As in most cities around the world that host slums
areas, the slums of Bogotá are largely the result of rapid
population increase without the housing and services provision that
such growth demands. During the past few decades, Bogotá
has seen sustained, rapid demographic growth through waves of rural-to-urban
migration in the wake of general impoverishment and violence. The
Bogotá urban perimeter expanded rapidly through illegal subdivisions,
occupation and the development of marginal areas by immigrants.
Bogotá’s inner-city slums, on the other hand, are mostly
the result of urban transformation processes, whereby certain downtown
areas underwent progressive social and physical deterioration and,
increasingly, accommodated lowerhierarchy social strata and economic
activities.
Slums are defined as spontaneous settlements on the city margins
that started to show up during the first years of the accelerated
urbanization process, and that were manifested as groups of shacks
or provisional housing; as resident communities in precarious housing
conditions; and as urban settlements in which the terrain’s
occupation and its development are conducted without any plan and
without the corresponding permits and licences that are officially
required.
The slums of Bogotá can be classified as the outcome of:
unplanned
and informal urbanization through subdivisions in peripheral and
marginal areas, largely characterized by an initial lack of physical
and social infrastructure, but which are often – within a
few years – improved by the city administration or through
self-help (or combinations thereof);
squatter
settlements with generally more dire physical and social circumstances
(although this category historically has had a relatively low importance);
inner-city
urban deterioration zones that came about through the progressive
move of 19th-century industrial, military and other functions adjacent
to the traditional urban centre to more appropriate locations, and
the social, economic and physical deterioration that followed in
the wake of this urban abandonment.
Although the latter concerns a relatively small proportion of the
urban area, these zones stand out by their strategic location and
the gravity of their social conditions. They are primarily associated
with crowded and dilapidated tenement houses, commercial room-renting
in marginal housing and critical social situations of poverty, drugs
and delinquency.
The tenure type in the slums is closely related to geographical
location and type of housing. The inner-city slums are, typically,
rental housing of dilapidated tenement blocks, whereas the squatter
settlements and ‘pirate neighbourhoods’ of the peri-urban
areas are owneroccupied. The latter tend to have a more transient
nature in the sense that four decades of experience with this type
of illegal urban expansion means that the very deficient conditions
are often only the phenomena of the first few years. After this,
gradual self-help and community improvements bring them to higher
standards in terms of infrastructure and housing quality.
With an upward trend in the share of the population living below
the poverty line – 19.4 per cent of the total population in
1994 and 23.0 per cent in 2000 – combined with a steady increase
in urbanization and an increase of the population of Bogotá,
it is expected that the proliferation of new slums will continue
well into the future.
There is no clear information about social and urban
homogeneity in the slum areas. There are, however, indications that
–the pronounced urban isolation in which the slum dwellers
live – the difficulty of access to physical and social infrastructure
and the high levels of violence, compared to other areas of the
city, generate patterns of depressed urban areas where the inhabitants,
despite their great heterogeneity, look for common interests originating
from their unsatisfied basic needs. Where underlying social structures
get stronger, there is a degree of empowerment that increases their
ability to act and react. The non-slum dwellers would appear to
view the impoverished urban groups as undesirables, expressed in
the specific terms applied to describe them – desechable (disposable),
gamin (street boy), vagabundo (tramp), populacho (commoner) –
that are highly associated with delinquency, unproductiveness and
uselessness.
During the past few years, remarkably effective actions involving
urban regeneration and recuperation have been conducted in the central
areas. New legal instruments and tools paved the way for reforms
and political transformations at the local level and improved the
quality of life for many population segments. In 2001 alone, urban
improvement policies for Bogotá, including administrative
reforms for greater efficiency and corruption reduction, have permitted
the implementation of social policies with tangible successes in
the areas of social housing, transportation, education and public
participation.
With a dire need to address a growing housing deficit that currently
stands at more than 500,000 units, and to stop the process of informal
urbanization in the peri-urban areas, Bogotá has a daunting
task before it. The combination of a growing political basis for
real involvement of the affected communities and improved knowledge
of the social problems of communities in the peri-urban areas will,
perhaps, provide the all-important lessons for improving the living
conditions in the slums, and may reflect the substantial change
in political will and in the management of poverty within Bogatá.
This summary
has been extracted from:
UN-Habitat (2003) Global Report on Human Settlements 2003, The Challenge
of Slums, Earthscan, London; Part IV: 'Summary of City Case Studies',
pp195-228.
unplanned
and informal urbanization through subdivisions in peripheral and
marginal areas, largely characterized by an initial lack of physical
and social infrastructure, but which are often – within a
few years – improved by the city administration or through
self-help (or combinations thereof);
