Cali guide
Which neighbourhood
Six areas, how the city is really divided, and how to read the numbers you will be quoted.
How the city is divided
Cali is organised into comunas, and every official statistic — safety, services, budget — is published by comuna, not by neighbourhood. Worth knowing which one yours falls in: Granada and Santa Mónica are Comuna 2; San Antonio and El Peñón are Comuna 3; San Fernando is Comuna 19; Ciudad Jardín is Comuna 22.
You will also hear about estratos, the 1-to-6 bracket Colombia assigns to each block to subsidise utility bills. It is not a quality score, but it does predict what you will pay for water and electricity: Granada 4, Santa Mónica 5, San Antonio 3, El Peñón 5, San Fernando 4, Ciudad Jardín 6.
Source: Planeación Municipal de Cali — estratificación (datos de 2015) · 2026-08
What we are not going to tell you
Typical monthly rent per neighbourhood. We looked: DANE, Camacol, Fedelonjas and the property portals publish nothing usable for Cali, and every figure circulating out there is a rule of three over data about something else — a departmental average, an unfurnished square metre, a tourist nightly rate multiplied by thirty. Ask in a local rental group and you will get a better number than any guide can honestly print.
On safety, and how to read it
You will find crime rates for Cali quoted everywhere. Before using one to rule a neighbourhood out, know how they are built: the official statistics are published by comuna, and a comuna is far bigger than the few blocks you will actually live in. Comuna 3 covers El Peñón and San Antonio — and also El Calvario and El Hoyo, which are a different city as far as your evening walk is concerned. A comuna-level figure tells you almost nothing about a street.
We are not printing a number here yet. The 2025 figures that circulate most could not be traced back to a source we could open and read, and a crime statistic attached to a neighbourhood's name is the last thing to publish on trust. What does hold, and is more useful anyway: the practical question is hours and streets, not which barrio to avoid. Walk the lit main avenues after dark, take a car late, and ask your host about the specific block.
Where we are
Our three apartments are in Granada, Comuna 2 — walking distance to the café and bar strip of Av. 9N, and close enough to the north that the airport run is straightforward. If it fits what you are looking for, they are here.