“It’s good quality for the price,” says Carlos Jiménez, a construction worker, as he sips his coffee and leans against the polished counter in Tostao’, a coffee shop in Bogotá’s bustling working-class district of Tunjuelito.

Despite being one of the world’s biggest coffee producers, Colombia has traditionally exported its best beans, and the few chains that do sell it are expensive; Colombians have instead developed a taste for tinto, a sweet brew made out of leftover beans.



The Tostao’ chain, however, sells actual coffee for a third of the price of the chains in poorer areas of the city, under the slogan “sin estrato” (“without social stratum”). Like all good marketing slogans, it’s a phrase that holds special resonance for its intended audience.

Something of an urbanist’s darling, Bogotá has been lauded for pioneering innovations such as the Rapid Bus Transport (RBT) network TransMilenio. But the high-altitude city of 8 million people is also the birthplace of a more controversial planning policy: explicit socio-economic stratification.

All neighbourhoods in the city are classified from 1-6, with 6 being the richest and 1 the poorest. Homeless people are simply sin estrato (without stratum). The idea is that “higher” strata residents (5 and 6) pay more for utilities and services such as water, telephone bills and rubbish collection, subsidising the “lower” strata (1, 2 and 3).

A street vendor pouring a cup of tinto. Photograph: Nick Kee Son/Getty Images

“I live in stratum 4,” says Jiménez. “Between 3, 4 or 5, you won’t notice much difference. But between someone from 1 and 6, you will. The vocabulary, the style of dress, the lack of culture.”

I earn a lot of money. I could live in the north but I don’t want to pay Carlos Córdoba, taxi driver

His remark is instructive of what many say is the unintended consequence of stratification: prejudice and stigma. What was designed as a progressive “system of solidarity” now stands accused of fuelling social segregation, and Bogotá’s district authority is pushing for the government to phase it out.

Unique to Colombia, the stratification system is applied according to a home’s characteristics; the government argues that “poor housing is inhabited by poor families”. Income is not considered. First launched in Bogotá in the 80s before spreading to almost every urban area in Colombia, the system has grown to incorporate university fees and social programmes.

Bogotá sprawls across a large Andean basin, 2,600m above sea level; “strata maps” clearly show how the strata correspond to the social makeup of the city. More than half of Bogotá’s citizens live in zones 1 and 2, mostly in dense slums that cover the hillsides; in the northern fringes are small clusters of zone 6, where luxury apartment towers block out the hillsides. Just 1.9% of all homes in 2014 were in stratum 6.

The upmarket neighbourhood of El Retiro. Photograph: Christian Science Monitor/Getty Images

Laudable ambitions

Milena Pérez, 39, works as an administrator near a pristine retail park in stratum 6, but lives in stratum 1, in the megaslum of Ciudad Bolívar. She commutes two hours each way, south to north. “The two are completely different – in the north I die of hunger because things costs so much more,” she jokes. If she had the means, she says, she would move. “If I could get a rich husband from the north, then sure!”

The stratification scheme had impeccable ideals: to alleviate urban inequality by helping the poor pay less. Bogotanos seem to approve of the principle. But the system is inefficient. In the past three years, the government has paid out close to £65m to Bogotá’s water firms to cover the shortfall in subsidies. There are also quirks. The low-rise historic centre of La Candelaria, home to numerous expats and diplomats, receives stratum 1 subsidies because of the area’s heritage status. Several decades after stratification was introduced, Colombia remains the second most unequal country in Latin America, according to World Bank figures.

A strata map of the Usaquén district. Red signifies stratum 1, up to dark green for stratum 6. Photograph: Secretaria de Planeación, Bogota

One consequence that its planners did not foresee was people competing to live in poorer, cheaper districts. Communities often fight fight to prove that their area does not deserve to be bumped up into the next stratum. Taxi driver Carlos Córdoba, 54, is a self-described “stingy millionaire” who chooses to live in the southern district of Soacha, in stratum 3. “I earn a lot of money,” he says. “I could live in the north but I don’t want to pay.” Strata 4 and 5 are boring, he says, since fewer people dance, drink, party and fight. He thinks the stratification system reflects class, rather than creating it, and the city works better when people “stick to their own level”.

“If I’m strata 3, that’s who I am. How is someone from strata 1, living among strata 5, going to be able to afford to pay for milk?”

Córdoba’s words hint at another, bigger criticism of the system: that Colombians have adopted it as a tool for classifying people, not buildings. The government’s website agrees with Córdoba – arguing that stratification does not “generate such differences” in class, but merely records them. But Manuel Riaño, an urban economist and professor at the University of Rosario in Bogotá, believes it has deepened the rifts between social classes and contributed to the stigmatisation of the poor.

“There are plenty of expressions like: ‘He got out of the strata,’ if a person thinks they are important, or ‘You can notice his strata’ to imply a person is bad,” says Riaño, noting as well that people from strata 1 or 2 often struggle to land well-paid jobs. Mónica Soto, 25, a teacher from stratum 4, agrees: “When you have an interview they always ask where you live – and you know the place where you live is highly correlated to your strata.”

These problems have led the administration of Bogotá and its mayor, Enrique Peñalosa, to press the national government to transition to a new system, one that takes into account an “increasingly dynamic and complex city”. Peñalosa, a well-known urban consultant who was re-elected in 2015, told a town hall discussion recently that the city is a “very powerful machine that works very well for income redistribution”, but he admits the current system has problems.

‘It’s the place for people with nothing’ … Javier Duque selling arepas in the district of Ciudad Bolívar. Photograph: Ella Jessel

These include a lack of contributions from affluent rural areas surrounding the capital, and the increasing polarisation of wealth. “Where the richest are, the richest go,” he said. “No one from stratum 6 goes to live in Soacha, and probably no one from stratum 2 goes to live in Sopó [an affluent town north of Bogotá].”

A new joint proposal by his administration, in collaboration with UN-Habitat and Bogotá’s utility companies, has proposed replacing strata and using new technology to assess individuals, rather than properties.

Removing its legacy and making Bogota truly sin estrato, however, might take much longer. Javier Duque, 55, was displaced from his home in the hills during the war with the Farc guerrillas in the 80s, and now sells tinto for 300 pesos (8p) in Ciudad Bolívar, opposite a branch of Tostao’. He doesn’t think removing the stratification system would have much effect on his area. “I always thought I would die in the country, but now I know it will be here,” he says. “It’s the place for people with nothing.”

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