Lessons in Social Equity from Bogotá's "Public Space" Mayors

Abstract

Latin America is the most urbanized region on the planet, and it is experiencing rapid development as well as generating new strategies for more equitable built environments. While it is emerging in the Global South, this southern thinking about equity is not confined to that particular geography. Rather, it can be used to help stimulate strategic and visionary planning in cities globally. In particular, Bogotá, a capital city of eight million people, is known for its “pedagogical urbanism” movement of the 1990s and early 2000s, when the city transformed into a model of urban development based on the work of two mayors, Antanas Mockus and Enrique Peñalosa, who shifted the existing spatial logic of the city toward a more inclusive and supportive built environment by reshaping social relationships and civic identity, as well as altering the design of public space and public transportation with the intent of bringing the city’s residents together in public space to form a positive communal identity. This paper summarizes the city’s transformation and the challenges that arose during it and explores lessons in operating multiscalar metropolitan spaces that create more imageable, integrated, and socially equitable territories.