Bogota's Central Focus

By Bruno Lobo

The stars have been aligning in Bogota — at least until recently.

This city of approximately seven million, the capital of Colombia, has the stability and demographics that favor growth and development. Planning, however, is a key challenge.

Gustavo Petro, the candidate of the left-wing party — Movimiento Progresista — was elected mayor in 2011 with a political program based on addressing Bogota's severe social and spatial segregation. Two years later, his administration imposed, without approval from the city council, a controversial revision to the city's strategic plan that tried to address some of the city's main planning problems by overhauling the local zoning resolution.

That plan was suspended after the mayor was ousted from office in March 2014. The city reverted to its previous zoning code. Then, in a surprising turn of events, Petro was reinstated a month later and since then has attempted to revive its plan.

Prelude to a plan

Before all this transpired, Bogota was going through a development boom fueled by a growing supply of affordable mortgage financing, declining interest rates, and increased demand for residential and commercial space. Building permits proliferated.

Most of the new development located on the periphery. It followed a pattern set in the 1940s, when riots in downtown Bogota had the effect of pushing the city's business districts and wealthier classes to the north and west — and pooerer classes to the south — hollowing out the city center.

The outward expansion of the city and lack of public investment created a host of other problems: traffic congestion and squeezed public amenities to the north, inadequate infrastructure and housing to the south, declining property prices and a rise in informal activities and crime in the city center and historic districts, and spatial segregation and a lack of transit all over.

During the 1990s and 2000s earlier administrations had tried to reverse these trends. Driven by two innovative mayors, Antanas Mockus and Enrique Peñalosa, the local government instituted various planning strategies including a new citywide strategic plan and development plan, which won Bogota international accolades. Among the innovations were a new citywide bus rapid transit system, TransMilenio; extensive improvements to existing public spaces; and a vast network of new parks, bicycle routes, playgrounds, and libraries in the most underprivileged neighborhoods.

To encourage affordable housing, the city created several zoning mechanisms to induce private development and developed thousands of new ones in the south and west sections of the city through its public developer, Metrovivienda.

To revitalize the city center, the local government encouraged development of lots in historic districts through its zoning code as well as sector-specific renovation plans that the private sector could be part of and lead. To facilitate plan implementation, it created fiscal and administrative exceptions and strengthened the use of eminent domain. It also engaged in extensive renovations of public spaces and amenities such as the Tercer Milenio park and the Jiminez pedestrian avenue.

A top-down approach

Progress was made, but there were setbacks as well. The BRT system couldn't solve all the city's mobility challenges. Urban renewal focused on physical structures but did not address the underlying social issues. And the demand for affordable housing still exceeded the supply. With the population increasing at two percent per year, informal settlements kept growing.

The planning incentives and extensive public works were not enough to attract investment to the city center. Although there were 24 urban renovation plans elaborated by the private sector as well as the city development agency (for example, Plan Parcial Estacion Central, Plan Parcial San Victorino, Plan Parcial Triangulo de Fenicia), only one was approved and none of them were implemented. During the same time 29 expansion plans were approved on the preiphery. As a result, businesses and middle- and high-income families continued to locate at the city's edges, exacerbating traffic congestion on the edges and decline in the center.

Mayor Petro's administration overhauled the city's strategic plan in 2013, it issued a decree based on the following principles:

• Densification instead of expansion. Directing new development toward the city center by downzoning its northern and western sections and substantially upzoning its central districts.
• Mixing uses. Permitting commercial and institutional uses (health, educational, and cultural) in all zoning districts of the city and allowing retail on the ground and first floors of all buildings.
• Mobility. Introducing maximum parking allotments.
• Affordable housing. Increasing the requirement for affordable housing units in new projects that opted to use the new maximum achievable FAR. Those new units could be provided on-site, off-site, or through a monetary contribution.
• Financing urban infrastructure and public value-capture. Requiring that most of the urban infrastructure be funded by developers and that lots be ceded to the city for new green spaces, roads, and public amenities.

The plan drew both accolades and criticism. Some argued that the upzoned sections of the city were already dense enough and that their public amenities couldn't support new development. Others said that the proposed new densities would undermine the historic neighborhoods' image and urban structure. And still others disliked the proposed mixed uses and parking limits.

In answer to the opposition, the administration argued that the upzoning would not apply to areas of historical value, only to areas that would benefit from urban renewal. And it said that mixed uses and limits on car travel and private parking were necessary to address the city's mobility issues.

The construction industry argued that the contributions required by the plan would not be paid for by landowners but instead become an extra project cost. Together with increased competition for fewer lots, the result would be higher land prices — and higher housing prices. Developers also said the plan would push development to the surrounding municipalities, thus directing investment away from the city instead of attracting it. The local government argued that the plan resulted in a net increase in buildable area allowed, and simply reallocated it from the peripheries toward the city's central areas.

The upshot

Bogota's real estate market quickly responded to the new plan. Developers rushed to get projects approved before the new code went into effect in 2013. When it did, applications for new permits dropped drastically. Still, the suspension of the plan invalidated more than 1,000 building permits.

Since Mayor Petro's return to office, lot acquisitions and requests for building permits have been practically halted in anticipation of yet more changes to the code. Only projects with existing permits have started construction — and the value of those permits increased when the areas around them were again downzoned.

Through all this, one factor should be kept in mind: The plan was imposed unilaterally, without dialogue with stakeholders. By trying to reallocate real estate values and expectations through its zoning code, the city underestimated the interdependence of the local government, local communities, and the private sector. The lack of stability and unexpected changes in the regulatory framework almost completely halted a thriving real estate market and originated projects that were the opposite of what was intended.

While the planning principles may have been right, the process chosen to implement them undermined the plan. In the future, the city might instead engage stakeholders in the reform of the system, focus investment in key central sites, and look to expand existing public agencies in order to address the city's shortage of affordable housing and trigger the urban renewal processes needed to address problems of mobility and socio-spatial segregation, so that its residents can benefit from growth.

Bruno Lobo is the director of a real estate investment firm based in New York and Bogota and a PhD candidate in planning at Columbia University.

Resources

Image: Maps from El Plan Urbano del Centro Ampliado de Bogotá.