Ciudad Guayana

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Ciudad Guayana from space, 2005

Ciudad Guayana (Guayana City) is a city in Bolívar State, Venezuela. It lies south of the Orinoco, where the river is joined by the Caroní River. The city, officially founded in 1961, is actually composed of the old town of San Félix at the east and the new town of Puerto Ordaz at the west, which lie either banks of the Caroní and are connected by three bridges. The city stretches 40 kilometers along the south bank of the Orinoco. With approximately one million people, it is a large city by Venezuelan standards. It is also the country's fastest-growing city^{[citation needed]}, due to its important iron industry.

It's one of Venezuela's five most important ports, since most goods produced in Bolívar are shipped through it into the Atlantic Ocean, via the Orinoco river. Ciudad Guayana is also the location of the Second Orinoco crossing.

[edit] History

Ciudad Guayana was founded in 1961 as a project by the Corporación Venezolana de Guayana, merging two towns on both of the riversides of the Caroni, San Félix and Puerto Ordaz, as a single city. Since then, many industries have settled in it, since its geographical position gives it many advantages, it's a centerpiece between cities such as Upata and Ciudad Bolívar, two of Bolívar State's most important cities.

Since its foundation it has grown from two fledgling towns into the Guayana region's most important industrial center, and a hub of growth in an otherwise typically underpopulated region of Venezuela.

Much critique has been made about its design, which was created by a number of planners from MIT and Harvard in the early 1960s. Lisa Peattie's "A View From the Barrio" is a good discussion of the adverse social effects that occur when a modernist city is placed without regard for context (social, economic, cultural, or climatological) in the middle of nowhere.