Manual for Designing Urban Imaginaries: Colombia

The Manual for Designing Urban Imaginaries: Colombia aims to confront one of humanity’s most pressing challenges: the complexities of transformation in an urban age.

Situated at the nexus of urban research, design, and activism, the volume focuses on Colombia’s rapidly urbanizing areas, where decades of armed conflict and forced displacement from neighbouring Venezuela have given way to new waves of social and environmental issues. In such a challenging sociopolitical context, this manual—emerging from research at the ETH Zurich under the frame of the Colombia Urban Transformation Program—explores the spaces where architectural practice and design thinking meet the hopes, needs, and perceptions of communities. The concept of the “urban imaginary”—denoting the desires of the collective—is evoked as a means of developing strategies for marginalized voices, so as to shape the future of their built and natural environments.

The manual demonstrates that true transformation is possible when alliances are forged, when diverse actors meet at a common table to negotiate, deliberate, and build solutions together.

For anyone navigating the complexity of an urbanizing Earth, the Manual for Designing Urban Imaginaries: Colombia is a call to action. It reminds us that every street corner and urban periphery holds the potential to inspire transformation, and that reimagining urban life is not just an architectural endeavour—it is a deeply human one. Though grounded in Colombia, the manual’s lessons extend to global areas grappling with displacement, inequality and rapid urbanization. Ultimately, this book is about embracing the most expansive and generative territory of urbanization: the human imagination.