On Shaky Ground: The Making of Risk in Bogotá

Abstract

How does risk become a technique for governing the future of cities and urban life? Using genealogical and ethnographic methods, this paper tracks the emergence of risk management in Bogotá, Colombia, from its initial institutionalization to its ongoing implementation in governmental practice. Its specific focus is the invention of the ‘zone of high risk’ in Bogotá and the everyday work performed by the officials responsible for determining the likelihood of landslide in these areas. It addresses the ongoing formation of techniques of urban planning and governance and the active relationship between urban populations and environments and emerging forms of political authority and technical expertise. Ultimately, it reveals that techniques of risk management are made and remade as experts and nonexperts grapple with the imperative to bring heterogeneous assemblages of people and things into an unfolding technopolitical domain.