The Colombian urban system in the face of globalization: economic restructuring and regional change

The Colombian urban system went from a polycentric structure, in the nineteenth century, to a network organized around four cities, energized by industrial development in the first half of the twentieth century. From the fifties, the acceleration of industrialization under a Keynesian model and the restructuring of regional economies by diversifying exports and mining, led to a growing primacy of Bogotá. The enthronement of the country in the process of globalization in the nineties and the subsequent industrial and agricultural crises remodeled regional economies, causing stagnation in some regions such as the Coffee and the upper valley of the Magdalena and revitalization of cities such as Bucaramanga and Cartagena. This paper examines the latter period, with the aim of providing an overview of the current structure of the network of cities, now modeled by processes of economic globalization and political liberalization.