Bogotá : violence as urban generator

Our cities bear the marks which human use and consumption brought upon them, in the middle of observing this vessels of environmental disaster, attention has been diverted from other potentially catastrophic formulas our urban centers inherently carry; we are still inhabiting violent cities in the age of climate-change urbanism. There is already an abundant base of studies –mostly behavioral, about the built environment and its relation to measurable phenomena like crime, homicide, violent crime or terrorism, terms which are often carelessly exchanged between them and the word Violence. Being architecture the main driving force of this study, the objective is to approach the architecture-violence relationship, aspiring to prove that its instrumentalization has given it a magnitude in the system of visible and invisible parts that conform urban violence. For the purpose of organizing this parts, a classification system has been constructed, with the hope it will help in the understanding of how violence, through space and time has formed and de-formed the city. As proving ground for this thesis, the selection of a study case has been carried out (Bogota, Colombia), from which the different components of space-time violence will be dissected. To conclude with the study, a project proposal has been made, with the intention of presenting an architectural proposal that embraces its inherent instrumental character as political weapon, and which can expose the structure of the violent layers within the city.