021.Bogotá 02.Coordinates City

2023-06-03

How difficult it would be to associate social class with addressing system. That is Bogotá.

**Coordinates : Carrera 17th and Calle 33rd South**
Sur (South District) : See the townscape of Sur. Houses overlap on steep slopes, and steep stairs connect plains and the top of the hill.
https://goo.gl/maps/5EAtREmAFWUbVTkB7

The city of Bogotá is 30 km north-south and 20 km east-west and is divided into grids by

Carrera : streets running north-south
Calle : streets running east-west

The city numbered the streets. Calle started from Calle 1st and Carrera from Carrera 1st in Centro (downtown).

When I lived there, Calle extended to 170th in Norte (North), 90th south in Sur (South). "South" is added to the end of the Calle number in Sur as Calle 50th Sur to distinguish from Calle in Norte

Meanwhile, Carrera extended to 130th in the west . The area located on the east side of the city is mountainous, so there is almost no urban area. Only a small part of the new urban area on the slope was displayed like Carrera No. 3 Este (East) by adding Este at the end of the Carrera number.

Due to the expansion of the city, twisted parts had appeared, but the city forced them to fit in the matrix of numbers.

If a house is located on the 12th lot on Carrera 7th, counting from the intersection with Calle 5th street, the address is 'Carrera 7th, 5-12'. It was just the coordinates. This coordinated addressing system became a matrix that reflected the social structure.

The top of the coordinates was Chico districts of Norte, where Calle 90th and Carrera 11th intersect. Starting from the top as the reference point, social class descended like contour lines as the numbers moved north-south or west. The original center of the city, Centro (Downtown), has declined, and, in Sur (South District) beyond Centro, the depression was outstanding. If you asked the coordinate points in the address of someone, you could roughly estimate from his/her social class to the income level, even in places you had never been, based on the number difference with the reference point. So, to say your address is to reveal your social class. Estrato's system emphasizes it. The city was divided into 6 layers called Estrato, and the difference in electricity and water charges between the lowest layer and the highest layer was more than 10 times.

A friend of my friend, who was a shopkeeper in Sur, saved his money and rented a small room in Norte, where the upper class lived. After having sent her daughter to school from there and having married a young man from Norte, he canceled his apartment and returned to Sur.

The Spanish Law of the Indies established this grid block system during the colonial period. Six hundred years later, the hierarchies that the Laws of the Indies structured still cast a shadow over the city of Bogota.