Judicialization and urban politics: Citizens, politicians, and judges in the suspension of Transmilenio on the Seventh Avenue in Bogotá

Abstract

This article analyzes the suspension of the Transmilenio BRT transport project on the 7th Avenue of Bogotá through legal demands. Based on 23 interviews and a review of legal and judicial documents, we show how the growing judicialization of urban planning in Bogotá is reconfiguring urban politics, opening new ways of influencing city decisions and empowering certain actors and discourses in urban governance. In this case, property owners, educated middle-class citizens, and politicians were able to suspend the project and defend their interests and visions of the city through the mobilization of legal knowledge. The article concludes by highlighting the need to better conceptualize the possibilities and limits of judicialization to democratize urban planning and policy, something that has not been given sufficient attention in Latin American urban studies.