Heading South: The Urban Design Studio goes to Bogotá

In mid January, our class headed to Bogotá, Colombia, to check out some of their recent and current projects relating to urbanism and social housing. Secretaría Distrital del Hábitat generously acted as our hosts, showing us around the city and providing a wealth of information about how they are working to improve housing conditions and generate new housing in a rapidly expanding city.

New growth in Bogotá is happens largely by illegal, informal development, posing safety risks to the residents as well as environmental and ecological risks to the entire region. We toured the periphery of Bogotá to see these patterns of growth, and to look at some current social housing projects by Metrovivienda, the sector of the Bogota government that is in charge of planning new housing for the city. We toured the city center with folks working at La Empresa de Renovación Urbana, the division responsible for revitalization projects in Bogotá. Caja de Vivienda Popular explained the government system for subsidies for home improvements and infrastructure for newly legalized settlements

Our focus in particular was on a planned housing and community development project in Usme, in the south of Bogotá. Usme is one of the last undeveloped pieces of land in Bogotá, and the project which Metrovivienda has planned is the largest in Colombia to date, expecting to house 200,000 people.

Our semester will focus on rethinking the current plan for the site and investigating the core issue of urban growth, using Usme and Bogotá as case studies.

We are extremely grateful to everyone at Secretaría Distrital del Hábitat, Metrovivienda, La Empresa de Renovación Urbana and Caja de Vivienda Popular who took the time to speak with us and help us to better understand how the issue of housing is being addressed in Bogotá. Special thanks to Anna Maria Buritica for spending so much time and energy to make our trip incredibly productive and exciting.