The case of Guatemala City

The Republic of Guatemala has an area of 108,889 km2 . It borders with Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras and Belize, as well as with the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean. Guatemala is a country with a great bio-diversity in a small territory, with geo-morphological and climatic areas which vary markedly, with regions of considerable agro-ecological richness. Two thirds of the country is mountainous, and 34 per cent is covered by woodland. The average temperature is between 18 and 22º C. Guatemala is located in the Central-American Isthmus, a region with a high level of risk from natural phenomena, as well as which it is extremely vulnerable due to the poverty of the majority of the population. Guatemala is divided into 8 Regions, 22 Departments and 331 Municipalities. Guatemala City is located in Metropolitan Region 1 (see Map 1) The country has a population of 11.3 million. There are 2.5 million inhabitants in the Metropolitan Region – 20 per cent of the total. National population density is 104 inhabitants/km2, climbing to 1,213 inhabitants/km2 in the Metropolitan Region. In the second half of the 1990s, the population grew at a rate of 2.7 per cent, much higher than the average for Latin America and the Caribbean (1.3 per cent per year).