Tunja, an intermediate city with great potential, must harmonize politics, urban planning and architecture, from which a more inclusive, sustainable, innovative and resilient city emerges. Krasnov that the hope and dreams of the people of Tunja do not die during his mandate.
Krasnov assumes the destiny of one of the cities with the greatest potential in Colombia and this already constitutes a challenge.
*By Jacinto Pineda Jiménez, ESAP teacher
Tunja is a bet with a future as evidenced by the national policy for the system of cities with a long-term vision, formulated by the National Planning Department (DNP), in 2013.
There Tunja becomes one of the 16 uninodal cities and together with Sogamoso and Duitama they are part of the ten regional axes where the country must prioritize investment to unleash urban and economic development. Today it is the third most competitive city in Colombia, according to the 2023 city competitiveness index, therefore, the challenge is to stimulate public and private investment, but with the firm action of generating opportunities to be more equitable.
Tunja must be inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable, in line with the challenges of the most important cities in the world, which entails planning the development and orderly growth of the territory, an urgent and cannot be postponed task.
Strengthening the city requires an efficient and dynamic government, with futuristic capacity, where trust is a principle for private sector investment that turns it into a partner for the development of urban projects. The public-private alliance is central but also improves the institutional capacity of the mayor’s office, based on a public organization based on knowledge, where innovation is built, clearly greater stimulation and decent working conditions for its human talent that enable the generation of public value from the best provision of goods and services that are the responsibility of the municipality.
Economic development must go hand in hand with the fight for inclusion because among the critical points are unemployment, poverty, the environment and in general a city that concentrates opportunities and therefore excludes. There are 18,043 people in extreme poverty, that is, they live with less than 248,277 pesos per month and 61,968 people live with less than 528,245 pesos. The GINI indicator that measures inequality is 0.501, which shows the level of inequality in opportunities.
Cooperation-unemployed-and-workers-Tunja
The problem of unemployment, historical in the city, in the last year is characterized by a decrease, reaching averages lower than the national level. The fact is positive, but the decline has occurred with an increase in self-employed workers, as evidenced in graph one. In one year in the city, the unemployed decreased by 2,810 people, but self-employed workers increased by 2,876. (in the last quarter July-September, 2023, there were 81,094 employed people).
Remember that the self-employed worker is anyone who carries out an economic activity independently and directly, without being subject to an employment contract. So you can be the independent doctor all the way to the salesman at the traffic light. Worrying. The high dependence of jobs on the government sector and the low employment of the industrial sector continue to be issues to be addressed in the occupational structure.
Graph 1
DANE source, own elaboration
Now, Tunja is the third most competitive city in Colombia, but one of the last in environmental sustainability (28). Of the 32 cities in green business it ranks 31st; bad performance in CO2 gas emissions and in hectares of deforested forests, it occupies 21st place. Pollution and solid waste management are a problem, in addition to a city that receives waste from 118 municipalities with an environmental impact that has not yet been determined. magnified.
Challenges for a mayor who must generate trust for investment, well-being and governance under a political context where the movement he represented barely reached 1.14% of the total votes for the municipal council. The citizen’s vote spoke, with a certain rejection of traditional practices, but now is the time for reason, for concreteness, for concertation; This city is potentiality, opportunity, so we wish the mayor the best, so as not to frustrate the dreams placed in his mandate.
