Ortiz, Catalina;
Duque Franco, Isabel;
(2026)
Care as urban policy domain: framing Bogota's District Care System.
Cities
, 169
, Article 106572. 10.1016/j.cities.2025.106572.
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Abstract
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, debates around care have gained unprecedented visibility in both scholarship and policy. This article argues that care is an emergent and contested urban policy domain—through which cities negotiate responsibilities, reshape spatial governance, and reconfigure institutional arrangements. Latin America has long been a site of feminist theorisation and urban policy innovation, yet the incorporation of care into urban governance remains under-theorised in spatial and institutional terms. We address this gap by analysing Bogotá's District Care System (SIDICU), a pioneering initiative launched during the pandemic that embeds care into the city's planning and service infrastructure. We locate Bogotá's experience within Colombia's decentralised planning model and its trajectory of urban policy experimentation, examining how SIDICU emerged from the convergence of feminist mobilisation, mayoral political will, and the policy opportunity created by the pandemic. Drawing on document analysis, interviews, and field observation conducted between 2022 and 2024, we propose an analytical framework linking relational contexts, institutional design, and spatial strategy to theorise care as a spatialised and politically generative urban policy domain. We argue that SIDICU enacts a territorial politics of care that transforms state presence, reframes infrastructure as reproductive, and inserts care into the urban planning apparatus. At the same time, it reveals tensions between the emancipatory aspirations of feminist actors and the rationalities of state-led policy delivery, as well as the fragility of care initiatives in changing political contexts. The article contributes to debates on feminist urbanism, policy mobility, and the transformation of urban governance in Latin America and beyond.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Care as urban policy domain: framing Bogota's District Care System |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.cities.2025.106572 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2025.106572 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. |
| Keywords: | Care, Urban policy, Bogota, Feminist urbanism, Policy mobility |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment > Development Planning Unit |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10215400 |
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