The Hotspot Cities Project: The case study of Bogotá 2050

Abstract

This paper summarizes an urban and regional planning case study concerning urban growth in relation to biodiversity in the city of Bogotá, Colombia. The case study is the third phase of an ongoing research project_the Hotspot Cities Project_at the McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology at the University of Pennsylvania. The first phase involved an audit of land use in the world’s biodiversity hotspots in relation to the Convention on Biological Diversity.1 The second involved mapping the projected 2030 urban growth of 463 cities in the hotspots, identifying the conflict between sprawl and endangered species. The set of 463 cities was then reduced to thirty-three by selecting the largest and fastest-growing of these cities in each respective hotspot, the so-called ‘hotspot cities’.2 Conservationists were then partnered with planners to represent these cities at a symposium at the University of Pennsylvania in June 2019 to share their experiences in regard to the conflict between urban growth and biodiversity occurring in their respective cities. In this third phase of the research, we take one of these hotspot cities, Bogotá, as a case study and_through a research-by-design process_ask whether conservation values and urban development can be symbiotic and how this can be explicitly reflected in the spatial planning of the city.