Northeastern zone of Santiago

The northeastern zone of Santiago de Chile, known as “sector oriente”, refers to the name given to the communes to the east of the Santiago commune, where the majority of the population with the highest income in Chile live. It is made up of the communes of Lo Barnechea, Vitacura, Las Condes, Providencia, La Reina, and Ñuñoa.

Historically, this sector has contained a large part of the upper middle classes and upper classes of Santiago. In 2002 it had 45.3% of its population in the socioeconomic group "ABC1" equivalent to the classes previously mentioned, and 31% in the group "C2" (middle). The communes of the northeast sector lead the Human Development Index (HDI) not only at the city level, but also at the national level, being among the 6 highest of the 346 communes in the country. In the same way, the sector as a whole contains the highest average cost in the price of housing and offices per square meter in the country, due to the high price of urban land in the area. They also lead the national ranking. Carried out in a 2015 study, the communes are the best in quality of urban life index, and with the highest availability of green areas in the city, as long as other services. Also, due to its pre-Andean orientation, it is called the «upper neighborhood of Santiago». Popularly, the expression "upwards from Plaza Italia" marks the division between the eastern sector and the rest of the city in an east and west direction and socially.

According to an article published by the scientific journal PLOS One in 2021, its inhabitants tend to behave as if they were an ethnic minority, reflected by the composition of their surnames, corresponding mainly to the Castilian-Basque aristocracy, as in the ten highest average status from Santiago: Aldunate, Errázuriz, García-Huidobro, Irarrázaval, Izquierdo, Larraín, Schmidt, Tagle, Undurraga and Vial. It has a greater variety of surnames than the rest of Santiago, and Chileans of European ancestry mainly live here. From a political point of view, its residents are inclined significantly more to the right of the spectrum than the rest of the city and the country. In the 2020 constitutional plebiscite, the communes of Las Condes, Lo Barnechea, Vitacura (the richest in the country) were the only urban communes nationwide where the Rejection option won, while the sector as a whole obtained 55.4% of the votes in favor of Approval, well below 78.3% of the national total. In soccer, they are mainly supporters of the Club Deportivo Universidad Católica, installed in Las Condes.