As urban transformations go, Bogotá’s is pretty spectacular. With investment in transport and cultural infrastructure, attention to environmental restoration, coupled with reductions in traffic fatalities (50%) and the murder rate (70%), Bogotá’s star on the ascendency.



This shiny new version of the Colombian city is brought to you by two globetrotting former mayors presenting the new Bogotá to western audiences, keen to learn from the city’s redemption.

Antanas Mockus, the former mathematics professor and presidential hopeful, twice elected to the office of mayor, is noted for appearing spandex-clad as the self-created “Supercitizen”. Credited with the turnaround in crime statistics and women’s nights out, when he suggested to residents that they should pay a further 10% in their taxes voluntarily – 63,000 did so.

Mockus’ second mayoral appointment followed Enrique Peñalosa. A journalist and urban transport consultant, Peñalosa is best known for promoting cycling and pedestrian infrastructure. He believes people should walk more. “Not in order to survive, but to be happy”. Critical of the rich who want roads for the cars only they can afford, keeping poorer residents out of large districts of the city, he suggested that “one symbol of lack of democracy is to have cars parked on sidewalks”.

But this happy egalitarian image is being called into question by Dr Juan Pablo Galvis. An assistant professor at SUNY College at Old Westbury, Galvis’ research looked at public life in public spaces across the city. His most recent article discusses how life is made tougher for some in public spaces by the community-led organisations managing these locations.

Based on his PhD research conducted at the University of Washington, a year of fieldwork in Bogotá and “a lifetime of casual interest, following of the city’s politics as a native” he has criticised this new dialogue. While both former mayors talk of equality and power, presenting their approaches to social inclusion and revitalisation, Galvis thinks this rebranding falls short of its promises and creates a selective view of the city. He offers two case studies to make his point.

Downtown Bogotá, seen from the Candelaria district. Photograph: Jesse Kraft/Alamy

The Asociación Civica Centro International San Diego (ACCISD) oversees the International Centre, a mainly business district north of Bogota’s colonial centre which saw rapid urban development in the 1960s. Gradual decline in the following two decades was accompanied by an increase in crime so the ACCISD was established to improve matters. Six to eight ACCISD uniformed staff patrol the district on motorbikes, reporting “aggravating actors” to police.

One ACCISD officer informed Galvis that while homeless people would leave voluntarily or be taken to a shelter, they were “constantly telling [the police] there [were] problems with street vendors in such and such a place.” Essentially a jumped up version of neighbourhood watch, this is the softly, softly approach compared to the more aggressive stance adopted by the Friends of 93rd Street Park.

After being redeveloped in 1994, the Asociación Amigos del Parque 93 took over all aspects of the park’s management. The Friends published a 20-page manual detailing acceptable behaviour and improper conduct, which included leafleting, selling and broadcasting. The organisation does not defer to social agencies to deal with homelessness or the police to respond to street traders. It is all handled by the group’s own officers.

One officer commented that “the park is self-sufficient … [it] has its own life and its own management, which is private. Public administration has one way of doing things, and private administration another.”

This private way of “doing things” is, Galvis suggests, the problem. “The blatant exclusions resulting from the private administration of this park seem to contradict the stated inclusionary principles of the Public Space Ombudusman, however, still presents this case as a successful example of community governance at work.”

Both managing agents operate under the Public Space Master Plan, a cocktail of constitutional reforms and policies relating to the creation and management of public space. Handing back power to communities, an ever popular political policy, brings with it potential to erode aspects of the mayors’ utopian visions, which in these cases means social stereotyping and exclusion.

Those groups typically expelled include “unruly youths, sex workers of different ages, genders and sexual identities and, in some cases, even poor people in general” but Galvis identifies street traders as being a particular focus for the attention from private security officers or police.

The city authorities “characterised street vendors as ‘mafias’, taking advantage of public assets, harbouring criminals and hurting formal employment in storefront businesses”. While traders had been banned in certain locations and tolerated elsewhere “the official policy is one of ‘recuperation’ of public spaces, where a certain street is cleared and ‘alternatives’ [such as] city kiosks are offered to the vendors that used to occupy the space. Once a space is ‘recuperated’ then no more vendors are allowed to relocate there.”

For all of the promotion, investment and best intentions, Bogotá remains a city that has yet to completely challenge the class structure that underpins the social exclusions Galvis discusses. He dismisses the suggestion that the mayors’ approach has been innovative, criticising the policies and the master plan for facilitating the social exclusion they seek to address. They have, in attempting to be inclusive, produced a “mirage of social harmony in public space”. A better understanding of class difference will improve the city’s governance.

Juan Pablo Galvis continues to research the public spaces of Bogotá and other cities in the global south.

Kat Martindale is a researcher, urbanist and founder of Cities Research. Follow her on Twitter at @KatMartindale and @CitiesResearch #ResearchFriday