Almendral, part of the plan.

Throughout the years, Valparaiso became the principal commercial spot of the Pacific, and assumed the administrative functions at a regional level, creating the province of Valparaiso, now known as the Fifth Region of Chile.

The construction of the railroad to Santiago allowed Valparaiso to break its enclosure and increase relations with its region and Santiago, opening an easier way of communication and transportation.

The city, during the 19th century, became an important immigration center, especially attracting the rural community. In this time, the population began the occupation of the cities that surround the Almendral. By the year 1907, the population had reached 162,447 people.

The occupation of the hills was spontaneous and corresponds to the second part of the occupation of Valparaiso. The population had saturated the Almendral with buildings of one or two floors, commercial buildings, stores, markets, industries and services. The occupation of the hills began with the English merchants who wanted to get away from the crowded, dirty port area, and settled on Cerro Alegre.

The rural and port immigrants of minimum resources took over the occupation of the hills. They settled in the hills that surrounded the port, with different results than the habitants of Cerro Alegre, by the precarious positioning of their houses, still present, in the hills of Santo Domingo, Cordillera, San Francisco, etc.

There were two basic movements, the vertical and the horizontal. The vertical movement followed the steps that the hills presented. There is a clif that presented problems for the vertical growth, but the installation of stairs and elevators seemed to overcome this issue, and the valleys became avenues of access to the higher areas. In 1920, all the hills of the city had become occupied until the Cintura road. In some cases, the vertical motion had overcome the slopes of the hills, and extended over the high costal plains, as is the case of Playa Ancha.

The horizontal direction was from West to East, first over the plan, and then the hills. Eventually, there was a fusion between Valparaiso and Vina del Mar (sister city), with the hill Recreo.

Now, the hills are filled with houses, from rich to poor, and the city has reached a population of approximately 263,500 habitants.

PROCESS

This portion of the atlas is to give the user an idea as to the steps that were taken to create the maps and images of this atlas. The creator employed the program ArcGIS Desktop, specifically ArcMap and ArcScene. The two-dimensional maps were created with ArcMap, and the three-dimensional maps were created using ArcScene.

The creator began with the program ArcMap, with the shapefile of the topographic curves of the city of Valparaiso, and the shapefile of the census blocks of the city, from INE. She then went on to utilize the ArcGIS extension 3D Analyst to convert the shapefile of the curves into a raster in order to create a three-dimensional version of the map in ArcScene. The first image is of the elevation in meters of Valparaiso, and the second image is a map of the census blocks. The last, and most colorful image, is the raster created from the topographic curves.

With the program ArcScene, the creator converted the shapefiles and the raster into three-dimensional shapefiles, using the z-values which she retrieved from the topographic curves. The following maps are the three-dimensional versions of the topographic and census block maps, with a view from West to East, more or less.

In order to determine the location of the most impoverished places in Valparaiso, the creator had to find data for poverty. In the shapefile of the census blocks, there were economic data for the categories of D and E (the most impoverished, from levels A-E). A new category was created, which added the data for groups D and E for each census block. The map to the right is a color-schemed three-dimensional map of the poverty in Valparaiso, seen from above. The colors range from green to red, with the darkest green having the least amount of poverty, and the brightest red having the most.

After making the separate maps of elevation and poverty, the creator had to combine the two maps. In ArcGIS, you can create a map with various layers. There is a table of contents on the left of the screen that tells you the different layers. The layer at the top of the table of contents is displayed first, on top of the other layers. For the final map, the user is supposed to be able to see the map of poverty over the map of elevation. Therefore, the creator had to place the layer of poverty above the layer of elevation in the table of contents, as shown in the image to the left. In order to see the two maps at the same time, the creator applied a transparency to the poverty layer. This is rather easy to do, by opening the properties dialog box for the layer and clicking the display tab. There is an option for setting the transparency, and the creator changed this transparency from 0% to 50%. The two images that follow are examples of the final map, which you can see under the "RESEARCH CONCLUSIONS" entry.

THE TOPOGRAPHY OF VALPARAISO

There are three main elements that form the topography of Valparaiso, the bay, the plane (aka "plan") and the hills.

The plan is the small, stretched coastal plane. It extends around the bay, and is completely enclosed by the hills. It is divided into two parts, the Port, and the Almendral. The port is the western sector, and corresponds to the primitive part of Valparaiso. The Almendral corresponds to the largest part of the plan, and this is where the most refilling projects have occurred, due to the frequency of floods caused by storms from the Pacific.

The hills are what give originality to the city, but they are also what limits its growth and development. They are continuous sources of problems. They form a giant amphitheater, with erosion valleys realted to old sea levels. They present terraces that step up the hills and these steps have facilitated the process of occupation. They form true "suspended neighborhoods", that sometimes become small cities in themselves. Even though they have many factors in common, each hill has its originality.

The contact between the hills and the plan is not a smooth one, with cliffs that are only interrupted occasionally by the thin valleys that open to the plan. The necessity to scale these cliffs initiated the installation of elevators and stairs, which are part of the cultural history of the city. The valleys have transformed themselves into access-ways to the hills, but also allow for the hills to drop big avalanches of mud and earth on the plan after every heavy rain. The climate, vegetation and soil unite to aggravate this problem.

The bay is completely protected to the south, but totally open to the north. It offers no natural protection against the winter winds that blow from the northwest, that produce storms that have disastrous affects on the city. The rapid descent of the continental platform permit the entry of many different sized ships, and it is only necessary to occasionally drudge the port, to remove the material deposited by the heavy rains.

The hills produce a high risk for the city of Valparaiso, due to the landslides that the slopes can produce. The dangers are constant, and the potential risk affects all the valleys and plan.

The rock of the hills is very strongly metamorphosized and weathered, throughout the geologic time and due to the climatic elements. The cliff and the hills are exposed to an evident risk of great rainfalls.

In Valparaiso, a rainstorm corresponds to the landslide of rocky material that covers practically the entire surface that you find at the foot of the hill. The rains present themselves sporratically and violently, and they mostly appear in the fall or winter. They are classified as torrential, because of the violence and short duration. The duration could las anywhere from one or two hours to a complete day, and can disappear for weeks.

Wind also plays a role in the erosion of the city. There is a very violent wind that comes from the Pacific, from the southwest, and is very erosive, contributing to the weathering of the soil, but without the violence caused by the rains. The human activity of dismantling the vegetation cover allows for the acceleration of the potential desintigration of the rocks.

The slopes of the hills are very deteriorated, eroded by the people, that pull up the natural vegetation to establish their houses. The natural phenomenon cannot be evaded, but we can mitigate the effects. This requires a cultural change, changing the attitute of the people, from the most simple public until the authorities.

POVERTY IN VALPARAISO

According to the article "Human Development in the Communities of Chile", written by the Chilean government, the line of poverty is defined as such: The situation of poverty is considered as those homes whose income is insufficient to satisfy the basic necessities, food, water, supplies, or other, of its members. The extreme poverty is considered those homes which, although putting the entire income towards the satisfaction of the most basic necessities of their household, does not succeed in satisfying them adecuately. A home is considered poor when its per capita income is less than two times the value of a basket of basic necessities, in the urban area, and 1.75 times in the rural area, where spending in the service areas has less importance. A home is considered to be in extreme poverty when the per capita income is less than the value of a basket of basic necessities. The value of the necessities in a rural area is less than the value in an urban area.

I decided to include many measurements to give an idea of the economic situation of Valparaiso, not only the poverty itself, but the economic and human development. From these measurements, one can have an idea as to the economic situation of the city, and the region of Valparaiso in general. This is not focused specifically on the poverty within the city and its location in the hills, but it is aimed at giving a view of the situation that exists, in regards to the poverty and human development.

INACER
INACER is the calculation of the Indicators of the Regional Economic Activity. It is a measurement aimed at showing the economic growth. INE, in conjunction with other organizations, designed this methodology. It has been applied in all regions of Chile, and some regions have received technical support from private and public groups to provide an even more complete version of the economic situation.

The objectives of INACER is to contribute to the permanent progress of the economic measurements, look for a system of signs to analyze and evaluate the evolution, tendency and dinamics of the regionel economic activity, and provide information to the authorities about the economy.

INACER is a synthesis of indicators and statistics produced by INE, at a regional level. It tries to identify the rhythms and tendencies of the economic activity, either acceleration, lack of movement, and or desceleration. It incorporates subsectors that are more relevant to each region.

There are 11 principal sectors that INACER takes into consideration, and some examples are fishing, mining, industry, construction, living property, and transportation. Its periodicity is monthly.

In Chile, some regions have succeeded in a dynamic economy, while others stay consistently behind. In 1998, the Fifth Region showed a decline economically, and in Valparaiso, there was a great fluctuation in the fishing area. In 2006, there was growth, led by the sectors of "Other services" (social, community and personal services), transportation and communication, and manufactural industry.

The Index of Human Development

Human development is the process of the amplification of the capacity of the people. All efforts should have at the center the people, and they have to be considered not only beneficiaries, but true social subjects.

The Index of Human Development (IDH) bases itself in the equality, potential, cooperation, sustainability, security, and productivity.

The difference between poverty and human development is that the IDH gives a more comprehensive vision of reality. The IDH shows the accumulation of human capacity and poverty emphasizes what the population lacks. The IDH has multiple dimensions, and poverty is limited to economic aspects. The IDH indicates how far or near an area is to an ideal goal, and poverty shows the percentage of the population that is below a certain "minimal" level of material opportunities.

In Chile, the IDH is based on three aspects, health, education, and income.

The results show that Chile has increased consistently its IDH in the period 1990-1998, and the successes of the human development have not been equally distributed throughout the regions. A relationship between human development and economic advances does not eist. The results of the IDH have been more homogenous in the regions than the evolution of economic successes.

Regarding the IDH on the community level, this reinforces the existance of important territorial inequalities in the advances of the human development in Chile, when the profiles of the advances in IDH of the regions show homogeneity. The communities with the greates presence of rural population show consistently lower levels of human development.

The community of Valparaiso occupies the fourth place in the classification regional, with an IDH of 0.780. The levels of advances are high and equal in regards to the health and education, but the income is behind. 95% of the population of the region pertain to communities with a high to very high level of IDH. The Greater Valparaiso area maintains a homogenic standing in regards to the human development in all of the dimensions. Only the city of Valparaiso itself differs from this group in the health dimension. The population has 93.1% in between an IDH of 0.7-0.79.

Through the research, I have found that the poverty situation is improving in the region as well as the city. The percentage of the poor and extremely impoverished continues to fall every year, and the level is currently below the national level.

The following maps show views in two dimensions and three dimensions of the poverty in Valparaiso. The green colors correspond to the areas with the least amount of poverty, and the red colors correspond to the areas with the most amount of poverty. I will present my conclusions in the next entry.

RESEARCH CONCLUSIONS: The relationship between poverty and topography.

The goal of this project was to find a relationship between poverty and topography in Valparaiso, Chile. While the maps show an obvious relation between the two, I was unable to find studies over the theme. Still, one can conclude that there is, indeed, a relationship between the poverty and topography of Valparaiso, and I am going to offer my own opinions as to why.

It is obvious that the poor people are concentrated in the higher altitudes of the hills, but none of the articles I read offered an explanation as to why. In my opinion, it is due to how the city was developed. Like I already said, the English were the first to occupy the hills in an organized way. The plan didn't offer any more space, so they had to occupy the hills. When immigrants arrived, they were of a lesser economic standing than the English, who already had established businesses. Because the lower parts of the hilss were already occupied (and now seem to have a higher price for the land than the higher regions), the immigrants had to settle higher up. This tendency continued throughout history, with the poor people migrating higher and higher into the hills, only to find space and affordable land.

A problem for the poor in the higher reaches of the hills is that their buildings are not very stable. The slopes of the hills make the erosion a very big problem for the city, and when someone has an unstable house, the effects of erosion become stronger. When a town is built, the vegetation is removed. Vegetation is what helps keep the land together during rain, and prevents erosion. Without it, the water runs freely, causing landslides. The effects of the erosion are worse for the poor, because each time it rains, the water could potentially destroy their homes.

The quality of their houses is also horrible when an earthquake strikes, sending the buildings immediately to the ground.

The maps in this section come from the final map. They are different scenes of the same map, so that the reader can have a panoramic view of the city, and different points of view. To see a video of a simulation of flying through the hills, see the entry with videos.

PERSONAL CONCLUSIONS

This project turned out to be a lot more difficult than I expected. I have taken many GIS classes, and thought that the maps would be easy. I was wrong. I ran into many problems with my personal computer, and could not get the programs to load properly. It was difficult to find time at the computer lab at school, because I needed special permission and blah blah blah Finish later...

VIDEOS

I have been having a lot of difficulty uploading the video. Please bear with me while I figure this out. Thanks!

PICTURES

Coming soon!