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Social capital of urban infrastructure with Bogotá’s cable car

Nature Cities volume 3, pages 68–77 (2026)Cite this article

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Abstract

Large informal settlements on city peripheries reflect deep inequalities in Latin America. Measuring social capital (SC) can help capture the social impact of transport interventions such as cable cars, aimed at better connecting these areas. Here we examine the social impact of the TransMiCable cable car, launched in Bogotá in 2018, by analyzing six dimensions of SC, identifying SC classes and evaluating the influence of TransMiCable on them. Three SC classes were identified: predominantly bonding, high tendency to form networks and trust within families; predominantly bridging, moderate tendency to trust friends and neighbors; and predominantly linking, higher trust in government institutions and stronger civic engagement. Individuals in the intervention area were 3.34 times more likely to transition from a bonding to bridging SC than those in the control group (95% confidence interval 2.43–4.62), suggesting that TransMiCable increased trust among friends and neighbors. This finding underscores community participation as a key part of urban transformation.

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Fig. 1: SC dimensions and forms.

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Data availability

The data supporting the findings of this study are available upon reasonable request to the corresponding author or to SALURBAL. Access to restricted data requires a data use agreement and approval of a study proposal by the SALURBAL proposal and publications committee. Some data may be subject to confidentiality restrictions. The SALURBAL project welcomes queries from anyone interested in learning more about its dataset and potential access to data. To learn more about SALURBAL’s dataset, visit https://drexel.edu/lac/ or contact the project at salurbal@drexel.edu.

Code availability

Code for the table estimates is available via GitHub at https://github.com/andresfuse/social_capital_transmicable.

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Acknowledgements

SALURBAL thanks many different agencies for their contribution in generating, processing and facilitating access to data or assisting with other aspects of the project. Please visit https://drexel.edu/lac/data-evidence for a complete list of data sources. The findings of this study and their interpretation are the responsibility of the authors and do not represent the views or interpretations of the institutions or groups that compiled, collected or provided the data. The use of data from these institutions does not claim or imply that they have participated in, approved, endorsed or otherwise supported the development of this publication. They are not liable for any errors, omissions or other defects or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. The Salud Urbana en América Latina (SALURBAL)/Urban Health in Latin America project was supported by the Wellcome Trust (grant no. 205177/Z/16/Z). More information about the project can be found at www.lacurbanhealth.org. The project was also supported by the Bogotá Urban Planning Department (www.sdp.gov.co), through agreement no. 369 of 2018, the joint grant between the Research Office at the Universidad de Los Andes and the Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá (grant no. 2018).

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Andrés F. Useche, María Alejandra Rubio, Diana Higuera-Mendieta.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Industrial Engineering, School of Engineering, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia

    Andrés F. Useche

  2. International Postgraduate School, Jozef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    María Alejandra Rubio

  3. Department of Environmental Sciences, Jozef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    María Alejandra Rubio

  4. School of Medicine, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia

    Diana Higuera-Mendieta, Paula Guevara-Aladino & Olga L. Sarmiento

  5. Urban Health Collaborative, Dornsife School of Public Health, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Diana Higuera-Mendieta

  6. Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Dornsife School of Public Health, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Diana Higuera-Mendieta

  7. Grupo de Epidemiología, Facultad Nacional de Salud Pública, Universidad de Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia

    Eliana Martínez-Herrera

  8. JHU-UPF Public Policy Center, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, UPF Barcelona School of Management, Barcelona, Spain

    Eliana Martínez-Herrera

  9. Group of Urban and Regional Sustainability, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia

    Luis A. Guzman & Víctor Cantillo-Garcia

  10. UPF Barcelona School of Management, Barcelona, Spain

    Joan Benach

  11. Research Group on Health Inequalities, Environment-Employment Conditions Network, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain

    Joan Benach

  12. Ecological Humanities Research Group, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Joan Benach

Authors
  1. Andrés F. Useche
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  2. María Alejandra Rubio
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  3. Diana Higuera-Mendieta
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  5. Eliana Martínez-Herrera
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  6. Luis A. Guzman
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  7. Víctor Cantillo-Garcia
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  9. Olga L. Sarmiento
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Contributions

A.F.U.: methodology, data curation, visualization, formal analysis, writing—original draft and writing—review and editing. M.A.R.: methodology, formal analysis, writing—original draft and writing—review and editing. D.H.-M.: conceptualization, methodology, data curation, formal analysis, writing—original draft and writing—review and editing. P.G.-A.: methodology, writing—original draft and writing—review and editing. E.M.-H.: conceptualization, writing—original draft and writing—review and editing. L.A.G.: writing—original draft and writing—review and editing. V.C.-G.: writing—original draft and writing—review and editing. J.B.: writing—original draft and writing—review and editing. O.L.S.: conceptualization, writing—original draft and writing—review and editing.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Olga L. Sarmiento.

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Nature Cities thanks Natalia Villamizar Duarte and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Useche, A.F., Rubio, M.A., Higuera-Mendieta, D. et al. Social capital of urban infrastructure with Bogotá’s cable car. Nat Cities 3, 68–77 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-025-00366-z

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