Metropolitan Areas in Colombia are officially designated administrative and census areas, composed of an urban center and its associated Municipalities.
The following criteria must be met for a group of communities to be designated a Metropolitan Area:
Commuting to work is, in fact, the major characteristic of a Metropolitan Area. As a result, the secondary cities are often called "dormitory cities"; meaning places where the inhabitants only go home to sleep.
An important function of the Metropolitan Areas is to provide for joint planning between the Municipalities, thereby managing ordered and proportional economic growth according to the necessities of the area and the physical characteristics of each Municipality.
The following are currently (2007) recognized by the Colombian government:
Other metropolitan areas which are not yet officially defined:
Intercontinental de Aviación S.A. was an airline based in Bogotá, Colombia. It operated domestic services and flights to neighbouring countries. Its main hub was located at El Dorado International Airport in Bogotá, with a secondary hub at Alfonso Bonilla Aragón International Airport in Cali. The airline closed operations in 2005.
The Municipalities of Colombia are decentralized subdivisions of the Republic of Colombia. Municipalities make up most of the departments of Colombia with 1,122 municipalities (municipios). Each one of them is led by a mayor (alcalde) elected by popular vote and represents the maximum executive government official at a municipality level under the mandate of the governor of their department which is a representative of all municipalities in the department; municipalities are grouped to form departments.
Caracol Radio is one of the main radio networks in Colombia. Founded in Medellín in 1948 when La Voz de Antioquia station acquired the 50% of Emisoras Nuevo Mundo, based in Bogotá.
The National Police of Colombia is the national police force of Colombia. Although the National Police is not part of the Military Forces of Colombia, it constitutes along with them the "Public Force" and is also controlled by the Ministry of Defense. Unlike many nations which use a tiered system of law enforcement, the National Police is the only civilian police force in Colombia. The force's official functions are to protect the Colombian nation, enforce the law by constitutional mandate, maintain and guarantee the necessary conditions for public freedoms and rights and to ensure peaceful cohabitation among the population.
The National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE) does not collect religious statistics, and accurate reports are difficult to obtain. However, based on various studies and a survey, about 90% of the population adheres to Christianity, the majority of which (70.9%) are Roman Catholic, while a significant minority (16.7%) adhere to Protestantism.
Metropolitan Area of Bogotá is the metropolitan area of the Colombian capital city of Bogotá, usually used for statistical analysis or technical use.
Rodrigo Arenas Betancourt was a Colombian sculptor. At the time of his death in 1995 he was recognized as one of the most important sculptors in Colombia and Latin America. Most of the main cities in Colombia have statues sculpted by Arenas.
The judiciary of Colombia is a branch of the State of Colombia that interprets and applies the laws of Colombia, to ensure equal justice under law, and to provide a mechanism for dispute resolution. The judiciary comprises a hierarchical system of courts presided over by judges, magistrates and other adjudicators.
Colombian geography presents formidable challenges to roadbuilders, needing to communicate its largest production centers deep inside the Andes with major ports in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. All of this carries a heavy premium to roadbuilding, compared with the cost of building highways in flat terrains. Therefore, the Colombian government is undertaking a great effort in order to improve the highway system, under the name of Fourth Generation Highways, with the intent of updating major roads to international safety and speed standards. This project will be funded through both public and private capital, with a total worth of nearly US$23 billion, accounting to a yearly investment of 3% of national GDP, improving or building a grand total of over 8.000 km of roads. These roads are expected to improve Colombia's competitiveness in order to successfully take advantage of the many trade agreements signed in recent years.
Access to the Internet in Colombia shows a marked increase during the last few years. As of September 2009, the web connections surpassed two million, as compared with an estimated total of 900,000 Internet subscribers by the end of 2005. The current figure equated to 17 million Internet users, plus 3.8 million mobile internet users, or 38.5 percent of the 2009 population, as compared with 4,739,000 Internet users in 2005, or 11.5 percent of the 2005 population. Colombia had 581,877 Internet hosts in 2006. This represents an overall growth of 54 percent each year, the highest in Latin America. Although as many as 70 percent of Colombians accessed the Internet over their ordinary telephone lines, dial-up access is losing ground to broadband. In 2005 Colombia had 345,000 broadband subscriber lines, or one per 100 inhabitants. In 2006 the number of personal computers per 1,000 people increased to an estimated 87 per 1,000 inhabitants, a rate still below that in other large Latin American economies. As of 2009, Colombia duplicated the number of personal computers reaching 26.3 percent, as compared with the rest of Latin America which showed a decreasing trend.
Hipermercados Jumbo is a Chilean chain of hypermarkets operating in Chile, Argentina and in Colombia.
Lebanese Colombians are Colombians of Lebanese descent. Most of the Lebanese community's forebears immigrated to Colombia from the Ottoman Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries for economic, political and religious reasons. When they were first processed in the ports of Colombia, they were classified as Turks because what is modern day Lebanon was a territory of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. The first Lebanese moved to Colombia in the late nineteenth century. There was another wave in the early twentieth century. It is estimated that over 10,000 Lebanese immigrated to Colombia from 1900 to 1930.
The Cooperative University of Colombia is a private institution of higher education founded in 1983, as a successor of the Instituto de Economía Social y Cooperativismo (Indesco).
The Episcopal Conference of Colombia is an administrative institution and permanence of the Catholic Church, composed of all the bishops of the dioceses of Colombia in a college, in communion with the Roman Pontiff and under his authority to exercise set of certain pastoral functions of the episcopate on the faithful of their territory under the rule of law and statutes, in order to promote the life of the Church, to strengthen its mission of evangelization and respond more effectively to the greater good that the Church should seek to men.
Radio Nacional de Colombia is a Colombian state-owned public radio network, part of Señal Colombia RTVC. It was launched – as Radiodifusora Nacional de Colombia – on 1 February 1940, three years after closure of the country's first state-owned radio station, HJN.
The 2021 Copa Colombia, officially the Copa BetPlay Dimayor 2021 for sponsorship reasons, was the 19th edition of the Copa Colombia, the national cup competition for clubs of DIMAYOR. The tournament was contested by 35 teams and began on 10 March 2021. It ended on 24 November 2021, with Atlético Nacional winning their fifth title in the competition after defeating Deportivo Pereira in the double-legged final series by a 5–1 aggregate score. As champions, Atlético Nacional qualified for the 2022 Copa Libertadores.