Indicator system for a multidimensional characterization of Colombia's municipalities

Current systems of urban indicators tend to focus on the analysis of large cities and metropolises, leaving aside the diversity of urban and rural territories where a large part of the population lives. In the case of Colombia, there is, furthermore, a lack of information at the municipal level, which makes it difficult for municipalities with scarce resources to formulate and update land-use plans. This essay proposes a set of indicators inspired by UN-Habitat's City Prosperity Index, but adapted to the diversity of municipalities and to the availability of statistical data in Colombia. The analysis of the results, and particularly the interrelation between territorial and socio-economic variables, has provided a new vision of the territory, allowing to identify, through a cluster analysis, four classes of rural municipalities, differentiated by their social and economic characteristics. Although the proposed method does not reach a level of detail sufficient for a diagnosis at the municipal level, it defines reference levels for a more specific diagnosis and to help to reduce the lack of information of which municipalities suffer, not only in Colombia, but also in many other developing countries.