Summary. This article is intended to describe the history of urban planning in Colombia, based on the definition of four key stages bringing together its characteristics and developments in the country. Each stage denotes a set of particularities which have established the most connocent practices and conditions in that nation, in line with national or international trends in urban planning processes. There are also characteristics linked to social processes which do not exclusively define growth or urban sprawl as a physical event, but rather as articulation of a number of social variables in the construction of the urban fabric.