Growth In Colombia Research Articles

Urban Growth in Colombia

This paper explores the importance of patterns of urbanization and migration in Colombia for the design of appropriate policies for regional, urban, and intermediate-city development. An opening section reviews the growth of the nineteen major municipios over the period 1918 through 1964, the date of the most recent available census. When these cities are ranked by size from largest to smallest, one observes a high degree of stability of rankings over the fifty-year period considered. This stability supports the hypothesis that an articulated hierarchy and system of cities has developed. That development in turn owes much to the flow of migrants into these cities. Largely as a result of the intensive migration into the four largest cities, their share of the total population of the 19 urban municipios rose from 46 percent in 1918 to 62 percent by 1964.