Abstract:In the last 15 years, Bogotá and Medellín, Colombia's two largest cities, have undergone urban renaissances. These are a direct result of a political will to tackle the social, economic and physical segregation caused by the large-scale urban migrations of the 1970s and 1980s, which resulted in informal developments that were often isolated from central urban areas with no infrastructure. Lorenzo Castro and Alejandro Echeverri describe the shared experiences and distinct approaches of each city.
“…Cultural and educational programmes for the new schools and libraries were developed. These interventions were meant to ‘generate a new image of the city through providing new symbolic references’ and this ‘change in residents’ image of their city, and their new‐found sense of belonging' contributed to transforming the supposedly ‘uninhabitable’ Medellín into one of today's ‘hip and trendy belles of the ball’ (Castro and Echeverri, : 103). This quotation, from two of Fajardo's principal architects, clearly indicates the importance of image building for his administration.…”
Section: Social Urbanism and The Rise Of Medellínmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…This suggests that their needs and requirements were considered a starting point in the planning process. Still, the primary tools of the intervention came from architecture and urbanism (Castro and Echeverri, ). The palette of interventions, from the construction of libraries to the creation of public spaces, was predefined and never a topic of debate.…”
Section: Social Urbanism and The Rise Of Medellínmentioning
The outdoor electric escalator in Medellín's Comuna 13, part of an Integrated Urban Project aimed at bridging the city's socio‐spatial divide, did not fully accomplish the project's goal of increasing the mobility of 12,000 people living in the area, nor did it make a significant contribution to diminishing social inequalities. The escalator project can be considered a prestigious solution to an ill‐defined problem that did not take people's mobility patterns into account. Although the project succeeded in increasing civic pride and improving Medellín's image of modernity and progress, it also led to new social inequalities.
“…Cultural and educational programmes for the new schools and libraries were developed. These interventions were meant to ‘generate a new image of the city through providing new symbolic references’ and this ‘change in residents’ image of their city, and their new‐found sense of belonging' contributed to transforming the supposedly ‘uninhabitable’ Medellín into one of today's ‘hip and trendy belles of the ball’ (Castro and Echeverri, : 103). This quotation, from two of Fajardo's principal architects, clearly indicates the importance of image building for his administration.…”
Section: Social Urbanism and The Rise Of Medellínmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…This suggests that their needs and requirements were considered a starting point in the planning process. Still, the primary tools of the intervention came from architecture and urbanism (Castro and Echeverri, ). The palette of interventions, from the construction of libraries to the creation of public spaces, was predefined and never a topic of debate.…”
Section: Social Urbanism and The Rise Of Medellínmentioning
The outdoor electric escalator in Medellín's Comuna 13, part of an Integrated Urban Project aimed at bridging the city's socio‐spatial divide, did not fully accomplish the project's goal of increasing the mobility of 12,000 people living in the area, nor did it make a significant contribution to diminishing social inequalities. The escalator project can be considered a prestigious solution to an ill‐defined problem that did not take people's mobility patterns into account. Although the project succeeded in increasing civic pride and improving Medellín's image of modernity and progress, it also led to new social inequalities.
“…By the 1990s, the local population had become psychologically willing for a change in governance and were in physical need of neighbourhood renewal and improvement. Castro and Echeverri (2011) interpret violence as one of the reasons why Medellín was forced to grow in an unplanned manner to accommodate formal and informal residents (additional to the reasons that have brought about extensive informal development elsewhere throughout Latin America) and see planning interventions as a way of alleviating, or addressing this phenomenon.…”
After being known as the 'murder capital of the world' in the 1990s, Medellin has pioneered innovative forms of city planning and management and was acclaimed the most innovative city in the world by the Urban Land Institute (ULI) in 2013. Hosting the World Urban Forum in 2014 allowed it to showcase its approach, key elements of which have been: creation of innovative transport infrastructure linking poorer peripheral districts to the city centre; culture-led regeneration; strong support of local development from the local business sector; and a successful municipally-owned utilities company. However, the city is spreading outwards without services and employment being provided; new low-income developments are replicating high-rise models which failed worldwide; there is limited intervention in the existing informal areas, many being in highly vulnerable locations where the level of risk is likely to increase with climate change; development has little regard for topography, ecological and environmental considerations; investment in accessible and good quality public space is restricted to some areas; the quality of the public realm does not always support health and wellbeing of the ageing population. This paper explores the institutional and socioeconomic context in which Medellín has achieved the internationally recognized status of an 'innovative city'. It questions to what extent social equity, environmental sustainability and citizen empowerment have been promoted as per the ULI claims when it conferred the prize. The paper queries the extent to which 'urban innovation' is happening in Medellín, which has considerable implications given its recently found role as a 'model' city in Latin America and beyond. Location and physical assets/constraints and demographics Medellín is the capital of the Department of Antioquia and the second largest city in Colombia. The city extends North-South for 14 kilometres in the lush Aburrá valley contained within two mountain ranges. At its maximum, the valley containing the city is 10 kilometres wide with 1km height diference between the highest point and its lowest. This results in a very steep topography and a city that is not only surrounded by but also embedded within its mountain range. Adding to its complexity, river Medellín runs the length of the city along the valley, fed by ample sources of water that run down the mountain range, most notably the Santa Elena and La Iguana streams (Alcaldía de Medellín POT 2014:5). The confluence of these three waterways leads to more than 100 ravines running down very steep hillsides. The Río Medellín constitutes the main hydrographic source of the Aburrá Valley, making it a natural drainage for the Municipality of Medellín. Medellín is also the capital of the Metropolitan region of Aburrá Valley (Área Metropolitana del Valle de Aburrá) Figure 1. This is a political and administrative region that unites 10 municipalities of the sub-region: Caldas,
“…Lorenzo Castro and Alejandro Echeverrí (2011), two practicing urbanists centrally involved in the developments in Bogotá and Medellín, forwarded an especially pure version of this ‘spatial fix' thesis in a piece in Architectural Design :Given the size of Bogotá, both in terms of population density and surface area, and its physical and social fragmentation, the intention [of Bogotá's spatial transformations] was to create a complete and unique image of the city that, rather than ignoring socioeconomic differences between its territories, was capable of bridging these through the design of a series of iconic urban elements associated with cross‐city systems [including the TransMilenio] … [This generated] a city that is integrated, continuous, open and accessible to everyone, inclusive, environmentally sustainable and capable of facilitating a sense of civic pride and stewardship among its citizens (Castro and Echeverrí, : 98).…”
Cities in Latin America in particular have been investing in new transportation networks such as bicycle systems, metros and bus rapid transit (BRT) technologies in recent years. These infrastructures are promoted as cures for trenchant social and spatial divisions as much as for traffic gridlock and vehicular pollution. This article unpacks the theory that infrastructures might mend cities that have been fragmented into disparate parts by uneven capitalist development. I argue that this ‘infrastructural solidarity' thesis relies on a troubled imagination—shared across urban design and strands of urban theory—that infrastructures are static, formal arrangements that concretize relations and enforce social cohesion or fragmentation. This article draws on qualitative research on the TransMilenio BRT system in Bogotá, Colombia, as well as on the work of Bruno Latour, suggesting that the political life of infrastructure is better revealed when such systems are understood as dense knots of shifting relations with complex temporalities. Arguments for the value of this type of actor‐network theory (ANT) reading often skew towards the esoteric, but the TransMilenio case shows how sorting through infrastructural ontologies actually matters in terms of how urbanists—academic and practicing—conceive of and work towards just and functional cities.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
