Spatializing Stratification: Bogotá

Abstract

This article presents the socio-economic stratification in Bogotá, Colombia, and discusses the socio-spatial elements of its constitution and development. The spatial classification of blocks and neighbourhoods based on services, amenities and building qualities in Bogotá, produces a surrogate spatialization of economic divisions.  It maps, classifies and excludes but is also appropriated and contested as a hierarchical, sociocultural spatialization of residents. Taken up in the civic culture, strata has become a pattern of identification, stereotypes and discrimination that normatively striates the citizenship of Bogotanos identifying who should and should not go where.