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Advanced 31: La Gestión Urbana
Rob talks with Lis’ sister, Judith. Judith recently completed her Masters in La Gestión Urbana (Urban Management), and discusses the current global migration to cities, amongst other topics. Here’s what we cover:
- Judith’s earliest memories of Lis
- The global city migration
- Gentrification around the world

Judith
Colombiana

Rob
Inglés
Contents
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Transcript

So, who are you?

Hi, thanks, I’m Judith Salinas, Lis’s sister.

And there are four sisters

Right

So, you’re the second one, how would you say that?

The third

The third one. Then Lissett is the baby and you are her oldest by about ten months.

One year. Sometimes they think we’re twins

So, we’re recording in London, tell us a little about why you’re in London and what you’re doing here.

Ok, I came to London because I want to study English, I want to speak English better, I want to continue my doctorate studies if possible next year or in two years. So, in order to do a PhD, of course I need a scholarship and in those scholarships that I have seen, they require a high level of English, and taking advantage of the fact that my sisters live here, I decided to come and study, to get to know it, and to share more time with them.

Very good, welcome to London.

Thanks

And before coming to London, what were you doing in Bogotá?

I worked at the Universidad Piloto de Colombia in the International Business program, I was a full-time teacher, I taught some classes, I worked in research and in student mobility.

And what was your thesis?

My thesis was about global cities. Actually, the title was “Challenges and opportunities of the global city for the urban management of Bogotá.”

Very good. Well that’s the topic today, because I have some questions about cities and how they are changing around the world with the general population, with the global population and all that. But before I talk about that I want to ask you one thing.

Ok

What is your first memory, the first episode, let’s say, that you remember with Lissett?

Ok, I remember when we were in school she … We were in the same course and she was the good one, so we always had homework, and I asked her and she did them … she came to the house and she did it and I, well, I’m too lazy to do it, so at the end of the day I said, Lis, lend me the homework and she put away her notebook and said no, that I had to do it, and she went with her friends, and then I took the notebook, and I copied the homework, and she realized that I had copied myself when we were in class, and she looked at me in a horrible way and she got mad at me.

Yes, she is very keen! She studies hard! She’s always been like this!

Yes, yes, I copied her homework

And who … how did you do in college, with the best grades?

No, but that was only in elementary school, or fourth or fifth grade

At what age, then?

We were eleven or thirteen years old. Yes. But in Baccalaureate it was different, I was also very good in high school.

Ok, let’s get to the point then. Well, you being an expert in these matters, let’s see if you have an answer for me. I’ve heard that the global trend now is that people are moving more and more to the cities. The cities are bigger than ever, and I don’t know if the countryside will have fewer people than ever, but the trend is that the people who come from the countryside, whatever, are moving to the cities. So, well, first question, if that is true?

Yes, it’s true, that’s the trend. In fact, a report among the United Nations says that by the year two thousand and fifty, that seventy percent of the world’s population will be living in urban areas.

Seventy percent.

Yes, and today it’s fifty-seven percent, sixty percent.

And is that happening in every country?

In most countries, right.

And, why is it happening then?

Well, I could talk to you specifically about South America, there, unfortunately, the investment and modernisation in the countryside is not the most appropriate or necessary, many people from the countryside

But, adequate to do what?

To work the land. To work the land, to have economic benefits, because many farmers last their whole life or wear out a lot physically, or their health because some type of crop, which when it gets sold not have the results that they expected in economic terms. So, agriculture is not very well paid, but it is also because the state has not given the necessary subsidies or the support that the farmer really needs, and actually in the countryside. When the population there does not have a good quality of life, for example, they do not have a hospital, they do not have a school, they do not have health, then they look to the cities for a solution. And that’s also why they leave, because they cannot find a hospital to take care of them. Then it begins … and if there are no economic resources, then even more the trend to go to the city begins.

And so they do badly in the countryside, basically because they cannot sell their agriculture or they can’t get what they want, but what does a city have to offer them, if they have lived all their lives in the countryside?

Exactly. Well, that’s where the debate starts, because many go to the city looking for jobs, looking for health, looking for education, but in reality in the city, they are so chaotic these days, because there is a lot of unemployment, insecurity, or those people, at least in the Colombian case, many arrive as displaced by the armed conflict. Then they do not find those guarantees, that quality of life in the city. In fact, the urban theme, the planning of the city, as far as I had researched in terms of a global city, it seeks to create an infrastructure for trade, for airports, for ports, for large multinationals, but it doesn’t create an adequate infrastructure for the quality of life of the population that lives there. Then there are problems both for those who have grown up in the city and for those who are coming to the cities, because the city is not a guarantee for people to be happy.

So that means like … Who are the cities for?

Exactly. That is the key point, or the point where I focused a lot for my study, and that apparently the cities are being built by those who have a lot of capital, those who have large investments, in fact Saskia Sassen, when he wrote Global City in nineteen ninety-nine, at that time she said that they are London, New York, and Tokyo, which are the big international business centres, because there is transfer of technologies, services, and financial issues. The banking sector has an important position in that city, and it seems that it is for these powerful people, which is why they are actually creating the city, and not for the quality of life or improving the quality of life of the population who lives there.

We’ve lived that in London, and to the point where there are places or neighbourhoods in the centre that are so expensive now that no one lives there, that is, they are foreigners’ investment houses, like Russians or whatever, but people do not live there, so you can go through several neighbourhoods, and all the restaurants that should be earning a lot because it is a very, very rich neighbourhood, but nobody lives there. Then the shops cannot survive, neither the restaurants, and all the communities, because they no longer exist, it’s like a vacuum.

Exactly. In fact, Saskia Sassen, in 2015, wrote a new book called Expulsions. So she says, and the gentrification phenomena are talked about, she says that the big investors come, they build big hotels, buildings, banks and the people who live there are displaced, because when building, then, the value of the land increases , taxes increase, education grows, the public transport service grows, increases, then the population that does not have the money has to go to the outskirts, or to the peripheries where there is perhaps not even drinking water, or there aren’t enough public services, and then those global cities are what is generating … it is expanding, the inequality gap, because the big multinationals are the ones that are really empowering the city.

So, you can say that this trend of the entire population moving to the cities is also a trend of inequality

Exactly. The inequality gap is marked.

But is it not true to say that in the countryside too, because things are not so good there. In other words, there is more inequality … I mean Colombia too, than the countryside … The owners of the countryside are like, I don’t know, seven families, something like that, they have ninety percent … and I do not remember the figures, but there are very few people who have the majority of the countryside.

That’s true. Actually, the Colombian case is quite complex, because … if you see a little the history of Colombia, the owners of the land a hundred years ago are the same owners today. So…

They are very old

They are very old or the new generations, too, but they are the same families, the same families are the owners from one hundred years ago today. Then there is also a complex process and that is that by being the owners of the land, the problem is that this land is not being worked on. That land is not modernised, it is not cultivated, it does not produce what it can really give to the world, because in reality the Colombian land is very fertile, but this is … it is in the hands of a few. So, those few who have the land who have not worked, who have not respected, and who have not valued the work of the farmer, then the farmer has to immigrate to the city, and there also comes an important factor which is the banking. In other words, it’s how the inequality is maintained. Well, this rich man who has the land goes to the bank, and when you go to a bank to ask for a loan the first thing the bank tells you is, “Do you have land?”, “Do you have private property?”, Then the wealthy man says, “yes I have all these properties”. Then the bank lends him what he wants. So, with that, that rich man has more money, he can buy more land, he can have more companies or do whatever he wants, but then the land as such is not modernised, it’s not producing anything, and the farmer remains in the … That is, expelled from their own habitat, because no … because the owner of the land does not want the farmer to work the land. So, this is also how this gap of inequality widens, because the one that has the most, continues having the most, and that is one of the great debates today in Colombia on the presidential political issue, which is today. One of them wants to change that. He wants to tell that owner of the land, “Well, if you are not going to work the land or cultivate it, then you must pay taxes to the state”. But it is because it is … That guys getting rich… And the earth is really everyone’s.

So, all this has something to do with gentrification. Was that also part of your thesis?

Yes

So, what is gentrification? And, that refers only to the cities, right?

Yes. It’s a phenomenon that, in most cities, I think in all the cities of the world in some way or another, the first thing to be said about gentrification is that it’s a little studied topic, very little studied, at least in urban planning processes. Because when we talk about urban management and infrastructure, where we say we are going to build a mall, or an avenue, or some buildings, or a park, or whatever, they start all that construction process, but do not take into account the population that has lived there. Then all that planning begins and when the project is finished, that is to say, for the people who lived here, the prices increase, the taxes, they have to … it is like they cannot pay what they, where they were living, then they have to leave. Then gentrification what it means is: it’s the urban spaces in which the higher wealth population arrives and expels those who do not have the same economic resources.

That’s happening in London. In fact, we have a case that, we’ve talked about this before in the podcast, about … what’s it called? The Paisa town, which is a place in London, it’s like a Colombian community in Seven Sisters, to the north that has always … never been like a very rich neighbourhood, nor attractive, but there were many Colombians there, and they have built, or made like a market there. And now the local government wants to tear it down and build luxury apartments and all that, as usual. But, if it were not for those Colombians before, then, the government would not want to do that, because the Colombians have created what it is now, and that is why it has value now. Because of what they’ve build and made. And that is one case of thousands in London. And, it’s sad, it has its sad side, but I guess this has never been anything new. It’s a new word, but I imagine it’s something that has been around for a long time.

Yes, it’s true. What should be taken into account in that renewal, or in that structure, is how they can make it easier for them to stay there. That is, reducing taxes or giving them special prices because in reality they are the ones who gave strength to that land, or to that space, and then expel them because they do not have money to pay for what is going to be built, well, it is not fair , or it is not … or it marks what we initially said, that inequality gap.

Well, going back to Colombia, or to Bogotá. There are these problems, then, of the farmers who live in the city, the gentrification within Bogota and other cities as well. Are there people who are against that, or are there some schemes that are helping these people? Or what is going on there? What are people saying?

Well, as I said, gentrification has been little studied, but there are organizations and NGOs that are supporting the people who live there. For example, in Bogotá you can see the case of La Candelaria, or some fifteen or twenty years ago the subject of the twenty-sixth, the twenty-sixth avenue, which is the avenue that connects the Bogotá airport with the city centre.

And La Candelaria is the centre

And La Candelaria is the centre. Then, about twenty years ago, an urban renewal project began in Bogotá, which is now known as the Bogotá multi project. It was an academic project, in fact with architects from Bogotá and Barcelona, who proposed the urban renewal of the … the airport to the centre and the centre from north to south as another … Imagine a T in which you are thinking of connecting the city with the world, and connect the north with the south, which are actually the most inequitable spaces in the city, then that project had a very important academic structure. That was in the year 2001, where the project was delivered and the population of that area was taken into account. But unfortunately for reasons of … because of differences of interest, both of the people who formulated the project and the … The local mayor at that time, and the Urban Planning Department at that time, because they could not reach an agreement and the project did not work it was not done, it was not carried out. Yes, we could say that it was 30-40% completed, because what was the [Avenue] twenty-six did change its urban structure completely, that is before reaching the city, the centre was quite complicated, dangerous and all that, there was a nice urban landscape.

Are you coming from the north? Is that the airport of the twenty-six you said?

The twenty-six is actually like in the middle of the city. It is on the horizontal. So, you and everything that is the twenty-sixth avenue, it’s a very big avenue, when you get to Bogotá and you go downtown along the whole of Avenue 26, you’re seeing an urban landscape of universities, hotels, banks and multinational companies that have built their buildings there, and it shows a nice city to the tourist, or to the person who arrives. When you get to the centre there is a part of urban renewal that has also been improved, because the centre thirty years ago was a particularly dangerous space, there was no adequate street lighting, there were no cameras, there was nothing and nowadays, you can already walk part of the centre safely.

You know that, in fact, several years ago in Bogotá, well, it still has a reputation for … at least here, of not being too safe, let’s say. But I felt very safe there. Each cash point had like a policeman with a dog and there was a lot of security, and I’m not saying that the whole city is like that, but at least in Candelaria I felt very safe.

Yes. Yes, that has changed. That has changed. But not the whole city, and then unfortunately people who lived in La Candelaria had to leave because they could not pay those prices that were there, and La Candelaria has now become a tourist place. Then the population there, or those who originally lived there, they are gone.

Good. Any other topic that you want to comment?

Well, more than commenting on it, it’s like starting to reflect that urban management is not only about for the architect, for the city planner, but for all disciplines, artists, doctors, the students, the engineers, we all have something to contribute from our area, knowledge, to make a better city, since the cities, then, are actually spaces with quality of life, and not the space for the airport, or for the building, or for the multinational.

The city belongs to everyone and it’s for everyone

The city is for everyone and for everyone and the priority is for us to live in the city. It cannot be the multinational or the bank

Easy to say, hard to action

Exactly, hard to put into action. But you have to work it.

And I think the first step is for everyone to be more aware of that

Exactly.

Well Judith, thank you very much, very interesting topic, and thank you very much for coming

Thanks to you, and long live Spanish Obsessed!

Long live!