Urban lessons from the Andes

“What can Andean capitals teach us about designing cities today?”

In this insight paper, Senior Architect Antonio Treglia explores the urban character of Bogotá, Lima, La Paz and Santiago, examining how topography, mobility, informality and public life shape their growth and identity. Based on direct experience during a personal trip, the paper identifies both shared patterns and key differences, revealing how these cities adapt to complex social and geographical conditions.

Through the observation of these four capitals, the paper reflects on several key urban lessons:

Lesson 1: Topography as urban identity - How terrain should shape urban planning, not constrain it;
Lesson 2: Mobility as an instrument of inclusion - How public transport can become a tool for social inclusion;
Lesson 3: Cities evolve faster than plans - What informal urban growth reveals about how cities really evolve;
Lesson 4: Public spaces as social infrastructure - How public space supports everyday social life;
Lesson 5: Material identity and urban character - How local materials and architecture create stronger identities;
Lesson 6: Shared patterns, distinct personalities - Why cities need local response, not universal solutions.

These reflections connect directly to the approach we pursue at Chapman Taylor in our masterplanning works, including the Shusha Masterplan and Jabrayil Masterplan in Azerbaijan, where responding to landscape, enabling connectivity and designing for long-term flexibility are central to creating resilient places.

A journey through South American capitals

Travelling as an architect means you never fully switch off. Every street becomes a lesson in movement. Every plaza becomes a test of how public life works.

A month travelling along the Andean spine of South America — through Bogotá, Lima, La Paz and Santiago — offered something more valuable than inspiration. It offered instruction.

These cities are intense, layered, and often contradictory. They are shaped as much by geography as by politics, and as much by informal adaptation as by formal planning. Yet together they form a remarkable reference point for anyone involved in urban design and masterplanning.
The challenges they face are familiar to cities across the world: rapid growth, difficult terrain, inequality, pressure on infrastructure and the constant need to adapt. What makes these capitals compelling is how visibly they respond to those pressures.

In many ways, they demonstrate something increasingly important for designers today: cities rarely succeed through rigid control. They succeed through flexibility, resilience and the ability to evolve over time.

A journey through South American capitals

Travelling as an architect means you never fully switch off. Every street becomes a lesson in movement. Every plaza becomes a test of how public life works.

A month travelling along the Andean spine of South America — through Bogotá, Lima, La Paz and Santiago — offered something more valuable than inspiration. It offered instruction.

These cities are intense, layered, and often contradictory. They are shaped as much by geography as by politics, and as much by informal adaptation as by formal planning. Yet together they form a remarkable reference point for anyone involved in urban design and masterplanning.
The challenges they face are familiar to cities across the world: rapid growth, difficult terrain, inequality, pressure on infrastructure and the constant need to adapt. What makes these capitals compelling is how visibly they respond to those pressures.

In many ways, they demonstrate something increasingly important for designers today: cities rarely succeed through rigid control. They succeed through flexibility, resilience and the ability to evolve over time.

Lesson 1: Topography as urban identity

The most immediate lesson these cities offer is about land.

In each capital, topography is not simply a backdrop. It defines how the city is experienced.

- Bogotá’s street grid constantly reorients itself towards Cerro Monserrate, the mountain that anchors the city visually and culturally.

- Lima spreads between desert and Pacific Ocean, with its public life unfolding along the clifftop edges of Barranco and Miraflores.

- Santiago sits in a basin with the Andes always visible above the roofline, and the urban hills such as Cerro San Cristóbal, punctuating the metropolitan area.

- La Paz offers perhaps the most extreme example of topographic urbanism anywhere: a city cascading into a valley, where altitude reflects social hierarchy.

None of these cities fought their geography. They organised around it. And their identity is stronger because of it.

When terrain is embraced rather than flattened or ignored, it creates cities that feel more legible, environmental responsive and rooted in something more enduring than any masterplan.

Lesson 2: Mobility as an instrument of inclusion

If topography defines urban form, mobility defines opportunity.

Across all four capitals, public transport is more than infrastructure. It is social infrastructure.

- Bogotá’s bus network acts as the connective tissue of the metropolitan area.

- Santiago’s integrated metro system embeds accessibility directly into the urban fabric.

- Lima continues expanding and upgrading its transport systems as the city grows.

- La Paz offers the most striking response: Mi Teleférico cable car system transforms vertical distance into everyday connectivity.

Crossing La Paz by cable car changes your understanding of the city completely. Markets, neighbourhoods, informal settlements and steep hillsides unfold beneath you. Areas once isolated by geography suddenly feel connected.

What matters most about these systems is not simply technical efficiency. It is their social impact.

Movement, when strategically integrated, changes how a city grows, reducing environmental pressure and enhancing social connection. Mobility becomes not only an efficiency measure, but a framework of inclusion.

Lesson 3: Cities evolve faster than plans

South American capitals operate within a visible tension between formal planning and informal urban growth.

Peripheral expansion in Bogotá and Lima, hillside settlements in La Paz, and spatial inequalities in Santiago all reflect decades of incremental community-led urbanisation.

But informality is not simply the absence of planning. In many cases, it is an adaptive response to pressure: it creates mixed-use neighbourhoods, active street life and local economies that more formal developments often struggle to reproduce.

Walking through these cities, the contrast is constant. Carefully planned infrastructure sits beside improvised construction. Formal grids dissolve into organic urban patterns. Yet despite that tension, many of these neighbourhoods remain socially active and economically resilient.

Cities are not fixed systems. They evolve. Rigid masterplans that ignore this tend to fracture under real-world pressure.

Effective masterplanning does not eliminate informality; it builds models flexible enough to work with it over time.

Lesson 4: Public spaces as social infrastructure

What stood out most consistently across all four capitals was the intensity of public life.

From La Candelaria to Usaquén in Bogotá, to Barranco in Lima, Barrio Italia in Santiago and Sopocachi in La Paz, streets and plazas are defined as much by occupation as by design.

Vendors spill onto pavements. Musicians gather in squares. Cafés extend into public spaces. Informal activities constantly reshape the streets.

These places are rarely polished or over-controlled. But they work because they are genuinely open to use. Some of the most memorable spaces were not necessarily the most carefully designed. They were simply the most alive.

That distinction matters.

Public space should not be approached as a finished composition. It should function as a structure that supports everyday activity, adaptation and social interaction over time.

The best public spaces are not the most perfect. They are the most used.

Lesson 5: Material identity and urban character

Each capital expresses a distinct architectural language shaped by local conditions.

- Bogotá’s extensive use of brick creates continuity, texture and warmth.

- Lima’s coastal light and layered history generates a distinctive urban atmosphere.

- La Paz reveals expressive, often experimental construction climbing across steep hillsides.

- Santiago balances contemporary development with preserved historic districts.

What these cities share is authenticity. Their character was not imported. It emerges from climate, economy, geography and cultural memory.

That gives each city a strong sense of place.

For architects and urban designers this is an important reminder. Local material palettes and contextual typologies tend to produce environments that feel rooted and recognisable.

Borrowed aesthetics, however sophisticated, often create places that could exist almost everywhere. Identity cannot be simply applied to a city. It must grow from the context itself.

Lesson 6: Shared patterns, distinct personalities

Despite their proximity along the Andes, these capitals are far from interchangeable.

They share visible social contrasts, strong landscape presence, a vibrant public life and a reliance on collective transport systems. All four demonstrate how geography, pressure and growth shape urban behaviour.

Yet their differences are equally instructive. Bogotá feels civic and expansive. Lima balances desert austerity with ocean openness. La Paz is dramatic, vertical and intensely layered. Santiago appears more consolidated yet still marked by inequality.

These distinctions are not only physical. They are cultural. Each city reflects different ways of occupying public space, moving through the urban environment and adapting to local conditions.

That may be the most important lesson of all.

Shared urban challenges do not produce universal solutions.

The role of design is not to replicate models from one place to another, but to interpret broader principles through the lens of local identity, culture and everyday patterns of life.

Lesson 2: Mobility as an instrument of inclusion

If topography defines urban form, mobility defines opportunity.

Across all four capitals, public transport is more than infrastructure. It is social infrastructure.

- Bogotá’s bus network acts as the connective tissue of the metropolitan area.

- Santiago’s integrated metro system embeds accessibility directly into the urban fabric.

- Lima continues expanding and upgrading its transport systems as the city grows.

- La Paz offers the most striking response: Mi Teleférico cable car system transforms vertical distance into everyday connectivity.

Crossing La Paz by cable car changes your understanding of the city completely. Markets, neighbourhoods, informal settlements and steep hillsides unfold beneath you. Areas once isolated by geography suddenly feel connected.

What matters most about these systems is not simply technical efficiency. It is their social impact.

Movement, when strategically integrated, changes how a city grows, reducing environmental pressure and enhancing social connection. Mobility becomes not only an efficiency measure, but a framework of inclusion.

Lesson 3: Cities evolve faster than plans

South American capitals operate within a visible tension between formal planning and informal urban growth.

Peripheral expansion in Bogotá and Lima, hillside settlements in La Paz, and spatial inequalities in Santiago all reflect decades of incremental community-led urbanisation.

But informality is not simply the absence of planning. In many cases, it is an adaptive response to pressure: it creates mixed-use neighbourhoods, active street life and local economies that more formal developments often struggle to reproduce.

Walking through these cities, the contrast is constant. Carefully planned infrastructure sits beside improvised construction. Formal grids dissolve into organic urban patterns. Yet despite that tension, many of these neighbourhoods remain socially active and economically resilient.

Cities are not fixed systems. They evolve. Rigid masterplans that ignore this tend to fracture under real-world pressure.

Effective masterplanning does not eliminate informality; it builds models flexible enough to work with it over time.

Lesson 4: Public spaces as social infrastructure

What stood out most consistently across all four capitals was the intensity of public life.

From La Candelaria to Usaquén in Bogotá, to Barranco in Lima, Barrio Italia in Santiago and Sopocachi in La Paz, streets and plazas are defined as much by occupation as by design.

Vendors spill onto pavements. Musicians gather in squares. Cafés extend into public spaces. Informal activities constantly reshape the streets.

These places are rarely polished or over-controlled. But they work because they are genuinely open to use. Some of the most memorable spaces were not necessarily the most carefully designed. They were simply the most alive.

That distinction matters.

Public space should not be approached as a finished composition. It should function as a structure that supports everyday activity, adaptation and social interaction over time.

The best public spaces are not the most perfect. They are the most used.

Lesson 5: Material identity and urban character

Each capital expresses a distinct architectural language shaped by local conditions.

- Bogotá’s extensive use of brick creates continuity, texture and warmth.

- Lima’s coastal light and layered history generates a distinctive urban atmosphere.

- La Paz reveals expressive, often experimental construction climbing across steep hillsides.

- Santiago balances contemporary development with preserved historic districts.

What these cities share is authenticity. Their character was not imported. It emerges from climate, economy, geography and cultural memory.

That gives each city a strong sense of place.

For architects and urban designers this is an important reminder. Local material palettes and contextual typologies tend to produce environments that feel rooted and recognisable.

Borrowed aesthetics, however sophisticated, often create places that could exist almost everywhere. Identity cannot be simply applied to a city. It must grow from the context itself.

Lesson 6: Shared patterns, distinct personalities

Despite their proximity along the Andes, these capitals are far from interchangeable.

They share visible social contrasts, strong landscape presence, a vibrant public life and a reliance on collective transport systems. All four demonstrate how geography, pressure and growth shape urban behaviour.

Yet their differences are equally instructive. Bogotá feels civic and expansive. Lima balances desert austerity with ocean openness. La Paz is dramatic, vertical and intensely layered. Santiago appears more consolidated yet still marked by inequality.

These distinctions are not only physical. They are cultural. Each city reflects different ways of occupying public space, moving through the urban environment and adapting to local conditions.

That may be the most important lesson of all.

Shared urban challenges do not produce universal solutions.

The role of design is not to replicate models from one place to another, but to interpret broader principles through the lens of local identity, culture and everyday patterns of life.

Conclusions: The most durable cities are the most adaptable

These Andean capitals are not perfect urban models.

They face deep social inequalities, environmental pressures and infrastructural challenges. But precisely because of those constraints, they reveal something essential about contemporary urbanism: resilience comes from adaptation, not control.

At Chapman Taylor, these lessons inform how we approach urban design and masterplanning.

Projects like Shusha Masterplan are conceived as evolving frameworks rather than fixed compositions, supporting long-term transformation, integrating mobility and landscape, and always focusing on how people actually live, gather and move in the places we create.

The Andean capitals are a reminder of why that matters. Cities are not defined by perfection, but by their capacity to accommodate complexity.

The best cities are not the most controlled. They are the most adaptable.