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TOXIC LANDSCAPES AND URBAN INFORMALITY, 2021

Waste has been concealed and misallocated as a consequence of urban growth. While many residents of cities rarely think about refuse beyond a quotidian scale, the spatial consequences of waste management systems are disproportionately dire for the neighbors of landfills – often, the urban poor. In Latin American cities, the entanglement of waste and urban informality is a driving force behind peripheral urbanization, a process in which the margins of cities are contested and appropriated by those who have nowhere else to go. I explored the consequences of centralizing waste in Bogotá, Colombia. The Doña Juana landfill, the only facility serving the city, has operated since 1988 and has radically changed the social dynamics and the landscape of its environment. As more land gets devoured to bury trash, contamination and informality spread at a similar pace, creating opportunities for increased peripheral development and reinforcing patterns of segregation.

GSAPP Housing Lab, 2020

Housing extends beyond the walls of your home. This has been the guiding principle behind the Housing Lab at Columbia University’s GSAPP, a place that strives for innovation in design and policy to radically rethink the principles of housing in New York City.

As a graduate research assistant for the Lab, I have collaborated in:

  • An policy brief to understand success in mixed-income neighborhoods [read it]

  • An exploration of urban density at a neighborhood scale [read it]

  • An evaluation of HDFCs, a limited-equity housing program in New York [read it]

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In the absence of order

The effects of a de facto metropolitan region, 2019

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Challenges of urban growth

For the last thirty years, the Colombian capital has expanded with a vertiginous pace. The city is the center of the Bogotá Savanna, a region of 4,250 square kilometers (roughly 1,640 square miles). Since 1997, urban sprawl on the region has increased 68% (or about 99 square miles), as a result of the disorganized and scattered growth the capital and its neighboring towns. The region’s population is nearing 10 million.

As a result of power imbalances in the region, the relationship between Bogotá and its neighbors has been contentious. The consequences are dislodged planning efforts and no clear path to address the political negotiations in the region. At the same time, the absence of regional planning has also resulted in the conurbation of Bogotá with several of its neighbors, and in the production of contradictory urban forms in terms of land use and environmental protection.

In July 2020, the Colombian Congress approved a constitutional reform to allow the creation of a metropolitan region centered around Bogotá. With this legal precedent, legislators sent a message for local authorities to resolve the obstacles that have hitherto plagued regional integration.

Despite this effort, the region is still missing concrete answers to at least five major urban issues that need to be solved in order to build the foundations for a metropolitan authority:

  1. Bogotá's conurbation with adjacent towns, a process that overloads service provision for smaller municipalities

  2. Regional transportation, an barely nascent enterprise

  3. Water provision in the region, currently in the hands of a public company owned by the city

  4. Waste management, since Bogotá's only landfill is enduring severe operational problems and has a license set to expire in 2021

  5. Determining who is going to be the environmental authority for the region

While the future for the Bogotá Savanna is filled with uncertainty, a corollary of this research is that there will be no local solution to regional challenges.

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conurbation or integration?


Obstacles to preserve Urban wetlands, 2018

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The cost of urbanization

Since 1950, Bogotá has lost 93.4% of the bodies of water it had in urban wetlands. On average, each wetland has lost 89.8% of its water coverage.* During the last two decades, the city has protected - to various degrees of success - fifteen wetlands located within its urban perimeter. Restored humedales have become places for leisure and preservation, and function as pauses to the dense fabric of the city.

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A pressing emergency

The majority of Bogotá’s urban wetlands, especially those located in lower-income neighborhoods, have not been properly preserved. Despite community efforts to reduce the damage that rampant urbanization has inflicted on these ecosystems, success has been modest as their dereliction continues. The planetary climate crisis leaves little time to act, and the city needs to redirect its efforts if it aims to use wetlands as tools to mitigate the effects of climate change.

I led this research project as part of my work at the Bogotá City Council. The images were taken and assembled by Ana M. Prada.

the potential of Bogotá’s street art, 2017

What?

Bogotá has been called South America’s street art Mecca, its Graffiti Tour became a permanent feature for national and international tourists, and new graffiti districts have been designated by the city.

I led this project while working at City Council.

How?

Established street artists and muralists from Bogotá have made an impact on global art circuits. They have proven that, in a city bereft of opportunities, street art is a way to reclaim a better life and expand the right to the city.

So What?

Urbanism gurus discuss a “creative class,” yet formulas to manufacture a creative city have failed to reproduce previous successes. In the meantime, Bogotá’s neighborhoods, rich and poor, are thriving with genuine creativity.

Taxis in BogotÁ, 2016

(a social approach to public Transportation)

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The taxi industry in Bogotá has been a point of contention in recent public debates. It has been lambasted in the media, sought after by politicians, and attacked by international companies with competing business interests. But it has not been properly understood. This paper summarizes the findings of a year-long research about the 52.000 taxis that circulate every day in the city, who are their drivers, and what are the main regulatory disincentives to their operation. I led the research team and wrote the executive summary.

In Spanish.