The Manzanas del Cuidado of Bogotá: The impact of a public policy of care on the mobility of non-remunerated domestic caregivers in the locality of Bosa

Placing care at the centre of urban life is a main tenet of feminist urbanisms, and Bogotá is a pioneer in it. The Colombian capital implemented its public care system, the ‘Sistema Distrital de Cuidado’ (SIDICU) in 2020, aimed at recognizing, redistributing, and reducing unpaid care work to empower women with the time needed for their own personal, professional, and political autonomy. SIDICU transforms care into a territorial organization principle through the ‘Manzanas del Cuidado,’ a spatial strategy to concentrate, within a 20-minute radius, public services of respite and rest, education and training, and employment, granted to caregivers and care-receivers in a simultaneous manner and in multifunctional public equipment. In that manner, the Manzanas promote a ‘city of proximity’ in underprivileged areas relatively disconnected from the rest of the metropolis. Paradoxically, care work is inherently conditioned by mobility, since a great deal of a caregiver’s quotidian tasks consist in trips, from grocery shopping to escorting relatives. For that reason, this master dissertation aims to identify, from a gender perspective, the impact of the Manzanas del Cuidado on the mobility of non-remunerated domestic caregivers, focusing on the locality of Bosa. By acknowledging women in their role as citizens beyond that of caregivers, the Manzanas ease access to the opportunities of urban life – that is, their Right to the City – through a ‘mobility of proximity’ within their own neighbourhoods, placing care as a social right at the centre of the city governance agenda and materialising the feminist slogan “the personal is political”.