[VftG] Look to healthy cities for Colombia’s growth
We heard last week that my successor as Finance Minister of Colombia, Juan Carlos Echeverry, expects ratings firms to upgrade Colombia to investment grade in the course of 2011 – which follows previous upgrades from Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s in 2010.
That was followed by news about the prospect of vast infrastructure investments from China in a trans-coastal rail link in northwest Colombia, and comments on Colombia’s “strategic position” for regional trade by China’s ambassador in Bogota. And on-again, off-again speculation about a free trade deal between Colombia and the USA has been renewed by news that the deal has support from President Obama and Congress.
Colombia is at a promising and vital point in its history and these stories speak to the optimism that currently surrounds debate about the prospects for Colombia’s economy. Commentators point to the President’s business-friendly credentials and the country’s strong institutional investment guarantees – Colombia being party to the World Bank’s Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, the Latin American Investment Guarantee Company and the New York Convention on Investment Disputes.
But investors may have overlooked – if they have thought about it at all – the fact that the success of urbanized economies depends on workers who are fit to work and children who are fit to learn, and thus on healthy urban environments and access to at least minimal urban healthcare.
Like most emerging markets in Latin America, Colombia is highly urbanized. Three quarters of its population lives in cities, although fewer are concentrated in its largest city (Bogota) than in countries like Chile where overwhelming demographic and economic concentration means most of the nation’s ‘urban eggs’ are in a single basket.
Unlike some other emerging markets in the region, successive national and local governments in Colombia have recognized the links between economic health and urban health and have worked hard to create healthy cities. Much has happened since my friend and compatriot, Enrique Peñalosa, Mayor of Bogota from 1998 to 2001 revolutionised the city’s transportation system, built dedicated (and healthy) cycleways, created health-promoting green spaces, integrated public health planning and city planning and developed urban health facilities. Better than most, he understood that a highly urbanized national economy needs healthy cities.
Enrique Peñalosa and I recently participated in a symposium on urbanization, health and human security organized by The Emerging Markets Symposium at Green Templeton College, Oxford. There was strong consensus that urban health is a critical parameter of economic growth and human welfare in emerging market cities; that if these countries are to achieve their goals their cities must play central roles; and that to play those roles national and local governments must attempt nothing less than the reinvention of urban public health.
The Oxford symposium concluded that the concentration of people and economic activity in emerging market cities is both a source of problems and a key to solutions. These cities face massive challenges in creating and maintaining healthful environments and delivering even minimal healthcare. But they derive huge advantages from the economies of scale and operation that are part and parcel of spatial concentration.
They should consider adapting successful innovations that have been pioneered in other cities and participate in sharing explicit and tacit knowledge about urban health and healthcare. They should explore options for home-grown rather than imported solutions. They should consider reforms to health and healthcare education and training, placing more emphasis on urban health and the social determinants of health.
And they should consider what might be learned about health and healthcare planning and management from the experience of cities like Bogota where city governments – for better or worse – control outcomes and the buck stops at City Hall.
Rodrigo Botero is a former Finance Minister of Colombia. He has also served the Colombian government as a special advisor to the president on economic affairs and as economic counselor at the Colombian Embassy in Washington D.C. He was founder and first excutive director of Fedesarrollo, a non-governmental policy research center located in Bogota of which he is now a trustee emeritus and member of the international advisory board.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in “View from the Ground” do not necessarily reflect those of the FT Tilt editorial team. FT Tilt may edit the columns for clarity; any errors of fact or omission are the author’s own.
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