grammar and sentence structures

City Life

Bogota is in the center of Colombia with ample history on how this city was developed. In the early days of the 1500s there was small group of tribes and indigenous that live and cultivate the green Lanscape. But everything changes after the arrival of the Spain conquistadors that reshape the future of the city. They name the city as Nuestra Senora de la Esperanza but in 1539 was change to SantaFe de Bogota and now just Bogota after gaining independent from Spain. Since then the city has growth tremendously in economic and population as well. For the last 40 years, people are moving from the rural areas to the city for better life and job opportunities especially hotel, retail and financial services. The city of Bogota continues transforming due to the fact there are more friendly policies in place and has heavily invest in infrastructure and open their economic globally. Since then Bogota is a service economic has an increase of “Bogota’s middle class now represent 51.6% of the population” ()). Nevertheless, the GDP of Bogota has increase 8% for the last decade as more jobs are creating and more migration are moving to the city still growing in the region out performing other cities in the country.

Bogota is the most populous city in Colombia with more than 8 million people in the capital district. However, “the majority of the population of Bogota is European mix, and people of mixed descent are those of mestizo origins... and small minority of Afro-Colombia and indigenous” (word). However, Bogota is facing a high level of poverty in the city with more than 12% live under the level of poverty and robberies has increase 60% from 2016 to 2017 most of the Bogotanos do not feel safe. This force the “...low income households [to] located on the city periphery, where public transportation system has some supply problems” (0). These people spend long time on the road to work and often time walked or ride a bicycle because they can’t afford to pay a bus ticket and the lack of infrastructure make it impossible to have more public transportation in the south. Nevertheless, unemployment rate is higher among this group and overall employment rate in Bogota is above 10%. The most affluential people live close to the CBD because they can afford to pay higher prices for housing or rent and usually are segregate in the north and near CBD, and they have their own transportation such as automobiles. The middle- income people leave between the wealthy and poor and there are major roads and highways that facilitated the transportation to CBD where most of the jobs are.

In addition, “The present average residential floor consumption in Bogota is 20 m2 per person in low-income zones, 35 m2 in medium-income zones and 80 m2 in high-income zones” (0). Low income family tend to live in a crowded room because most of them have bigger families. Perhaps According to ())))) the city already has a high-density problem in the low-income zones with a 40,000 inh/km2 and only 20% of the population live in a moderate area. Besides, citizens in Bogota run into another problem “the city has the highest percent of renters among the principals' cities in the region” (0). Only 37% of the population are homeownerships, and 63% of the population rent in the city because they can't afford homeownership. Even thought, the lack of land in the city make it impossible to own a house due to the high price of the housing market. One of the reasons is a very small percentage of young adults in the low and middle income continue thier education while the wealthy attend to the best universities in the city and automatically put them in the advantages in life. Definitely there is a correlation between homeownership, poverty and education in the city of Bogota.

As matter of fact, “...in the last two decades, the city has received and influx of over one million people displaced by internal violent and political conflict” (0). These people are usually in the lower social economic spectrum and face high discrimination in the job especially Afro-Colombia's suffer the most. The internal migration brings their culture to the city and neighborhood are changing tremendously and most recently there are facing external migration from Venezuela due to the political climate this country is going through. however, most of them continue sharing the same religion as catholic and same languages, one of the reasons is when Spain colonize this country, they integrate their faith and religion among them and is been passed over the generation. Also, the street food vendors have growth drastically in low income community. While the most affluent people in the city holds formal employment and build safety net due to the fact, they have accessibility to quality jobs opportunities in midsize and large companies. Also, there is a high evidence of foreigner's langue's are been implement in the school curriculum from K to higher education especially English and one of the reasons this city wants to follow the path of India and Morocco. Which both countries have attract international corporation due to the fact of low labor. plus, English and French have become part of their daily life of those two countries and Bogota wants to be a leader in the near future to master English languages and compete for business in a global scale.

The economic specialization of Bogota in the early days was mainly base in agriculture coffee, sugar cane and bananas but has change drastically throughout the years and century now is consider the core center of Colombia trade and services. Nowadays, Bogota economic has become a city hob in service industries. According to the article Economic of Bogota the “commercial sectors are finance, IT, human resources, auto industry, food and beverage and pharmaceutical and health care are the main jobs in the city that counts 24% of the GDP of Colombia” (). Perhaps, one of the basic sectors is finance because they can export their service to other part of the country. This generating loans to consumer or commercial business in X city and return the profit to Bogota. In the other hand the no basic sector is mainly focus on the local scale and the money flows in the city, basically small chain stores or restaurants.

Nevertheless, these industries create a multiplier effect and many of them do in a small scale while other does in bigger scale. For example, the commercial industry decides to build a car manufacture in the city. In the process of building a manufacture requires city permits, architect, engineers, electrician, contraction material, labor. In each of these phases of building the manufacture creates jobs to different people that will be better off, and they will spend money on food or health care because of their consumption will create jobs in the food and health care industry is like snowball that money continue generating jobs. However, multiplier effect can have a negative effect to, for example, bank is going out of business, needs to layoff 1000 employees these people will no longer pay their cell phone and shop less food to save money. The cell phone companies make strategy lay off in their personal and the retail industry layoff personal as well and eventually the GDP of Bogota will decrease. Nevertheless, as more international corporations are moving to the city of Bogota continue changing, to different service industries such as IT and costumer services. Globalization has force government in recent years to devote a percentage of thier GDP into telecommunication in Bogota in order continue growing and compete in a global scale. Telecommunications make it easy to connect business around Bogota by transferring huge files of data and increase productivity not only in the city but in the country as well. These people created communicated with one another without having to interaction face to face. For example, there is a great presents of Americans companies outsourcing some of their IT jobs to Bogota and are changing the way people used to work and interreact with one another.

Moreover, Bogota city has strange location is not even near a coast or a major river as most of the cities that were colonize by the European at the time were at strategy location to transport resources. The influence from European architecture has penetrated in the development of the city in the early times but continue moving forwards from modernism building to postmodern in slow paces. According to the city paper of Bogota “during the years Le Corbusier worked on Bogota he showed how master plan could create a social order... and work to create maps and charts of Bogota neighborhoods...” (o). However, none of those projects come into life because the city council did not approve the project. There is evidence that those projects have reshape the city architecture development. One of the evidences that support the project of Le Corbusier has influence the city are many public places from parks to museums where people can gather to socialist and experience the life of the city culture. The city of Bogota considers a monocentric city, since all the jobs are located in the CBD. The majority of the population that live around the CBD used the public transportations and bicycles to transport from point A to point B has become part of their life. Because “... Bogota is a dense city … travel time are high, the roads are in poor condition and the congestions is too high” (0). Usually the people form low social economic status do not have access to the public transportation because they live in the far away from CBD. People there are more well economic usually segregate in the CBD and north part while low income families live in the south but there is no evidence of suburbanization in Bogota as most of the wealthy people still dominating the CBD neighborhoods.

The political Lanscape of Bogota still very controversial one the reason this city is not the only one in the country that is been affect by corruption and drug war. The government face many issues from the national health care system to public education. For example, “A simple revision of Bogota’s educational public policy, the city mayor office strategies concerning for education issues” ()) The policy makers focus solely in the number of students enrolled in the school district to distribute the adequate funds. Instead, they should focus in the quality of education instead the numbers of students enrolled in school. As this article illustrated the students do not have the right skill to enter into the market after high school because of the poor education system. One way to suport these public pragmas the government of Bogota main revenue comes from land taxes. For example, “in Bogota there is a preferential system applicable to land used in residential purpose, that is being classifies as being 1 and 2”(8). They used a calculation system refers to Unify Property which basically the tax of the property is also base of the annual income of the owner. It is not only one way for the city to have revenue to support, education or garbage collection, but also earn revenue from legal service and sales taxes. Never the less “Bogota gets seven bidders for $4.5 billion subway project” (0). There are more than seven international companies hoping to close this contract with Bogota from China to Mexico are bidders for the contract this will include the collaboration of international companies from engineers to design to builders. According to Reuters article 30% will be found by Bogota taxpayers and the remaining will come from the national government. This is will create more than 14,000 job in Bogota that will boost their economic and minimize the traffic congestion.

In conclusion, Bogota continue changing and implementing new policies that will benefit the whole society and growth their economic. This city has minimized the crime year after year and could potentially become a good place for American retirement. The health care system is very affordable compare to the most develop countries. The increase of private security and police continue making some part of Bogota extremely safety. The housing rent varies from $ 350-500 a month and this location are based near the CBD. The cost of living is extremely low and with a great quality of life. I personally like to visit the city of Bogota because the culture and the great history this city has.