Slums
Slums are a byproduct of Colombia’s rapid expansion and urbanization accompanied by the not so rapid development of irrigation, plumbing, roads and policing. However this examination of Bogota, the country’s capital is not unique; these slums develop throughout the world in the form of favelas in Brazil, barrios in Mexico and gecekondus in Istanbul. In chapter five of the Planet of Slums, Davis describes an issue of an endless struggle by the poor to make ends meet, and how the developers only perpetuate this struggle through renovations which were intended to introduce a new sophistication to the broken city. Slums really started to develop in Latin America around the 1970's, this could be correlated with the rise of several criminal enterprises out of Colombia like the Medellin and Cali cartels. Underdeveloped and temporary housing in other parts of the world started even sooner, in 1920 Rio de Janeiro documented its first slum.
Countries across the globe along with the help of investors try to push the poor out in order to bring in the wealthy. In an article by Business Insights it examines one of these companies as they expand into Colombia. BT is hiring 250 “highly skilled professional services specialist” (pp. 4). This class based segregation can be found in almost any city but is combated in the form of these illegal settlements that develop when those who previously occupied the area refuse to move. Moving away from the city could mean as long as three hour commutes in order to get to work therefore those who claim to have a right to their city stay and risk the destruction of their property and with it their entire livelihood. Davis develops another point in his chapter by outlining events that took place in Sub-Saharan Africa where the indigenous people who were colonized for decades overthrew the British colonialists but reinstated the exact segregation laws which they fought to abolish, only this time it was in favor of them.
This constant struggle stated in the first paragraph is again referenced in the sub section titled “Removing Human Encumberments” as an endless social war in which the poor fight to gain social capital and the rich raze the land due to a contract and destroy the livelihoods of human beings. Bogota tries to combat this impending doom of complete segregation through the use of large town squares that include the rich and have the ability for the poor to watch if they are not able to participate. Yet still exclude transients and the homeless population by not allowing them to stay here As it was put by Juan P. Galvis in his article on “Planning for Urban Life” that sleeping and living in the park becomes unfair to others around them because it represents a small scale private encroachment on a public space (pg. 93).
The largest slum in Bogota is known as Ciudad Bolivar, which consists of both rural and urban areas. The total population of this area is about 590,000 people. The most thriving industry inside this slum is drug dealing, robbing, and murder. Police and even the military do not enter this area as it is too dangerous. As far as housing goes, the buildings are more permanent than those built in the slum of Dharavi. Concrete homes with working televisions scale the mountains and unpaved “roads” are barely scalable by humans let alone cars and bikes. Colombia has generally had a decreasing population growth according to the CIA reports on population, however Ciudad Bolivar has experienced a higher rate of growth than the negative mean of the country. This can support Davis’ idea that slums are only growing and by the year 2050 an estimated 50% of the world's population will be living in slums.
The heavy investments by private companies into developing countries with the idea of a city wide gentrification uproots the once thick lifeblood of the land and diffuses originality into the monotonous global market. Does succumbing to the will of globalization doom every country who partakes to this fate? Or is there something that can be done to maintain individualism in the growing era of conformity?