Bogotá's Green Roofs, Vertical Gardens & Sustainable Urban Drainage (SUDS) Programme

As part of Bogotá's 2016–2020 'Bogotá Mejor para Todos' development plan, the city's Secretaría Distrital de Ambiente launched a technical-support and promotion programme — rather than a direct subsidy — to help public and private buildings install green roofs and vertical gardens as climate-adaptation infrastructure.
Between mid-2016 and mid-2018 the programme delivered 13,000 m² of green roofs and vertical gardens across public and private buildings, against a target of 20,000 m² by the first half of 2020, on an initial investment of roughly COP 1.1 billion (about US$350,000); by 2019 the city had recognised dozens of projects, including the 3,100 m² Santalaia vertical garden.
In parallel, Bogotá's urban-infrastructure agency (IDU) reported 237 sustainable urban drainage system (SUDS) typologies in execution as of December 2022 — 215 inundable tree wells, 17 bio-retention zones and 5 green ditches — with 10 already built and operating, concentrated on projects such as Avenida 68 (140 tree wells, the highest SUDS concentration of any road project in Colombia). The city's newer Territorial Ordering Plan (POT) now mandates 271 km of green corridors citywide.
The original 20,000 m² green-roof target for 2020 does not appear to have been publicly confirmed as met — the latest verifiable figure (13,000 m², mid-2018) falls short of it — and no independent third-party audit of stormwater-retention performance has been published; the C40 Cities case study draws on the same city-government reporting rather than independent measurement.

Read the full analysis: https://www.ambientebogota.gov.co/techos-verdes-y-jardines-verticales