With the suspension of the Territorial Ordering Plan (POT) of Bogotá, processed by the mayor Claudia López, the debate on decree 190 of 2004. This contains the regulations for establishments whose activity is the sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages on the site.
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This implies a return to an outdated norm in terms of land use and occupation. In the POT prior to Claudia’s, valid from 2004 to 2021, there are the regulations urban 18 years ago.
With this regulation, of the more than 28,000 establishments categorized as bars, only 11,000 could be located. That is, its existence and operation were verified.
Of this group, only 163 have a valid license to offer its services, according to information from the Mayor’s Office of Bogotá.
“The POT of 2004 and what was raised in the second Peñalosa administration, as Asobares indicates, was a totally impractical regulation for the city”assured Diego Laserna, councilor of Bogotá for the Alianza Verde.
He also pointed out that this rule is strict and different from the local reality where very few establishments of this type can operate legally.
The decree resumed its validity on June 16, 2022 after the temporary suspension of the new POT. This leaves a vacuum on the situation of the pink zones in the capital.
In addition, there have been half processes that the López administration had advanced. In the POT of 2004, it was proposed to move the bars to certain areas to apply the regulations. In 2018, a proposed regulation of many of these establishments.
In this way, it aimed at the formalization of these spaces.
According to Laserna, the illegality of this union is the lack of resources of the local mayors to have control of these urban regulations. Before the pandemic, bars and nightclubs generated contributions from more than 3 billion pesos per year for the country.
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“We can have a lot of regulations and no matter how flexible or strict they end up being, if there is no way we can enforce them, all regulatory effort goes to nothing.”, says Councilman Laserna.
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