Why the Rich Live on the Hillside: How Spanish colonialism, environmental risk, and gravity created the urban class map

 

“Why the Rich Live on the Hillside”

(How Spanish colonialism, environmental risk, and gravity created the urban class map)

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You’re standing in a Latin American city.
You look up—and see mansions perched on a hillside.
You look down—and see slums clinging to the ravine.

That feels… backwards.

In North America or Europe, the poor live in the floodplains, the old industrial districts, the flats near the freeway.
The rich head uphill. To the view. The breeze. The space.

But in Caracas, La Paz, Rio de Janeiro, Bogotá, it’s the opposite.

So—why?

Let’s trace the slope of history.

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🏛 It Starts With the Spanish

When the Spanish colonized Latin America in the 1500s, they brought more than soldiers and steel.
They brought urban design.

Specifically: the Laws of the Indies.
A grid-based city layout with a central plaza, government buildings, and a cathedral.
The elite lived near the center.
Flat land was for the powerful.

The outer edges? Those were for the Indigenous, the laborers, the unwanted.

As cities grew, the poor were pushed outward—and upward.

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⛰ Why Up the Hill?

At first, hills were undesirable:

• **Steep.

• Erosion-prone.

• Far from services.

• Hard to build on.**

So informal housing—the kind you build yourself, without a permit—grew on the edges.
Where no one else wanted to live.

And in many cities, those edges were hills.

That’s why today, you’ll see favelas in Rio sprawled up the slopes…
While the wealthy live in the flat, planned zones below—complete with private security, air conditioning, and gated driveways.

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☔ And Then Came the Rain

Climate added a twist.

Flat land floods. Hillsides slide.

But if you have money, you can afford:

• Retaining walls,

• Drainage systems,

• Reinforced concrete.

You turn a dangerous hill into a private vista.

If you don’t have money?

A rainy season means mudslides.

Every year in places like Venezuela and Peru, people die—not because of where they chose to live, but because they had no choice at all.

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🏗 Global Twist: Now It’s Flipping

In the Global North, hills have always been desirable.
In the Global South, they started as marginal—but in some cities, that’s changing.

Gentrification creeps uphill.

Developers eye those views. Build high-rises. Push out the poor.

In Rio, some favelas are now tourist attractions.
In Mexico City, luxury homes nibble at the edges of hillside barrios.

The geography of class is still vertical—
but who’s on top?
That’s starting to shift.

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🧭 What This Tells Us About Development

Ask a geography student where people live, and they’ll say “cities.”

Ask where within cities?
The answer tells you everything.

About:

• History,

• Inequality,

• Infrastructure,

• Risk,

• Power.

Because space is never neutral.
It reflects who had the power to choose—and who didn’t.

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So next time you see a hillside packed with homes, don’t just look at the view.
Look at the history.
Because that slope?
It’s not just geography.
It’s a social ladder, built into the earth.