Street Art and Urban Planning: The case of informal settlements in Bogotá
We would like to warmly thank Andrés Sepúlveda, urban planner for the Department of Habitat of Bogotá and lecturer of urban development at the El Bosque University in Bogotá, for his visit at ISTP and his talk about the use of street art as an urban planning tool in the case of informal settlements in Bogotá.
by Niklas Stolz
Being a city with 7.15 million inhabitants, of which 2.2 million live in informal settlements, brings a lot of challenges in the field of social and urban regeneration. To tackle those issues, the city of Bogotá has been using street art as a tool for engaging with communities and rebuilding trust in the municipality. During his talk Andrés Sepúlveda shared insights from the implementation process and possible outcomes of street art projects in informal settlements in Bogotá.
As one of the most prominent examples Mr. Sepúlveda showed impacts from the intervention in La Mariposa, where a butterfly was painted over the entire neighborhood. Surveys in the community indicated that after the intervention the perceived frequency of drug use and gang activity decreased, while the likelihood that an inhabitant wants to keep living in the community increased.
The ISTP would like to thank Mr. Sepúlveda for giving such an interesting insight into the use of street art in Bogotá. We hope to welcome him again at ETH Zurich in the near future!
For more information and the full report, please visit our Reports page.