Understanding urban densification in Latin American cities: determinants of the production of built space in informal areas in Bogota (2007-2018)

In Bogotá, as in most large Latin American cities, urban informality is a persistent phenomenon. Although the expansion of new informal land has decreased, the densification of existing informal settlements is one of the mechanisms driving the persistence of informality. While a lot is known about the factors that triggered informal expansion in Latin American, less is known about the recent processes of informal production in large cities and the role of informality in the densification process. We analyze the build-up area in 2007 and 2018 in formal and informal zones. Information was reduced through principal components analysis, and we evaluated with linear regression how urban structure, demographic dynamics, and urban regulations explain changes in building density in the period. We conclude that market pressures are forcing low-income sectors to build in peripheral areas to maintain their location within the city at the cost of high density and low access to urban amenities. On the other hand, the flexibility of informal built space production allows them to respond more quickly to increased demand. Formal constructions explain part of the production of built space in informal legalized zones that could press the displacement of the population.