Bogota (and other cities in Colombia, too) uses a rating system to label the social status and wealth of a neighborhood. So, block by block, you can say how nice your neighborhood is by the number it has been assigned. At first this sounds outrageous, to a supposedly egalitarian American, but there are some advantages to the system also.
The Six Strata
There are six strata, ranging from 1, the lowest, to 6, the highest. It is pretty much considered that 5 and 6 are the upper classes, 3 and 4 the acceptably middle-class neighborhoods, and 1 and 2 for the poor. I’ve heard that the difference between 1 and 2 is that, in strata 1, there will be at least one public utility that does not serve the neighborhood (so, no electricity, or no water, no telephone, etc.). But I’ve asked different people and gotten varying responses to the question of what makes a 1 a 1.
I live in a strata 5, but my neighborhood is much nicer than many of the strata 6 ones. Partly this is because the streets and sidewalks in my immediate neighborhood were torn up over the past few years for utility work, and now that they’ve been put back, they look great. I think the other difference might be that while many of the strata 6 neighborhoods are uglier and more boring than mine, they are also farther removed from lower class areas. Two blocks from me, on the other hand, is a strata 4 sector.
Public utilities by Strata
The place where the strata system is beneficial is in the payment of utilities. I pay a premium of 20% added onto my utilities, which is supposedly used to subsidize the costs for people in Stratas 1 and 2. This seems fair. Also, my utilities might be more expensive to start with. For example, I get unlimited local phone service for something like $20 US per month, and in lower stratas it would cost about $8 per month.
I had a friend last year who lived in a Strata 3, even though he had a brand shiny new townhouse inside a conjunto (gated development). His utilities were dirt cheap.
I say the premium paid by people in 5 and 6 is “supposedly” to subsidize the lower strata, because it’s widely assumed that much of that money goes into the pockets of the utilities managers and politicians. But the system is in place at least nominally, so the people in the lower strata DO get the lower bills, which is nice (especially considering that if you have trouble paying a bill, you are cut off after being just a day or two late).
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