THE URBAN LANDSCAPE

In many ways, Latin American cities look very similar. They are all highly unequal and contain wide extremes of poverty and affluence. Urban sprawl has produced almost identical suburbs, so that it is difficult to tell either the shanty towns or the high-income residential areas in one city from those in another. The ubiquitous bootblack, street vendor and beggar frequent the central streets of every major city along with elegantly dressed business people and government workers. Traffic congestion, skyscrapers and street children are found everywhere.

At the same time, every Latin American city is different. The look and feel of Tijuana. Oaxaca. Salvador. Buenos Aires and Lima reflect major differences in culture, climate, poverty and economic function. While I feel that there are enough bonds linking this range of places together to justify writing a book entitled the Latin American City. I want to begin by emphasising their diversity.

The following descriptions of five Latin American cities show the differences that exist across the region. The descriptions include cities from Mexico in the north through Spanish South America to Portuguese-speaking Brazil. La Paz, with its poor, indigenous population living up in the clouds is the archetypal Andean city. Rio de Janeiro with its cultural kaleidoscope, its beaches and sunshine, its life and glamour is in a very different world. Bogotá is different again; a poor city but, unlike most in Latin America, one that became no poorer during the 1980s. Caracas, with its motorways and skyscrapers, looks very much like a North American city; only its hillsides full of shanty towns remind visitors that it most certainly is not. Finally, Guadalajara, seemingly a pearl of Mexican tidiness and civility, stands in apparent contradiction to the patent disorder so obvious in the other cities. Is the real Latin America shown best by the social tranquillity of Guadalajara or in the bubbling unpredictability of Rio de Janeiro? Is the economic resilience of Bogotá the norm, or the dire poverty of La Paz?

Santafé de Bogotá

Flying into Bogotá means crossing the Andes. Below, the green, undulating slopes of the eastern cordillera are covered by the small coffee farms that for so long sustained the Colombian economy. Then, about forty miles from the airport, the landscape changes; a flat plateau spreads out surrounded by a ring of mountains. Coffee cultivation gives way to dairy farming and to fields of maize, potatoes and vegetables. Plastic greenhouses are everywhere, accommodating Colombia's newest boom product, fresh-cut flowers. In a few miles, the climate has changed from semi-tropical to temperate.

Bogotá huddles against the eastern rim of mountains, with the sabana stretching out in three directions. On top of the mountains, two thousand feet above the centre of the city are two great religious symbols, the convent of Monserrate and the giant statue of Guadalupe. These monuments to piety once dominated the whole city. Today, they can still be seen from most parts of Bogotá, even if their religious significance has undoubtedly declined. Unlike Caracas or Rio de Janeiro, Bogotá has few physical constraints on its expansion.

Located at 8,600 feet, Bogotá's climate is cool and it rains frequently. Colombians from other parts of the country say that the climate matches the cachaco persona: cool and reserved. The city is grey, lacking the warmth of the coastal areas, the vibrancy of the coffee regions, the colour of the Cauca valley. These comments reveal the stereotypes that are embedded in Colombian regional sentiment. The images are real but misleading in an important respect: Bogotá is no longer a regional centre. Today, it is the most Colombian of cities for the simple reason that it is full of migrants from other parts of the country.

Like most large Latin American cities, Bogotá has grown rapidly. In 1938 it had 350,000 people, by 1964 it had 1.7 million, today it has 5.2 million. In little more than fifty years its population has grown around fifteen fold. Migration from the countryside began in a big way in the 1930s, magnified by the rural violence that has been such a recurrent theme in Colombian political life. People came from every part of the country, although the bulk of the new arrivals came from the two nearby departments of Cundinamarca and Boyacá. Today, fewer than half of the inhabitants were born outside the city, the consequence of earlier migrants bearing their children in the alien urban environment. Migrants continue to arrive in the city, but the pace of urban growth has slowed down. Between 1973 and 1985 Bogotá's population grew annually by only three per cent.

From a distance, Bogotá looks anything but the supposedly impoverished Latin American metropolis. The skyscrapers and office blocks of the central city are dwarfed by the backcloth of mountains. From the airport the visitor travelling to the centre of town passes modern factories and the local offices of world-famous companies. Overpasses take traffic across the four-lane motorway. If many of the cars are less than smart, the Mazdas and Renaults which dominate the traffic are recognisably modern vehicles. On arrival at the Tequendama hotel, it is likely that the traveller has seen little in the way of poverty.

Looking out from the hotel window in the morning, there are few signs of shanties. Most of the buildings are solidly constructed and only later does one notice the distant flanks of the mountains with their higgledy-piggledy housing, clearly too small and untidy to be middle-class. But self-help housing in Bogotá, even though it houses most of the people, is not flimsy. At night the climate is sufficiently cold to guarantee that most homes have solid walls. When I first went to the city it took me a week to find a 'proper' shanty town.

But few visitors go to the low-income areas of the city. They mainly stay in the central area and travel to the sanitised northern suburbs. Around the Country Club and the Unicentro shopping mall, the large areas of expensive housing give off a reassuring feel of affluence. Of course, there are some poor people on the streets, pulling hand carts containing recycled refuse, cleaning shoes and selling newspapers; they can be seen looking out of the overcrowded buses passing through. But they impinge little on the scene. The north of Bogotá is typical of the way that Latin American elites have managed to create areas of 'modernity' amidst vast surrounding expanses of poverty.

Should the visitor move further north or travel to the segregated south of the city, a different world appears. The shops are smaller and offer a more limited range of goods. The streets in the commercial centres contain different kinds of people. They speak the same language and they are dressed in 'proper' clothes, but they are darker, smaller, and obviously much poorer. Take the bus to the end of the route, and the urban environment deteriorates. The road acquires increasing numbers of pot-holes and eventually runs out of tarmac. The housing gradually becomes more rudimentary, revealing the self-help nature of the building process. The plots are laid out in a regular pattern, but every house looks very different. Each family has built what it can afford. One plot has a well-constructed two-storey home, the next a rickety shack. These low-income areas are not invasion settlements or squatter communities, for the poor have bought their plots of land. Initially, the settlements lacked all services and some communities had to petition for years before they obtained electricity, water, drainage and schools.

These people are different from others in Bogotá only in the sense that they are much poorer. They are 'marginal' to Bogotá society only in the sense that they live on the edge of the city. Most can read and write and most children go to school. Few are politically active, and many are ardent Catholics who spend some of their weekend helping to build a new church. Many work in the 'formal' economy as factory workers, builders, shop-workers and government employees. Even those employed in the 'informal sector' are scarcely marginal; the vendors are selling manufactured products, cigarettes, ice cream, chewing gum and newspapers. There are few beggars in this part of the city and, unlike the central areas, there are few street-sellers. Most of the local commerce operates from small shops and from improvised counters in people's front rooms.

What is it like to live in one of these settlements? In terms of the quality of shelter, it all depends. Some of the houses are spacious and well-constructed, others are extremely flimsy. Some settlements are well-serviced, but most new neighbourhoods will suffer from years of neglect. Between 1974 and 1980 Britalia, in the southwest of the city, had few taps, no drainage and no paved streets. When it rained the streets were almost impassable with thick mud. Many parts of the settlement suffered from a foul smell because pools of sewage filled the drainage ditches. Today, the settlement is linked to the drainage system and nearly all of the roads are paved. In a few years the settlement was transformed.

The transformation, however, was not without cost. The community had to demand water and drainage. The Water Company was reluctant to service the settlement because the community did not have title deeds, because the authorities were investigating the activities of the developer, and principally because the settlement lay below the level of the River Bogotá. If water were to be installed, then drainage would be needed. But to provide drains that worked would require a pump to move the water into the river. A satisfactory electric pump would be expensive and the Company wanted to be sure that the population was prepared to pay for its installation and maintenance. The community sent delegations on many occasions to the Water Company. In the end, a deal was struck: the community would pay a deposit of 30 per cent of the cost of the installation and pay off the rest over a four-year period. The community organisation started collecting the money.

Getting to work from low-income settlements is always a problem. Casablanca, in the Suba district of Bogotá, was off the bus route for ten years. Workers had to walk ten minutes to the nearest bus route and then hope that the buses would not be too full to pick them up. Now buses reach the settlement, even if they fail to provide an adequate service. Although few Bogotá drivers are averse to speeding, the buses move slowly because of the dense traffic and because of the frequent stops they make whenever anyone wants to get on or off. The buses are also desperately crowded.

Fortunately, there are many signs that the quality of life in these settlements improves through time. On my first visit to Casablanca, in 1978, most streets lacked drains and all but one street lacked paving. On my most recent visit in 1992, these problems had been largely resolved and many of the houses were solid two-storey structures. Perhaps the most ostentatious sign of progress, was the large satellite dish that had been installed in the settlement to receive television programmes from abroad. While Casablanca is still a poor settlement, it shows that some kind of improvement can take place.

Bogotá certainly does not give the impression that it is in decline. Of course, it escaped lightly from the regional debt crisis of the 1980s; the Colombian economy actually grew during the decade. More factories were built, more private banks and insurance offices were established, the number of government employees continued to grow, and the number of middleclass households increased greatly. The physical fabric of the city reflected this growth. More and more roads were paved, and the electricity and water systems spread outwards to supply the ever expanding suburban sprawl. There were many more cars on the road, and more and better buses. More skyscrapers and hotels appeared as well as shopping malls, cinemas and entertainment complexes. Every year Bogotá looked more and more like a North American city. The shift from the Spanish colonial churches and patio houses of Candelaria in the centre to the ugly Bulevar Niza shopping mall encapsulated the dominant trend.

At the same time, the sprawl of self-help suburbia is a reminder that Bogotá is an extraordinarily unequal place and that it faces some severe problems. Years of complaints about the appalling pollution in the River Bogotá have produced little improvement. The authorities considered building a sewage treatment plant too expensive, and the low-income settlements and villages downstream from Bogotá bear the terrible scar of that pollution. Only now is a project being planned with the World Bank to address the problem. In 1992 the electricity system failed the city. A combination of drought, administrative incompetence, and a measure of corruption meant that Bogotá, along with the rest of the country, was plunged into darkness every evening of the week. In April, most areas of the city were suffering from seven hours of power cuts a day. For people unused to candles and addicted to their favourite television soaps, it came as a terrible shock. Despite economic growth, progress in Bogotá has a habit of being constantly interrupted.

Bogotá is undoubtedly a crime-ridden and violent city. Petty crime, which has always been rife, is currently rampant and rates of car-jacking, armed robbery and kidnapping have recently escalated. Few homes, even in the low-income settlements, fail to take elaborate precautions against burglary. Higher-income families long ago started moving into estates with armed security guards or into high-rise apartment blocks. In the first eight months of 1993, 5,600 people in the city died violent deaths, and 2,000 of these were shot. The capital city has now overtaken Medellin as the most violent city in Colombia. Nationally, Colombia's murder rate in 1992 stood at 86 per 100,000 population, compared to 9 per 100,000 in the US. Perhaps the influence of drugs is partially responsible, although few people in Bogotá use cocaine or basuco - the local equivalent of crack. Insofar as a drug culture is evident in Bogotá, it is reflected most clearly in the increasing numbers of Mercedes and BMW cars on the streets.

Caracas

Caracas is undeniably a spectacular city. The drama begins on the journey from the airport. From Maiquetía, which is virtually on the beach, a modern motorway winds its way 17 miles to Venezuela's capital nestling in a narrow valley 3,000 feet up in the mountains. The motorway sweeps across deep ravines and through long tunnels in the hillside. Soon after leaving the airport, the passenger becomes aware of one of Caracas' dominant features; the ranchos or shanty towns clinging onto the slopes of the mountains. As the city gets closer, more shanties crowd in on both sides. On leaving the last tunnel, they seem to be everywhere. As the road drops into the valley a different kind of modernist vision begins to unfold, with a skyline full of hundreds of skyscrapers. In central Caracas, everything seems to be in the air: mountains, apartment buildings, office blocks, advertising hoardings, even the slums!

Caracas has more skyscrapers than any other Latin American city, certainly than any other city of its size. Because it is located in a series of narrow valleys it is densely populated. Running through the valleys are the motorways which, together with the skyscrapers and the ranchos, most symbolise the city. Caracas was built on oil and a motorcar culture. The city needed motorways for the huge vehicles that every caraqueño was determined to drive. Easy money from the oilwells meant more and more motorways. More oil meant more money, more money meant more cars, more cars meant more motorways, and as more motorways would not fit in the narrow valleys, more cars meant more congestion. No-one could get to work. Despite the motorways, congestion is worse in few other Latin American cities. Only when the underground began operations in 1983 did the situation begin to improve a little.

The motorways both created and destroyed Caracas. Nowhere in the rest of Latin America is the old city centre so insignificant. Apart from the Plaza Bolívar and the Congress building, there are few traces of the colonial past. The centre of gravity long ago moved along the motorways to the commercial and business sub-centres which developed along the floor of the main valley: Sabana Grande, Chacaito, Chuao and Petare.

In Caracas, oil wealth flowed into motorways and skyscrapers, into expensive real estate and into public projects. In the process, it also built a series of spectacular follies. Perched far above the city is the empty Humboldt Hotel - a testament to caraqueño dreams of greatness, devised to house visitors who could only get to the hotel by cable-car. Then there is the helicoide, a commercial-cum-exhibition centre, which was never completed or used. In the 1950s, huge superblocks were built to house the poor. The country's autocratic leader, Marcos Pérez Jiménez, had declared a war on the ranchos and sent his troops to clear out the shanty towns. He thought that the slums created a bad public image, that the people of a modern capital should live in proper accommodation - even if they had no wish to be relocated. Arguably, the Parque Central complex is also a folly. A vast housing and office complex less than one mile from the Plaza Bolívar, it was intended for poor families close to the central city. Those families would be subsidised by selling the more expensive apartments to higher-income households who would pay the market price for their homes. Unfortunately, corruption and incompetence pushed up the costs of construction so that the expensive apartments could only be sold if subsidised. A former mayor of the city fled to Miami in the wake of the scandal.