Intro Post by Jose Antonio Ramirez

“Now is the time for politics of love”- proclaimed Gustavo Petro, the recently elected major of Bogota, after his decisive victory last Sunday, October the 30^th, against the former major Enrique Peñaloza, and the emergent runner Gina Parody.

Petro’s heraldic claim resounded throughout the length of his campaign calling to terms one of Bogotá’s most overwhelming challenges: the need to reduce processes creating social and spatial segregation. Among all his potential solutions to that question (ranging from the construction of a new subway system, to the dissipation of Bogotá’s existing stratification’ system), the role of urban renewal policies in downtown areas and its incidence in the land market deserve particular attention. In what follows, I will roughly depict the panorama that he will be facing in the following years. Looking particularly at urban upgrading and renewal strategies, I argue that Petro’s “Politics of Love”, face a difficult challenge as they need to tackle the predominant distrust that have already permeated all debates on urban redevelopment in the last years.

Petro’s proposals hint at the continuation of redevelopments projects conceived by previous governments in order to densify downtown areas. Contingent on this, he is emphasizing both the need to both include residents of these areas and discourage the existing and pronounced divide between the North and South of the city.  Firstly, we can agree with Petro’s claim with regard to the city’s levels of segregation.  Although, recent works have showed how social barriers in the city are more porous than the strict North-South divide citizens recurrently perceive, there are still strong processes of social and residential segregation that legitimize the general perception (UNDP 2008, Aliaga and Alvarez 2010)*.

However, we have to disagree with the novelty of his approach. The right of the residents to participate in the redevelopment projects and the objective to diminish social barriers in Bogotá’s downtown areas are not new to Petro’s approach but have been well-rooted since previous governments-at least on paper. The Urban Operation of Downtown decreed by the former left government in 2007 clearly states that regeneration Read More…