Affordable and productive housing to (re)-densify the center of Bogota

Although it has been in the center of political debates for years, the growing Social Housing deficit in Colombia, particularly Bogota, has not yet found a permanent and sustainable long term solution. The internal conflict has forced millions of people to migrate into larger cities and, while the center of Bogota presents a low population density, the less accessible and less service-supplied outskirts are overcrowding with newcomers. This research strives to understand the dynamics that have shaped the city profile allocating low income households on the peripheries while lowering the population in the city center. It will propose architectural tools to be applied within the Bogota’s current Mayor’s plan for the city center re-densification trough social housing. The research will be supported on the description of urban phenomena such as the city growth towards the periphery, internal forced migrations and social housing allocations dynamics. It will also explore case studies for contemporary Social Housing in urban centralities, as well as the social principles described in the Mayor’s Plan. The research identifies key tools to propose affordable and sustainable quality Social Housing that would become a platform for social interaction and sets the bases to invert a negative process and reduce the gap of housing inequality in Bogota.