Bogotá, the capital of Colombia, is located in the center of the country, on the eastern “Bogotá Sabana”, 2640 meters (8661 feet) above sea level.
The Bogotá River crosses the Sabana forming Tequendama falls to the south. Tributary rivers form valleys with flourishing villages, whose economy is based on agriculture, livestock raising and artisanal production.
The Bogotá Sabana is bordered to the east by the Eastern Cordillera of the Andes mountain range. Surrounding hills, which limit city growth, run from south to north, parallel to the Guadalupe and Monserrate mountains. The western city limit is the Bogotá river; Sumapaz paramo borders the south and to the north Bogotá extends over the Sabana up to the towns of Chía and Sopó.
Climate
The average temperature on the Sabana is 14°C, varying from 9 to 22ºC. Dry and rainy seasons alternate throughout the year. The driest months are December, January, February and March; the rainiest are April, May, September, October and November. June and July are usually rainy periods and August is sunny with high winds.
Climatic conditions are irregular and quite variable due to the El Niño and La Niña climatic phenomena, which occur in and around the Pacific basin and are responsible for very pronounced climatic changes.
Urban layout and nomenclature
The urban layout dates back to Colonial times, and is a square layout adopted from Spain. The current street layout has calles which run perpendicular to the hills heading east-west with numbering increasing towards the north, and towards the south from calle 1, and carreras which run parallel to the hills in the south-north direction with numbering increasing east and west from carrera 1. New urban sectors incorporate diagonal – equaling streets – and transversal – equaling carreras. Streets are numbered.
It has over one thousand neighborhoods or divisions forming the developed urban network. Neighborhoods of higher economic status are primarily located to the north and north-east. Poorer neighborhoods are located to the south and south-east, many of them squatter areas. The middle classes usually inhabit the central, western and north-western sections of the city.