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Uruguay Urbanization
In the nineteenth century, Uruguay was already highly
urbanized. But in the twentieth century, it has been one
of the
world's most urbanized states. According to the 1985
census, 87
percent of Uruguayans lived in urban areas, the highest
percentage in Latin America. The department of Montevideo
alone
accounted for 44 percent of the country's population; the
department of Canelones accounted for another 12 percent.
Furthermore, the interior of Uruguay, although sparsely
populated, was also quite urban. Census figures from 1985
indicate that even outside Montevideo over 80 percent of
the
country's inhabitants could be classified as "urban"
(i.e.,
living in towns of 2,000 inhabitants or more). Most of
these
townspeople lived in the departmental capitals.
Uruguay's level of urbanization seemed likely to
continue to
rise, based on estimates of the growth rate of the urban
population vis-à-vis that of the population as a whole and
that
of the rural population. During the 1960s, the urban
population
grew at an annual rate of 1.7 percent, while the overall
population growth rate was only 1.0 percent. In the 1970s,
the
growth rates were 0.6 and 0.4 percent, respectively. For
the
1981-88 period, the overall population growth rate was 0.7
percent, while the urban population grew by 0.9 percent
and the
rural population by only 0.3 percent.
Data as of December 1990
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