Metrovivienda is a government agency that operates in Bogotá, Colombia, to regulate and promote urbanization throughout the city, with a specific focus on the lower income population. Since its inception around 15 years ago, Metrovivienda has focused on land management planning as its main line of action. However, over the last few years, it has branched out to provide subsidies for housing, as well as directly engaging with both private and public institutions to produce Priority Housing, which services the lowest income bracket.
I spoke with Nicolás Corso, former director (2012-2015) of Metrovivienda, about his views on land management planning as urban policy and about the more recent partnerships and projects. This interview revolves around two projects: Parque Cantarrana, an affordable housing development of 400 units on three acres of land, and Plaza de la Hoja, a Priority Housing development in the city Centre.
How has Metrovivienda promoted and regulated new urban development in Bogotá over the last few years?
Metro Vivienda’s main function is land management. Traditionally, it bought land in areas designated for urban expansion, urbanized it, and then sold it to private developers ready for construction. This was done with the idea of competing against pirate encroachers, by selling cheap land of excellent planning and design standards instead of giving way to unplanned, informal settlements.
With the current Mayor (Gustavo Petro) we realized two things. First, that our strategy was not entirely flawless because ultimately processes in areas of expansion can be more expensive than planning for central areas of the city due to elevated risk factors. Second, we decided to shift our focus and started to generate projects in partnership with builders, not just delivering land but delivering homes. We wanted to steer and follow processes until the last moment. We began to generate projects and partner with private developers.
We started to attract investors into our existing properties, not only by selling the land, but also by telling them to manage entire developments to hand the Priority Housing units directly to the users.
Ciudadela Nuevo Usme is one of Metro Vivienda’s largest urban interventions resulting from its historical function as a land management agency. Parque Cantarrana is located at one of the edges of the new development. What was the main objective of the Public-Private Partnership established for the Parque Cantarrana housing project? What legal framework allowed for it and what can be expected looking forward?
Parque Cantarrana was one of the first projects where we used a legal tool called Priority Development. The city administration required landowners to urbanize idle property within two years, after which it went out for public auction. In that sense, the promoter of Parque Cantarrana benefited from the auction and bought the land. Metrovivienda bought the adjoining land and then we established a partnership as landowners in a scheme that allowed Parque Cantarrana to develop the entire project using Metro Vivienda’s land in exchange for a proportional number of Priority Housing units. It also became a mechanism whereby small to midsize developers could take the land as a loan and pay it off at the end of the project, thus saving them the need for seed capital.
This management scheme unfortunately, with the exception of another project, has not been used since then. In the future, however, we hope to develop similar projects but in more central areas of the city, something that is much more complicated. We want to regenerate tracts of land in the city Centre where we can partner with the private owners of adjacent lots to either provide the land in a trust scheme or develop it together to produce Priority Housing units. Unlike in the private sector where land value impacts the cost structure, for us that is not a consideration as long as we break even. Our main goal is to generate Priority Housing; we are not interested in yielding profits or in capitalizing on our land.
How does that differ from Plaza de la Hoja? What were the mechanisms used in this case and which institutions were involved?
In Plaza de la Hoja we identified underutilized batches of land owned by the City Government. Our logic was that we could not declare Priority Development for all private land, while government land remained idle. Plaza de la Hoja, for instance, had not been used for over 10 years.
We incorporated an article in the Development Plan whereby these assets were to be transferred to Metrovivienda for the development of Priority Housing projects. In the specific case of Plaza de la Hoja, for instance, two government agencies partnered for mutual benefit. We did a transfer of land in association with the IDU (Urban Development Institute), who owned the soil. They transferred a vacant lot of nearly five acres and in return we gave them 1,400 square meters of urbanized land.
We organized an architectural competition because it was the first project we were doing in downtown Bogotá.
We realized that Bogotá was lagging in thinking about Affordable Housing and Priority Housing, and we intentionally wanted architects and students to focus on Priority Housing. We wanted to figure out how to advance or how to imagine Priority Housing for the city Centre in the 21st century.
Both projects show how Metrovivienda has moved beyond its basic function to take a more active role in the creation of an inclusive city. What are your two main priorities in terms of urban management policy?
The main objective was to break the paradigm that Priority Housing had to be built on cheap land on the periphery. Traditionally, the low-income population was allocated to high-risk areas; inevitably, in the event of floods and other natural disasters they were the most affected. We had to build a project that proved it was possible to have Priority Housing in the city Centre. We wanted to bring people closer to employment areas in order to create greater interaction with the city and increase individual revenue. Additionally, we wanted to reduce commuting time and engage the people more directly with urban services and amenities. It was our goal to show that we could achieve Priority Housing in the city Centre, and our bet on a project like Plaza de la Hoja proved that financing a mixed-use project for low-income population is possible.
The second objective was to create a clear path for the victims of the armed conflict in Colombia. These new inhabitants of the city — Bogotá receives the greatest influx of internally displaced persons — have to be catered to in a just manner. Metrovivienda, as a pioneer in Colombia, has both the resources and the organizational structure to do so.
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