Planning through Spaces of Exception: Socio-Spatial Inequality, Violence … · 2019. 4. 18. ·...

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Planning through Spaces of Exception:

Socio-Spatial Inequality, Violence and the Emergence of Social

Urbanism in Medellín (2004-2011)

By

Luisa Fernanda Sotomayor

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for

the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Department of Geography and Program in Planning

University of Toronto

© Copyright by Luisa Fernanda Sotomayor (2015)

ii

Planning through Spaces of Exception:

Socio-Spatial Inequality, Violence and the Emergence of Social

Urbanism in Medellín (2004-2011)

Luisa Fernanda Sotomayor

Doctor of Philosophy

Department of Geography and Program in Planning

University of Toronto

2015

Abstract

Medellín, a city known as one of the most unequal and violent in the world, has

recently been praised as an example of urban innovation. Grounded on claims to social

justice and democracy, mayors Fajardo (2004-2007) and Salazar (2008-2011) adopted a

policy called social urbanism. With this approach, Medellín expanded infrastructure and

social investments to marginalized districts, instituted participatory programs, and sought

to integrate precarious enclaves in the “formal” city through transit policy, public spaces,

and emblematic architecture.

This dissertation is about the emergence of “social urbanism.” It seeks to reveal

its origins, political rationalities, and tactics on the ground. Based on document analysis,

semi-structured interviews with key actors, and focus group data, I examine the

connections among socio-spatial marginality, conflict, urban politics, and entrepreneurial

urban governance arrangements. Most crucially, I identify the gaps and ambivalences

that emerge between the politics of three disparate logics at play: first, goals of

development and socio-spatial redistribution; second, the pressures cities face to repair

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local economies and attract foreign resources; and third, the influence of violent actors,

including both organized crime and the repressive arm of the state.

While the promises of social urbanism are commendable and have been loudly

conveyed internationally, an analysis of social urbanism at the neighbourhood scale

reveals a mode of emergency planning that turns areas of intervention into spaces of

exception from city ordinances and governance arrangements. Through a large-scale

Urban Development Project approach, social urbanism seeks to expedite implementation

and generate a swift sense of transformation. I argue that, the implications of relying on

exceptions need to be carefully considered since vested interests can easily co-opt the

planning process.

Furthermore, violence, and social and economic dislocations in the city are still

profound, particularly in areas such as Comuna 13, where non-state armed groups

prevent residents from capturing many of the benefits of urban upgrading. Despite new

public works projects and state presence, criminal networks have retained their territorial

influence. Because Medellin’s urban innovations are being implemented along the

ongoing sway of illegal violent actors, governance in these spaces can be characterized

as a contradictory “orderly disorder.”

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Acknowledgements

When I started the Doctoral Program at the University of Toronto I heard from a

more advanced colleague that writing a PhD thesis is a very solitary process. Although

the daily fight against distractions to actually “get things done” is certainly an individual

struggle, the intellectual stimulation, academic rigour, and ongoing motivation required

to complete a PhD successfully involves building a network of mentors, peers, and allies.

In the past five years, I feel fortunate that I had so many supportive people around me.

First, I want to thank my PhD supervisor, Professor Amrita Daniere. Amrita is

one of the smartest, most generous, and optimistic professors that I know and her

guidance and ongoing mentoring have been invaluable to me. Amrita always knew how

to encourage me: whether challenging me to do better, providing reassurance when I felt

overwhelmed, or pushing me to meet deadlines. I also owe Amrita much of my editorial

skills. After five years working with her, I think I am very close to understanding correct

punctuation.

I am also grateful to my PhD committee members, professors Richard Stren and

Paul Hess. While writing, I kept remembering what Richard first said when I asked him

to be in my committee: “it better be good.” I am happy I did not disappoint Richard, who

always read and commented my drafts in great detail. To Paul, I am indebted for always

asking the hard questions. In particular, I appreciate Paul’s ability to do so in the least

frightening, almost Canadian manner. Both Richard and Paul have provided me with

much appreciated academic guidance and career advice.

To my external examiners, Professors Ana María Bejarano and Jason Hackworth

at University of Toronto, and Professor Alan Gilbert at University College London, I

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want to thank them for their thorough feedback on the final stage of my dissertation,

which will hopefully help me to produce a book manuscript soon.

This research would not have been possible without the financial support of the

following institutions: the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada,

the Ontario Graduate Scholarship Program, the International Development Research

Centre, the School of Graduate Studies at the University of Toronto, and the Department

of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto, Mississauga.

In Medellín, I want to thank Professor Peter Brand for opening the doors for me

at the School of Urban and Regional Planning at the National University of Colombia –

Medellín campus, and guiding me during fieldwork. I also want to acknowledge the

support of my research assistants: Laura María Pedroza and Marlon Vargas. Julian

Henao and Zunil Lozano Medrano provided occasional assistance. I am most grateful to

the López-Rios and the Henao family (Doña Lucy, Don Sergio, Adriana, Oscar, Adolfo

Alejandro, Alejita, Daniel and Jerónimo) for hosting me in Medellín, and for their

limitless generosity. In Comuna 13, I owe Doña Socorro, Doña Mary, and the women of

the Associación de Mujeres de las Independencias, Jeihcco, and Katalina Vasquez for

helping me throughout.

Special thanks go to Abigail Friendly, Gabriela Sauter, Lake Sagaris and Evan

Castel at the University of Toronto for their feedback and friendship as we navigated

together the intricacies of graduate school, to Allison Lebow for editorial advice, and to

Monica Torres for hosting me during a productive writing retreat in Goderich, ON.

Professors Clara Irazábal at Columbia University, Roberto Rocco at Delft University of

Technology, Julio Dávila at University College London, Graham Denyer-Willis at

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Cambridge University, Julie Gamble and Sergio Montero at University of California at

Berkeley, Natalia Angel-Cabo at York University, and Catalina Chaux, also provided

feedback, and I am grateful for many intellectually stimulating exchanges and

engagements.

Finally, I want to thank my husband Jaime, who was almost always interested in

hearing about my research, and whose brilliance and pragmatism helped me many times

to clarify my own thinking. Most importantly, I thank Jaime for always being a fantastic

cheerleader, and undoubtedly, my biggest fan. I also owe to my children Sara and

Emma, now ages 12 and 6, who accompanied me during some instances of fieldwork

and grew and matured immensely in this process, and to the Escallon-Buraglia family

(Jaime, Inés Elvira, Diana, Diego, and Julián); my parents, Edelmira and Emilio, and my

sisters, Maria Angélica and Ximena, their husbands and children, for always being there

for me when I needed them.

Toronto, November 2014

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ....................................................................................................................... IV

LIST OF ACRONYMS ................................................................................................................................ X

LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................................................................... XII

LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................................................ XIII

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 1

SOCIAL URBANISM: ORDERLY DISORDER IN THE INNOVATIVE CITY .................................. 1

1.1 SOCIAL URBANISM: A DEVELOPMENTAL URBAN POLICY ASSEMBLAGE ............................................. 6 1.2 RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND KEY THEMES ....................................................................................... 11 1.3 METHODS............................................................................................................................................ 25 1.4 RESEARCH SETTING ............................................................................................................................ 27 1.5 CITY MANAGEMENT ........................................................................................................................... 30 1.6 STRUCTURE OF THE DISSERTATION .................................................................................................. 32

CHAPTER TWO ...................................................................................................................................... 35

FROM INDUSTRIALIZATION EXPERIMENT TO DIVIDED CITY: ............................................ 35

PRIVATIZED PLANNING, ECONOMIC DISLOCATION AND URBAN DECAY ........................ 35

2.1. THE RISE OF COLOMBIA’S FIRST INDUSTRIAL EXPERIMENT ......................................................... 37 2.2 URBANIZATION AND POPULATION GROWTH .................................................................................. 41 2.3 PLANNING AND ORDERING THE CITY ............................................................................................... 44 2.4 THE PERIPHERALIZATION OF LOW-INCOME HOUSING: POLICIES, PROGRAMS AND ACTORS ...... 49 2.5 ECONOMIC CRISIS AND URBAN DECAY ............................................................................................. 53 2.6 CONCLUSION: A DIVIDED CITY .......................................................................................................... 61

CHAPTER THREE .................................................................................................................................. 63

ENCLAVES OF SOCIO-SPATIAL RELEGATION ............................................................................. 63

3.1 PLACING COMUNA 13, SAN JAVIER ................................................................................................... 65 3.2 STORIES OF ARRIVAL ......................................................................................................................... 69 3.3 KEY ACTORS IN DEVELOPMENT: WOMEN’S GROUPS, SOCIAL CAPITAL AND INSTITUTIONS .......... 73 3.4 THE CONSTRUCTION OF COMUNA 13 AS A DANGEROUS PLACE ..................................................... 79 3.5 HETEROGENEOUS FORMS OF VIOLENCE IN COMUNA 13 .................................................................. 82 3.6 LOCAL GOVERNMENT’S RESPONSES (1990-2003) ....................................................................... 85 3.7 SECURITIZATION AND (PARA)MILITARIZATION (2000-2003) ................................................... 87 3.9 CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................................................... 91

CHAPTER FOUR .................................................................................................................................... 92

CREATING SPACES OF PLANNING EXPERIMENTATION: ........................................................ 92

DECENTRALIZATION, NEW SOLIDARITIES AND STATE TRANSFORMATIONS ............... 92

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4.1 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND BARRIOS POPULARES AS SOCIAL LABORATORIES ................................ 94 4.2 POLITICAL EXCLUSION AND VIOLENCE IN COLOMBIA ..................................................................... 96 4.3 STATE MODERNIZATION: A WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY .............................................................. 99 4.4 NEW CIVIC SOCIETY ACTORS .......................................................................................................... 104 4.5 ENCOUNTERING THE STATE ............................................................................................................ 106 4.6 PLANNING EXPERIMENTATIONS ..................................................................................................... 113 4.7 STRATEGIC PLAN FOR MEDELLÍN AND THE METROPOLITAN AREA (1997) .............................. 118 4.8 CONCLUSIONS ................................................................................................................................... 120

CHAPTER FIVE .................................................................................................................................... 123

LEADERSHIP, URBAN POLITICS, AND NEW POLITICAL RATIONALITIES ....................... 123

5.1 FROM CIVIC ACTORS TO POLITICAL MOVEMENT: CHANGING URBAN GOVERNANCE AND LOCAL

POLITICS .................................................................................................................................................. 126 5.2 A MULTI-CLASS PROGRESSIVE REGIME ......................................................................................... 134 5.3 GOOD GOVERNANCE IN THE VALLEY ................................................................................................ 135 5.4 “SYNERGISTIC” RELATIONS: INTER-CLASS COALITIONS AND PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS

.................................................................................................................................................................. 138 5.5 REDISTRIBUTION AND SOCIO-SPATIAL INCLUSION: REDEFINING THE CITY AS A PROBLEM-SOLVING ARENA ...................................................................................................................................... 140 5.6 CONCLUSIONS ................................................................................................................................... 146

CHAPTER SIX ....................................................................................................................................... 148

PLANNING THROUGH EXCEPTIONS: ........................................................................................... 148

THE LOGICS OF THE INTEGRATED DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS ......................................... 148

6.1 WHAT ARE URBAN DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS? ............................................................................ 151 6.2 PUI AT NORTH-EASTERN AREA ..................................................................................................... 160 6.3 PUI COMUNA 13 .............................................................................................................................. 163 6.4 PUIS AS LEGAL EXCEPTIONS ........................................................................................................... 165 6.5 CONCLUSIONS ................................................................................................................................... 178

CHAPTER SEVEN ................................................................................................................................. 181

AS GOOD AS IT GETS? ....................................................................................................................... 181

SOCIAL URBANISM AT THE NEIGHBOURHOOD SCALE ......................................................... 181

7.1 THE QUALITY OF LIFE AND THE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDEXES .............................................. 182 7.2. PUI NORTHEASTERN AREA (COMUNAS 1 AND 2) ....................................................................... 184 7.3 PUI COMUNA 13 .............................................................................................................................. 201 7.4 PPPS (PUBLIC-PARAMILITARY PARTNERSHIPS): GOVERNANCE IN THE POST-ORIÓN ERA ..... 208 7.5 CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................................................... 211

CHAPTER EIGHT ................................................................................................................................. 213

MEDELLÍN’S PROGRESSIVE PLANNING AND THE GRAY ZONES OF URBAN INNOVATION .................................................................................................................................................................. 213

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8.1 FROM MEDELLÍN TO NORTH AMERICA’S DECLINING CITIES? SOCIAL URBANISM’S FUTURE

TRAVELS ................................................................................................................................................... 217 8.2 PROMOTING “REDISTRIBUTION, RECOGNITION AND ENCOUNTER” .............................................. 218 8.3 THE POSTCARD EFFECT: INTERNATIONALIZING MEDELLÍN VIA SOCIAL URBANISM .................. 221 8.4 THE GRAY ZONES OF URBAN INNOVATION .................................................................................... 222

APPENDIX A ......................................................................................................................................... 227

METHODS AND RESEARCH DESIGN ............................................................................................. 227

SAFETY AND POSITIONALITY .................................................................................................................. 236 CAVEATS .................................................................................................................................................. 238 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................................ 238

BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................................... 240

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List of Acronyms

AUC: United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de

Colombia)

C-1991: 1991 Political Constitution

CAP: United Commandos of the People (Comandos Armados del Pueblo)

CEDEZO: Zonal Business Development Centre (Centro de Desarrollo Empresarial

Zonal)

CNMH: National Commission for Historic Memory (Comisión Nacional de

Memoria Histórica)

CIAM: International Congress of Modern Architecture

OPAMMA: Office of the Presidential Advisor for Medellín and the Metropolitan

Area (Consejería Presidencial para Medellín y su Area

Metropolitana)

DAPM: (Departmamento Administrativo de Planeación Municipal)

DNP: National Planning Department

ECV: Quality of Life Survey (Encuesta de Calidad de Vida)

EDU: Urban Development Corporation (Empresa de Desarrollo Urbano)

ELN: National Liberation Army (Ejercito Nacional de Liberacion)

EPM: Medellín’s Utilities Company (Empresas Públicas de Medellín)

FARC: Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas

Revolucionarias de Colombia)

GDP: Gross Domestic Product

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GT: Grounded Theory

HDI: Human Development Index

ICT: Institute for Territorial Credit (Instituto de Crédito Territorial)

IPC: Popular Training Institute (Instituto de Capacitación Popular)

JAC: Community Action Boards (Juntas de Acción Comunal)

KFW: Federal Ministry of Cooperation of Germany (Kreditanstalt für

Wiederaufbau)

MA: Municipal Agreement

MCC: Citizens’ Commitment Movement (Movimiento Compromiso Ciudadano)

MPP: Master Pilot Plan

MCV: Medellín Como Vámos?

NVC: Cores for Citizenship Life or Núcleos de Vida Ciudadana)

NGO: Non Governmental Organization

PRIMED: Comprehensive Neighbourhood Improvement Program (Programa

Integral de Mejoramiento de Barrios Subnormales)

PUI: Integrated Urban Projects (Proyectos Urbanos Integrales)

SMP: Society for Public Improvements (Sociedad de Mejoras Públicas)

QLS: Survey of Quality of Life

TOP: Territorial Ordering Plan

UDP: Urban Development Project

UNDP: United Nations Development Program

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List of Tables

2.1 Medellín’s Population Growth (1883-2013)………………………………………43

2.2 Medellín’s Population Growth (1964-2005)………………………………………43

4.2 Participatory Planning Processes in the Northeastern and Northwestern Areas.….115

5.1 Abstention in Mayoral Elections (1998-2000)…………………………………….128

5.2 Income and Investments Per Capita in the Largest Colombian Cities, 2011

($USD)………………………………...……………………..…………….............137

6.1 Selected Institutions and Partners Involved in social Urbanism Initiatives………..159

A.1 Summary of Research Participants in Interviews and Focus Groups………….….233

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List of Figures

1.1 Medellín, Comunas and Corregimientos..……………………………………….…27

1.2 Medellín, Antioquia, Colombia …………………………………………………....29

2.1 Location and Topography of Medellín and the Aburra Valley, Antioquia………...38

2.2 Medellín’s Urban Area, 1908…………………………………………………....…40

2.3 Medellín’s Urban Area, 1947………….………………………………………...…41

2.4 Household Income for the 20% Poorest and 20% Wealthiest in Colombia (1991-

2005)……………………………………………………………………………….56

2.5 Quintiles 1 and 5 and Urban Gini Coefficient (1991-1999) ……………………….56

3.1 Comuna 13, San Javier and the Centre-Western Zone……………………………..67

3.2 Dwellings built on unstable terrains with high Gradients in Comuna 13…………..68

3.3 Landscape in Independencias II….....………………………………………………69

3.4 Middle Class Area near San Javier Metro Station, Comuna 13……………………80

4.1 Political Timeline 1988-present……………………………………………………109

5.1 Medellín’s Municipal Revenues in USD (Millions) 1995-2010……………….….129

5.2 Sergio Fajardo’s Handwriting: Medellín’s Transformation: Medellín the Most

Educated”… ………………………………………………………………….….141

5.3 Medellín’s Human Development Index by Comuna………………………....…...143

6.1 PUI Actors and Components……………………………………………….……..155

6.2 Summary of PUI Initiatives………………………………………………….……156

6.3 Map of Integrated Projects…………………………………………………….…..158

6.4 PUI at Northeastern Area (Comunas 1 and 2) Public Works Projects…………....161

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6.5 Santo Domingo Library Park and Metrocables………………………………...…162

6.6 Santo Domingo Stop, Metrocable Station Line K………………………………...162

6.7 Metrocable Station and Pedestrian Improvements………………………………..163

6.8 Library Park San Javier, Presbitero Jose Luis Arroyave, Comuna 13………….…164

6.9 Outdoors Escalators in El Salado, Comuna 13……………………………………173

7.1 PUI Northeastern Area (Comunas 1 and 2)………………………………………..184

7.2 Quality of Life Index (percentages) Comunas 1 and 2 (2004-2010)………………185

7.3 Human Development Index (Percentages) Comunas 1 and 2 (2004-2010)………..186

7.4 Homicide Rate per 100,000 Inhabitants in Medellín (1991-2012)……………...…187

7.5 Real Estate Transactions –Residential. Comunas 1 and 2 (2000-2007)…...………188

7.6 Average Cadastral Property Values USD Comunas 1 and 2 (2000-2007)………...188

7.7 Avenue Improvement project, Pui North eastern Area…………………………….190

7.8 Spain Library Park public spaces and Pedestrian Paths……………………………191

7.9 Turf Field at Granizal………………………………………………………………191

7.10 Zonal Business Development Centre CEDEZO in Santo Domingo………......….193

7.11 Small Business in the Surroundings of Spain Library Park……………...…….....198

7.12 Restaurant La Mesa de mi Barrio in Santo Domingo…………………………….199

7.13 Children Tour guides in Santo Domingo………………………………………....200

7.14 PUI Comuna 13……………………………………………...……………………201

7.15 The 99 Avenue Rehabilitation Project…………………………..………………..202

7.16 Quality of Life and Human Development Indexes for Comuna 13, 2004-2010.…203

7.17 Pedestrian Bridge Connecting San Javier Library Park to the San Javier Metro

Station……………………………………………………...…………………..205

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7.18 “Bienvenidos:” Army’s Checkpoint in Comuna 13’s Area of Expansion..……...208

8.1 Youth Dancing at the Entrance Hall of San Javier Library park……………….….219

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Chapter One: Introduction

Social Urbanism: Orderly Disorder in the Innovative City

Few cities have transformed the way that Medellín, Colombia’s second largest

city, has in the past 20 years. Medellín’s homicide rate has plunged, nearly 80%

from 1991 to 2010. The city built public libraries, parks, and schools in poor

hillside neighborhoods and constructed a series of transportation links from there

to its commercial and industrial centers. The links include a metro cable car

system and escalators up steep hills, reducing commutation times, spurring

private investment, and promoting social equity as well as environmental

sustainability. …

But a change in the institutional fabric of the city may be as important as the

tangible infrastructure projects. The local government, along with businesses,

community organizations, and universities worked together to fight violence and

to modernize Medellín.

Urban Land Institute, Medellín: Innovative City of the Year, March 1st 2013

With this statement, in March 2013, the Wall Street Journal, Citi and the Urban

Land Institute recognized Medellín, Colombia, as the Innovative City of the Year. The

contest originally involved 200 contenders at the global level. Through an online voting

component, the list was narrowed down to twenty-five cities at first, and later to a group

of three finalists, including New York and Tel Aviv. The award was given to Medellín in

recognition of what has been dubbed the “Medellín miracle”: “a radical urban makeover

with a redistributive purpose: the best projects … for the poorest, more violent areas”

(The Economist, 2014, n.p.). Grounded on claims to social justice, violence reduction,

and democracy, and supported by an ample inter-class coalition (Gutierrez et al., 2009),

mayors Sergio Fajardo (2004–07) and Alonso Salazar (2008–11) implemented an urban

policy they termed social urbanism. Under this policy, Medellín expanded basic services

2

and social investments to marginalized districts; instituted participatory budgeting and

participatory planning programs citywide; and sought to integrate precarious enclaves

into the “formal” city through transit policy and the expansion of public spaces to the

city’s peripheries.

Social urbanism was a response to urban crisis. In the 1980s and 1990s, amidst

deindustrialization and growing informality, Medellín became a central node to the

international drug-trafficking business (Arango-Jaramillo, 1990). By 1991, drug-dealer

Pablo Escobar had constituted a powerful criminal network and declared war against the

Colombian state, spurring fear across the country and turning Medellín into the most

violent city in the world for nearly a decade (Salazar, 2013 [2002]; Cardona, et al. 2005).

Although Escobar was killed in 1993, Medellín’s–and Colombia’s–recent history has

been indelibly marked by drug wars and the ongoing influence of non-state violent actors

(old and new) with diverse interests and agendas (Ceballos & Cronshaw, 2001; Pécault,

2001). In parallel, the city’s socio-economic gaps widened in the 1990s and early 2000s,

and urban poverty concentrated in the city’s peripheral hillsides (Jaramillo, 1998). Thus,

the Medellín of the 1980s–2000s is typically characterized in both international and local

renderings as an unequal and violent city influenced by the mafia and contested by

militias; in other words, an urban havoc.1

Not surprisingly, news of the 2013 Innovative City of the Year award produced a

great deal of local pride and enthusiasm, although it was not the city’s first award or the

most prestigious. In fact, between 2008 and 2014, ensuing the implementation of social

1 Such depictions of Medellín are exemplified in international films such as Our Lady of the Assassins

(2001) directed by Barbet Schroeder; Blow (2001) with actors Johnny Depp and Penélope Cruz; and

Colombian films such as Rodrigo D: No Future (1990) and The Rose Seller (1998) by filmmaker Victor

Gaviria.

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urbanism, Medellín’s local government received over forty international recognitions

that celebrated the city’s efforts in city management, sustainability, urban planning, and

poverty reduction. For instance, in 2008, Medellín was honoured with the UN-

HABITAT Best Practice Award for Improving the Living Environments of the Poor and

the Holcim Gold Medal for sustainable and equitable development. In 2009, the city

received the Gates Foundation Award for the educational impact of its system of Library

Parks and the Curry Stone Design Prize for Transformative Public Works. In 2010,

Medellín was one of three cities exalted in UN-HABITAT’s Scroll of Honours for its

participatory and poverty reduction programs; while in 2012, it was conferred the

Sustainable Transport Award by the Institute for Transportation and Development

Policy. In 2013, Medellín accepted Harvard’s Veronica Rudge Green Prize in Urban

Design.

And yet, the 2013 innovation prize was especially meaningful for the current

mayor Aníbal Gaviria (2012-2015) and the business elites because it ranked Medellín

along a prominent list of world class cities.2 It also sparked a “hype machine” with

coverage from mainstream media outlets such as CNN, the New York Times, The

Washington Post, and The Economist. Following three decades of drug-related violence

and economic downturn, Medellín was “back on the map” as an international example of

state-led success and innovation.

In May of 2014, as the local host of the 7th World Urban Forum, over 22,000

urban practitioners from across the globe, including government officials, international

consultants, academics, and personnel from multilateral development banks, United

2 Aníbal Gaviria’s reaction to the prize, along with the views of other city officials and private-sector

managers can be found in the Award’s website: http://online.wsj.com/ad/cityoftheyear

4

Nations agencies, and NGOs, travelled to Medellín to witness the transformation.

According to UN-HABITAT officials who spoke at the event, the experience of

Medellín demonstrates that “when equity is an integral part of the development agenda,

the deep structural problems and challenges of cities can be better addressed” (UN-

HABITAT, 2014, n.d.). Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz echoed this sentiment in an article

that appeared on May 8th, 2014 in the The Guardian (UK) titled: “Medellín’s

metamorphosis provides a beacon for cities across the globe.” In this piece, Stiglitz

underlines Medellín’s policies and the role of urban planning in promoting equity and

sustainability. This perspective is similar to the one by Fukuyama and Colby (2011) who

had earlier argued in the Foreign Policy journal:

Over the past generation, Americans have grown cynical about grand

experiments in urban planning and other sweeping social-policy programs. But

for most of the world's population, consumed with the necessities of day-to-day

existence, getting social services right matters a lot more than ideology (…).

Think government can't deliver smart, intelligent urban design that changes lives?

Travel to Medellín, and it's hard to remember why it is that Americans have given

up trying (Fukuyama and Colby 2011, p. 1).

But was there really a radical change? Can we attribute Medellín’s recent

glowing reputation to smart policy and fine urban design? Indeed, the case of social

urbanism contains puzzling elements that should be detailed given the city’s remarkable

junctures. Contrary to Fukuyama’s and Colby’s (2011) perspective, Hylton (2007) raises

suspicion about highly visible projects that may fall short in addressing the deep

complexities of a socially divided city. While bearing the legacies of the drug cartel wars

of the late 1980s and 1990s in mind, with over half of the population working in the

informal sector (Betancur 2007a) and a blatant stigmatization of youth and low-income

5

communities (Riaño-Alcalá, 2006), it is yet to be problematized whether an “extreme

makeover” (Hylton, 2007) could possibly reduce pervasive social exclusion in the city.

Thus, we may ask, what exactly does success mean in the complex context of Medellín,

and what type of innovation happened through planning?

This dissertation is about the emergence of “social urbanism.” It seeks to reveal

its origins, political rationalities, and tactics on the ground. I shed light on the

connections among socio-spatial marginality, conflict, urban politics, and entrepreneurial

urban governance arrangements. Most crucially, I identify the gaps and ambivalences

that emerge between the politics of three disparate logics at play: first, goals of

development and socio-spatial redistribution; second, the pressures cities face to repair

local economies and attract foreign resources; and third, the influence of violent actors,

including both organized crime and the repressive arm of the state.

Recent literature defines the construction of urban policies, including social

urbanism, as a process that is both relational and situated. Policy formation involves

constant flows and connections to other places (Latour, 2005; Peck & Theodore, 2010),

but it is also deeply embedded in the local territories, histories, and social contestations

that play out in the sphere of urban politics (McCann & Ward, 2011). Indeed, Medellín’s

distinctive context has, as of late, rendered the city a field of ongoing re-visioning and

policy experimentation. In these policymaking exercises, a variety of actors and

networks endowed with different forms of power use their means of influence to

mobilize local, national, regional, and transnational ideas in order to legitimize particular

types of place-making. Such relational dynamics are inherent to urban politics, which

Allen and Cochrane (2007) define as: “an interplay of forces where a range of actors

6

mobilize, enrol, translate, channel, broker and bridge in ways that make different kinds

of government possible” (p. 1171 original emphasis). Fundamentally, this “interplay of

forces” entails a struggle over socio-spatial transformations.

Analyzing urban policy formation, and therefore, its affinities and connections

with certain actors, discourses, places, and practices (Amin, 2002), allows us to engage

with a classic concern for urban scholars: the question of “how and in whose interests do

local space economies are produced and reproduced” (McCann, 2002, p. 385). It also

invites us to question what type of city visions are promoted and by whom in order to

legitimize particular models of urban growth (Logan & Molotch, 1987; Macleod, 2011).

In engaging these questions, this thesis considers urban policy experimentations, such as

social urbanism, as the result of multiple, complex, and contradictory assemblages.

The existent tensions between Medellín’s territorial characteristics, intricate

institutional legacies, politics, and contingency, and the local hopes of policy players and

networks for rebuilding the city in reference to transnational developmental agendas and

global economic processes, delineate a productive field of inquiry for the elucidation of

emerging forms of urban policy and planning policy innovation in Latin American cities

and beyond.

1.1 Social urbanism: A developmental urban policy assemblage

Planners and policymakers interviewed for this research defined the practice of

social urbanism as a “problem-solving” approach in relation to three situated and

intertwined issues: first, deficient connectivity between informal neighbourhoods and

other areas of the city; second, concentrated urban poverty, violence, and lack of

7

educational and economic opportunities; and third, widespread “invisibility” and

illegitimacy of the state in these particular communities3 (John Maya, former Chief

Executive Officer at the Urban Development Corporation or EDU, pers. comm.,

08/08/2012; and César Hernandez, former Technical Coordinator for the Integrated

Urban Projects, EDU, pers. comm. 24/09/2011).

Within the landscape of urban upgrading approaches, social urbanism can be

characterized as a “comprehensive neighbourhood upgrade.” In essence, it is an

integrated, multi-sectoral planning strategy aimed at transforming the built environment

in order to enable the implementation of social policy. In the case of social urbanism,

public works projects are planned according to the goals to improve the provision of

health, education, local economic development, mobility, early childhood development,

food security, safety and conviviality, mobility, culture, and sports and recreation. This

approach to slum upgrading is different from the more common “sectoral” methods that

would typically prioritize the gradual provision of basic services, physical amenities and

land titling. In fact, the Urban Development Corporation or EDU (Empresa de

Desarrollo Urbano), the city’s decentralized agency in charge of implementation,

describes social urbanism as a way to “install simultaneously all of the [social]

development tools available to the state” (EDU, 2013, n.p. emphasis by author) in

underserved territories. Thus, the assumption is that all municipal agencies and bodies

are to be involved in the planning process.

3 Many experts and residents interviewed for this research interpret the state’s illegitimacy and invisibility

as an “absent state.” The discourse of the “absent state,” which has become prevalent as a way to explain

the problems of the city, is based on the lack of service provision, but also, it relates to the fact that non-

state armed groups have historically held and disputed territorial control and enforced their owned laws,

norms and rules. However, it is an inaccurate depiction insofar as citizens still relate to the state through

national and local state policies, they also bargain against the state to acquire services, and engage in other

state-society interactions, even if sporadically.

8

The term “social urbanism” first emerged during Mayor Fajardo’s administration

in the context of planners’ informal conversations about their own practice. As the term

gained traction among wider publics, “social urbanism” became a policy brand

associated to an “equity planning” framework. Alejandro Echeverri, former Director of

the EDU described this equity vision with these words: “although all urbanisms are

intrinsically social, social urbanism is the idea that these [urban development] projects

should convey new opportunities for social transformation, should be socially

meaningful” (pers. comm. 03/12/10). In 2008, Mayor Salazar gave continuity to social

urbanism and formally adopted it as a programmatic line of his political agenda.

Policy actors identify five important characteristics of social urbanism as a

planning intervention: first, a geographic targeting method involving the Human

Development Index to establish areas where the municipality should prioritize

investments based on equity criteria; second, a coordinated planning effort to consult,

build, and manage new operations and service delivery; third, the creation of what

planners interviewed called “quality places” where urban design and architecture play

important roles and make the state visible; fourth, the expansion of welfare programs to

informal neighbourhoods to underserviced areas; and fifth, strong community

participation methodologies.

These different components of the policy materialize into an inter-institutional

planning exercise engaging municipal secretariats, decentralized agencies, special

purpose bodies, civic society partners, non-profits, community-based organizations and

residents through an urban project approach. Inside the project area, physical

redevelopment is minimized to preserve the character of self-built neighbourhoods.

9

Public works projects are thus devised as “urban acupuncture” (Echeverri, pers. comm.

03/12/10): a mix of monumental buildings and small-scale projects that create

infrastructure corridors and expand public spaces thus reducing the need for residents’

relocations.

Much of the international appeal of Medellin’s social urbanism lies in the

application of a large-scale Urban Development Project (UDP) management model.

UDPs are targeted operations developed under special circumstances that rely on legal

exceptions for a rapid reconfiguration of the built environment. As planning tools, UDPs

display a great symbolic capacity to change previous imageries associated with marginal

places, creating a swift sense of transformation (Swyngedow et al., 2002; Carmona &

Burgess, 2005). The allure and political efficacy of UDPs are self-evident for planners

and politicians alike; this is the case even more so in cities like Medellín, which, having

been torn by conflict, are trying to remake their fortunes.

Medellín’s urban policymaking also has a transnational dimension: it

appropriates global models of urbanism such as Barcelona’s ideas of revitalization

through citizen participation, quality architecture, and urban projects (Monclús, 2003;

Delgado, 2007; Sánchez, 2011); national “best practices” such as Bogota’s program of

public spaces, city management and transit expansion (Martin & Ceballos, 2004; Gilbert,

2006; Berney, 2010); and Porto Alegre’s experiences of democratic governance (Abers,

2000; Baiocchi, 2005; Avritzer, 2010). Social urbanism is also framed within “good

governance” agendas as promoted by international development organizations and

agencies (Grindle, 2012); and human development goals based on Sen’s (1999)

capabilities framework, particularly in program design and evaluation. This approach

10

has been widely promoted by United Nations institutions across the developing world,

and it is implemented to benchmark advances in poverty reduction in Colombia and

throughout Latin America. As such, social urbanism has been assembled based on the

local experiences, and also through its connections to distant places and transnational

developmental agendas.

There is a growing interest by scholars in examining Medellín’s social urbanism

from various disciplines. For instance, some researchers have studied mobility

innovations in connection with poverty reduction, particularly the impact of Medellín’s

aerial cablecars (Blanco & Kobayashi, 2009; Brand & Dávila, 2011; Dávila 2013). Other

authors provide critical historical (Hylton, 2007; Mendieta, 2011) and anthropological

(Pérez, 2010) accounts of the politics of “creative destruction” and urban reconstruction

in the city. There are also examinations of Medellín’s local economic development

policy (Devlin, 2010; Bateman, et al., 2011). For instance, Bateman et al., (2011, p. 1),

claim that “a radical new trajectory” has pushed progress in Medellín and that state-led

planning is “promoting enterprise and social inclusion.” Other urban researchers have

used discourse analysis methods to interpret the politics of social urbanism (Quinchía,

2011; Montoya-Restrepo, 2014), while Leyva (2010) focuses on state transformations,

and Gutierrez et al. (2013) look at security policies.

This wide-ranging literature has been insightful. However, there are very few, if

any, comprehensive studies in the field of planning interpreting social urbanism’s

precedents, characteristics, and effects. Thus, this dissertation studies the context,

history, limitations, and possibilities of social urbanism. Through this work, I attempt to

contribute a relational and situated framework for the analysis of urban planning

11

experimentation and innovations in Latin America.

1.2 Research Questions and Key Themes

This dissertation is transversed by five interconnected themes: first, socio-spatial

(in)justices; second, participatory planning and democratic innovations; third, urban

politics and the tensions between global economic pressures and local developmental

rationalities; fourth, legal exceptions in governance and planning; fifth, democracy and

violence.

1.2.1 Socio-spatial (in)justices

My point of departure is the history of the city. I examine Medellín’s process of

urban growth to identify the historical and geographical formation of socio-spatial

injustices. Socio-spatial injustices are understood as the disadvantages produced by

unequal access to locational resources, mobility, public services, and the structures of

production that shape urban form (Soja, 2010; Harvey, 2009[1973]).

I show that Medellín’s current complexities have overlapping precedents in local,

national, and global events. In fact, Medellín was one of Latin America’s leading

industrial hubs in the early and mid twentieth century: a “land of opportunity” for rural

migrants seeking a better quality of life (Farnsworth-Alvear, 2000). As a society highly

oriented to property rights and a deeply conservative moral standpoint, it succeeded in

accommodating population growth when this growth translated into needed labour, and

the urban poor could participate—however meagrely—as players in the housing market.

12

When contingencies such as La Violencia4 (1948–58) pushed impoverished rural

populations in Colombia to migrate to cities, and Medellín’s industrial model decayed,

the urban poor encountered multiple obstacles to access markets (labour and housing)

and to live and work informally in centrally located areas. These barriers were imposed

through institutions serving the interests of the propertied classes, and recreated

themselves into a “spatial regime” (Gotham, 2003) where property rights institutions,

planning by-laws, and urban development tools were instrumentalized for the benefit of

an elite, creating deep socio-spatial injustices. Urban space was therefore shaped to

reflect the consolidation of well-off classes in the central areas of the city and socio-

spatial exclusion of those without means or property spearheading a process of

peripheralization of the urban poor. In speaking to this, I illuminate how Medellín’s

urban peripheries have been constructed as “spaces of socio-spatial relegation”

(Wacquant, 2008; Auyero; 2013), as an outcome of the interacting violence,

differentiated citizenship (Holston, 2008), and exclusionary characteristics that coalesce

in the Medellín’s precarious peripheries.

1.2.2. Participation and bottom-up democratic innovations

So what are the limits and possibilities for planners attempting to challenge an

entrenched socio-spatial regime? What are the prospects of urban reform? To answer

these questions, I turn to the processes of state modernization—including urban reform,

decentralization, and democratization of state institutions—that took place in Colombia

4 La Violencia or The Violence refers to a historic period (1948-1958) of civil war in Colombia between

the Conservative and Liberal partisan elites following the assassination of Liberal populist leader Jorge

Eliecer Gaitán in 1948. La Violencia was fought by paramilitary armies in the rural countryside, creating a

large number of internal refugees who were forcibly displaced from their hometowns and migrated to

cities. See Pécaut (2001) for a national account and Roldán (2002) for an analysis of La Violencia in

Antioquia.

13

over the past three decades, and that, in many cases, created opportunities to improve

local governing capacities.

Baiocchi, Heller and Silva (2011) assert that the downward shift of power from

the national order to the local may convey new institutional openings for democratic

action through which citizens may reclaim their rights more effectively. In the context of

Medellín, I examine locally driven community based planning and the emergence of

“invented” and “invited” (Miraftab, 2009) spaces of participation. I show that, in the

context of decentralization, new informal and formal participatory spaces were created.

These spaces included city visioning exercises, collective debates about the city’s future,

and informal planning at the community level. Those settings became key instances of

democratization where social learning occurred and a demand for “radical planning”

(Friedmann, 1987; Beard, 2003) emerged. In turn, ordinary citizens acquired experiences

and skills that transformed them into political actors struggling for changes. These

experiences engaged them in planning processes as they pursued broader transformations

in their local territories. Decentralization would later enable local political spheres to

absorb these civil society innovations.

Until 1990, subnational politics in Colombia were characterized by a seemingly

unbending bipartisanism. The democratic election of mayors, which was instituted for

the first time in Colombia through Legislative Act 01 of 1986 and implemented in 1988,

along with the adoption of the 1991 Constitution, and the transfer of functions and fiscal

resources from the national and departmental level to municipalities changed sub-

national politics and inter-governmental relationships substantially. This is particularly

true for the three largest cities, and Bogotá became a prime example (Dávila & Gilbert,

14

2001; Martin & Ceballos, 2004). Decentralization and the 1991 Constitution created

incentives for new actors–outside the traditional bipartisan system–to participate in

politics. It also created opportunities for municipal administrations to pursue wide-

ranging urban reforms (Dávila, 2009).

1.2.3 Urban politics and the tensions between global pressures and local

developmental rationalities

The next section links participatory processes and emerging political actors to the

formation of a new civic and political movement called Citizens’ Commitment

Movement (Movimiento Compromiso Ciudadano). Led by Sergio Fajardo, the Citizens’

Commitment Movement emerged in 1999 in opposition to clientelistic bipartisan

politics. The movement was socially heterogeneous and developed its political identity

around goals such as education, redistribution, violence reduction, and participation.

Proponents of the movement included grass-roots leaders, left-leaning activists, liberals,

academics, intellectuals, environmentalists, and NGO actors. The movement built on the

support of the professional middle-classes and the young business elites, which in 2003

helped it to succeed in local elections. Once in effect in 2004, a “synergistic

relationship” (Evans, 1997) evolved among an ensemble of actors inside society and the

local government who shared a politics of reform. Stone’s (1993) urban regime

framework is useful to clarify how things “got actually done”: how were agendas set,

resources mobilized, and state-society coalitions built. According to Stone (1993, p. 17),

a “local governing capacity” is not just reflected by the outcomes of an electoral process

because the local state needs resources from non-state bases. Thus, a local governing

capacity reflects an informal coalition of actors inside and outside of government who

form an “urban regime” to strategize, find resources, and gather support towards

15

particular ends. As Gutierrez et al. (2009) assert, the Colombian “metropolitan miracle”

that took place in Bogotá in the early nineties, led by mayors Mockus and Peñalosa, and

that occurred a decade later in Medellín, found conditions of possibility via the political

organization of an heterogeneous group.

In the period 2004-11, a multi-class “progressive regime” (Stone, 1993) governed

Medellín: a mix of activist reformers and coalitions across government and society. This

regime was concerned with social issues, and managed to gather the support of an

unusual mix, such as Medellín’s Chamber of Commerce, Proantioquia, a powerful

private foundation representing the interests of Antioquia’s largest businesses and

corporations; trade union organizations, such as the Escuela Nacional Sindical; and

neighbourhood associations such as Corporación Cultural Nuestra Gente, representing

low-income areas of the city. By networking horizontally with new civic society and

private sector actors, this coalition added new “political rationalities” and new

“technologies of government” (Rose & Miller, 2010) to the local state; in other words, it

created new capacities to govern. For this, it relied on the middle-classes’ organizational

and technical skills and strong community participation.

Undoubtedly, some of the characteristics of social urbanism, for example, the use

of monumental architecture as city-marketing and the local government’s efforts to

internationalize the city as a model of successful and innovative urban transformation,

respond to the aspirations of the local elites and the middle-classes to reorient the local

economy from its decaying manufacturing base to service sectors. This goal requires the

city to be perceived internationally as safe, innovative, liveable and culturally vibrant to

foreign corporate executives willing to do businesses and perhaps relocate some of their

16

staff to this city. A policy like social urbanism can thus gather support from the middle–

and business–classes seeking to align the local economy with global trends, and reduce

their security costs.

Indeed, contemporary practices of urban policymaking in Medellín–and

elsewhere– play out in a global environment of scalar restructuring and neoliberalism

(Brenner, 2004). This milieu pushes cities to reconstruct local economies and to seek out

marketing strategies as they compete for mobile capital in an exclusionary “zero-sum”

game (Brenner & Theodore, 2002). At the local level, urban policy and local politics are

deemed to play important functions as a means to set a “spatiotemporal-fix” that allows

capitalism to grow and develop (Jessop, 2002, p. 469). Within these considerations,

critical scholars argue that urban planning is increasingly instrumentalized to enable

market-driven socio-spatial transformations (Swyngedouw, et. al. 2002). In this view, the

growing role of planning in branding a city’s image, generating new revenues through

tourism, and attracting or retaining a “creative class” (Florida, 2002) of professionals is

increasingly obscuring the transformational potential of the planning field towards more

equitable cities.

Thus, in the case of Medellín, the goals of equity and redistribution are in tension

with those of urban boosterism pursued by some economic sectors and elites who

supported Fajardo’s and Salazar’s reforms. Yet, I argue that the social urbanism agenda

in itself carried genuine goals of social development and redistribution associated to

equity planning approaches. Parnell and Robinson (2012) argue compellingly that, in

cities of the global South, developmental intentions often drive urban agendas, evoking

17

“right to the city” (Purcell, 2008; Harvey, 2003; Marcuse, 2009), “good city”

(Friedmann, 2000; Amin, 2006) and “just city” (Fainstein, 2009) concepts.

Over the past decade or so, ideas of the right to the city and socio-spatial justice

have had a trickle-down effect from intellectual debates into society and the field of

government. Anti-neoliberal groups and social movements have evoked the “right to the

city” in their struggles to reclaim their rights to habit and to inhabit the city as equals

(Marcuse, 2009), participate in decision-making, and appropriate urban life (Mitchell,

2003; Purcell, 2008). These considerations and discourses have also filtered into the

fields of international NGOs and urban policymaking, although in a less radical and

often depolitized way (Mayer, 2009). Government-led initiatives evoking the right to the

city and socio-spatial justice include anti-poverty programs, city re-visioning strategies

(Parnell, 2010), the adoption of city charters like in the case of Mexico City, and “good

governance” (Grindle, 2012) agendas. Nowadays, such initiatives are becoming a staple

of urban policy, particularly as former critics of the state and NGO actors are more

commonly moving to occupy positions in government.

The interest in right to the city ideals is partly explained by democratization

processes and changing political economy orientations in the region. Specifically, Latin

American political economies have in the past few years experienced a gradual shift

from laissez-faire neoliberal fundamentalism promoted by the Washington Consensus

(WC) to a renewed recognition of the role that institutions, politics, culture, and the state

can play in supporting development goals (Leiva, 2008; Mayer, 2003). At least three

dynamics are driving this turn: first, the sustained presence of civic, social and

indigenous movements organizing against neoliberalism and demanding enhanced

18

political participation (Stahler-Sholk et al, 2007); second, the rising tide of leftist or

centre-leftist leaning parties that, starting in 1999 and throughout the 2000s, swept

national politics in the region (Ellner, 2011; Weisbrot, 2006); and third, the recognition

by international development agencies and multilateral organizations that the market

alone cannot fix its collateral damage in the form of mounting inequalities (Devlin &

Moguillansky, 2012).5

For cities, these trends have translated into a growing recognition of the potential

role that the state can play in promoting urban quality of life and sustainability. In

negotiating decentralization and an evolving urban reform legislation, municipal

authorities have gained a more varied toolkit of land-use management instruments to

control the effects of exclusionary urban development (Irazábal, 2009). This shift has

prompted some cities to venture into more comprehensive agendas. For example, until

1986, land-use planning regulations in Colombia were a function of national-level

authorities. Gradually, the country adopted a legal framework (1989, 1997) for territorial

ordering, which now demands locally developed master planning. It also imposes a

statutory duty on the political system to commit to the prevalence of public over private

interests, the social and ecological function of property, and the rights to dignified

5 Following the collapse of Import-Substitution-Industrialization (ISI) policies and the macro-economic

volatility crisis of the 1980s throughout the region, multilateral organizations imposed, or at least

promoted, the idea that greater efficiency and macroeconomic stability would favour economic growth. By

embracing open markets, adopting labour reform, shrinking the role of government, and consequently,

expanding the role of the private sector to state activities, countries were expected to attain a systemic

comparative advantage. The implementation of a package of structural adjustment policies (SAPs) would

help countries run more efficiently, improve access to capitals, skills and opportunities for the population

and reduce poverty and inequality in the long term (Leiva, 2008). However, this neoliberal re-engineering

spawned a new crisis in Latin America, failing to achieve the expected rates of economic growth, widening

the inequality gap, and exposing populations to unprecedented social, economic and environmental

vulnerabilities (Weisbrot, 2006; Keeling, 2004).

19

housing, public space and civic participation (Piedrahita & Gonzáles, 2010). Similar

processes and other innovations are sprouting up in other Latin American countries as

well, leading Irazábal (2009) to highlight the historical significance of this shift: "This is

a marked deviation from historic land-use policies in the region that privileged private

over public rights and reduced the effectiveness of planning institutions” (p. 560).

1.2.4 Legal exceptions in governance and planning

The following section asks whether planning policy innovations can redress

decades of socio-spatial relegation in Medellín’s marginalized comunas, or districts, and

to what extent can social urbanism challenge the oppressive norms and the legacy of

institutions that support the accumulation of socio-spatial injustices. How can planners

negotiate the construction of public works projects, and reinsert institutions in

neighbourhoods where the state’s legitimacy is contested and the actual territories are

off-limits to the police? What type of “urban governance innovation” allowed Medellín

to implement social urbanism against adverse circumstances? I argue that the execution

of social urbanism was possible because policymakers invoked exceptionalities in

governance and planning. I show that Medellin’s integrated urban projects resemble the

idea of a “government of emergency” where special rules are applied in order to install a

new spatial order in highly contested territories. Through the adoption of special norms,

the local government participates in the intense reorganization of local power and the

ordering of urban space.

The concept of “state of exception” has been most frequently studied in war-like

situations, such as the Nazi concentration camp system or Guantanamo Bay. For

instance, in the case of Colombia’s national violent conflict, the state of exception is

commonly associated to scholarship concerned with “states of emergency”: presidential

20

decrees imposing the temporary suspension of civil liberties enabling the executive to

implement counterinsurgency measures (Ramirez, 2010). In these examples, the

suspension of the rule of law is grounded on claims to the public good, so that military

impositions can legally regulate over civilian life.

Agamben (2005) contends, however, that in current times, legal exceptionalities

are not only associated to wartime; in fact, they have become a staple tool of government

that is applied to a wide array of political and economic instances. In their own

interpretation of Agamben’s work, Gray and Porter (2014) claim that: “One of the

hallmarks of contemporary states, including democratic ones... is the voluntary creation

of states of emergency, even when not formally declared” (p.1). Based on discourses of

crisis and necessity, modern governments have reserved the benefit to suspend the norm

when it seems advantageous to do so, and appeal to special dispositions to address a

variety of circumstances.

In recent years, urban scholars have brought increased attention to the

reconfigurations of power within local governments and the politics of exceptionality in

urban governance and planning (for example, Swyngedouw et al, 2002; Marrero-

Guillamon, 2012; Sanchez & Broudehoux, 2013). In these examples, practices of

exception are generally seen as “legal instruments defining special rules and procedures

for specific urban governance situations” (Baptista, 2013, p. 40). These exceptions are

often justified based on atypical occurrences such as sports mega-events (Gray and

Porter, 2014), terrorism threats and securitization (Burke, 2012), but also on the basis of

economic efficiency, flexibility, and opportunities for city-marketing (Swyngedouw et

al., 2002). As such, local governments make the case for exceptions in order to take

21

shortcuts in the execution of policy and govern particular spaces (and populations) in a

differentiated way (Baptista, 2013). Thus, these exceptions are at the borderlines between

“public law and political fact” (Gray & Porter, 2014, p. 1).

The territorialization of exceptions has also been studied with particular interest

in the contexts of East and Southeast Asia, where liberalization translated into a “zone

fever” (Roy, 2011, p. 234) led by the state to establish new transnational spaces of

capital accumulation such as special economic or technologic zones, tourism districts, or

free-trade zones. In China, for instance, these zones of exception are linked to an

emerging type of fragmented urbanism articulated by differentiated state-led planning

(Cartier, 2001; Ong, 2006). In this context, zones of exception are conceived of as

“spaces of graduated or variegated sovereignty” (Ong, 2006, p. 7) because they are

administered differently, have additional privileges, and are subject to a different type of

control from government agencies; thus, producing “different territorializations of value”

(Ong, 2008, p. 124).

I show that the discourse of social urbanism and its materialization in the form of

large-scale urban development projects uses a language of “crisis” and “necessity” to

justify the implementation of exceptionalities in planning and governance. As the local

state reasserts its presence through the reconfiguration of the built environment and the

provision of services in areas historically beyond its actual control, urban planning tools,

such as large-scale development projects become territorialized forms of exception or

“zones of indistinction.” Agamben (2005) describes these spaces as “a threshold or a

zone of indifference, when inside and outside do not exclude each other but rather blur

with one another” (p. 27). Medellín’s Integrated Urban Projects (PUIs) demarcate new

22

liminal spaces where the logics of informality, the law, and social urbanism’s legal

exceptionalities merge and overlap, one without absorbing or eliminating the other.

In the context of Medellin’s uneven urbanism, this “planning of emergency”

creates an alternate scale of valorization to the socio-spatial regime deemed responsible

for causing urban fragmentation. Thus, exceptions are justified with the goals of

redressing socio-spatial injustices when formal planning practice has failed to support

“just city” principles. In contrast to other experiences, such as those of mega-events or

security threats, the exceptions invoked through social urbanism have the primary goal to

create spaces of redistribution, social encounter, and collective life. In this regard, social

urbanism provides a rare example of how,

[n]eoliberalism, as an accumulative and anticipatory logic of valorization is both

enabled and disabled by exception, a political mechanism that configures spaces

of capital accumulation or spaces of collective life (Ong, 2008, p. 127).

In examining social urbanism’s physical interventions as spaces of exception, I

also look critically at the reconfigurations of power in governance underpinning PUIs’

new spatial arrangements. The implications of relying on exceptions from statutory

norms to provide services to the urban poor merit careful consideration, particularly

since vested interests or urban politics can easily co-opt the planning process and subvert

the initial goals that have been thought to support just city principles. Exceptions assert a

“sovereign power” to impose special rules, which in essence constitute undemocratic

instances of decision-making (Agamben, 2005).

1.2.5 Democracy and violence: An orderly disorder

A recurrent theme throughout this study is democracy and violence, and what

they mean in the evolution of governance in the city. Recent scholarship points out that

23

in contemporary Latin America, urban policies often unfold in an environment of

“violent pluralisms,” a scenario where “multiple violent actors operate within the polity

and maintain different and changing connections to state institutions and political

leaders” (Arias & Goldstein 2010, p. 21). Medellín provides a prime example of violent

pluralisms. As Chapter Three explains, from vigilantism, to youth gangs, to rightist and

leftist militias, to powerful drug mafias and their overlapping influences, ever-changing

alliances, and territorial contestations, many of the city’s low-income neighbourhoods

have been historically off-limits to judiciary institutions and police forces. Non-state

armed groups have had a history of replacing, complementing or encroaching the state as

(in)security providers.

The expansion of violent groups has been linked to the reproduction of

Colombia’s historical violence, and to a weak state failing to recognize the rights of all

citizens and lacking the capacity to enforce the rule of law. The power void left by the

state in the precarious neighbourhoods has at different times conferred violent actors

with local legitimacy in the regulation of social conflicts, while fuelling economies of

violence linked primarily to the demands of the global illicit traffic of arms and drugs. In

addition, given existent systemic barriers restricting upward social mobility, for those

involved with the mafias, the risks of participating in illegal activities are offset by the

anticipation of large economic rewards.

State-society interactions and “institutional openings” for social change in

Medellín should therefore be understood within the context of a “besieged” democracy

(Bejarano & Pizarro, 2002). As Holston (2008) observes from the Brazilian perspective,

the Latin American experience of democratization is characterized by “a perverse

24

paradox” (p. 271) because violence, criminalization, and social injustices have

proliferated alongside the formal expansion of rights. Similarly, democratization in

Colombia entailed new formal channels of participation, social rights, and increased

local autonomy; but nevertheless, this democracy is flawed in the guarantee of dissent

and in the protection of human rights (Bejarano & Pizarro, 2002; Ramirez, 2010). As

Arias and Goldstein (2010) indicate, it is necessary to understand the roles that violence

fulfills in contemporary democracies in the region as “an element integral to the

configuration of those institutions, as a necessary component of their maintenance, and

as an instrument for popular challenges to their legitimacy” (p.4).

The study of social urbanism in such a complex environment leads us to question

the ascending role of planning in processes of state formation, as increasingly, mayors

and policymakers resort to planning tactics with the hopes of reconstituting state-society

relations in informal and often disputed areas of a city. As a form of “emergency

planning,” social urbanism is often accompanied by securitization measures, and relies

on practices of exception in governance in the sense that state armed forces and

institutions are selectively territorialized to retake problem zones. Implementing urban

planning efforts in neighbourhoods where the state’s legitimacy is into question, and the

rule of law is loosely enforced, engenders complex governance scenarios that function as

“gray zones” (Auyero, 2007) in state-society relations. Gray zones are defined as

institutional spaces where normative exceptionality allows for formal/informal,

legal/illegal, and democratic/violent norms to overlap. This unclear normative

environment implicates legal and extra-legal actors who acknowledge one another and

sometimes follow the norms and interests of one another but do not openly or

25

consistently mobilize against each other. While state authorities do become a local

reference of legitimacy, the scope of state power is diffused and shared with extra-legal

agents. For residents, the rules and modes of interaction in this exceptional governance

scenario tend to overlap and merge in obscure ways.

Referring to crime and policing in marginalized areas of Buenos Aires, Auyero

(2007) characterizes gray zones as those spaces “where the activities of those

perpetrating the violence and those who seek to control them coalesce… a murky area

where normative boundaries dissolve” (Auyero, 2007, p. 32). Building on Auyero’s

concept of gray zones, and on Agamben’s (2005) zones of indistinction and regimes of

exception, I argue that social urbanism thus produces an “orderly disorder” in place-

making and governance. While planning attempts to construct a more functional,

equitable, safe and fluid spatial logic through social urbanism’s interventions in the built

environment, these efforts take place in neighbourhoods where the state’s legitimacy and

authority are still contested. Consequently, despite increased participatory governance,

urban planning and service provision, and new state-society relations through an

expanded subnational state, local violent groups and organized criminal networks retain

their territorial influence, which evolves into reciprocity and collusion among the

different actors involved. As a result, governance is disordered and unclear to residents:

it is both “confused and confusing” (Auyero, 2007).

1.3 Methods

This research employed a qualitative, grounded theory (GT) approach (see

Appendix A for a detailed description of methods). The particularity of this method is

26

that instead of testing or verifying a hypothesis, findings are built upon fieldwork

experiences and reflexivity, and theoretical contributions emerge through systematic

coding and analysis of data (Charmaz, 2006). GT’s rationale is that as research evolves,

key themes transpire into categories, concepts, and theoretical contributions. The

emphasis is on “thick analysis” in contrast to other qualitative methods, such as

ethnographies, which focus primarily on “thick description” (Clarke, 2005).6

The research design consisted of a policy case study and two mini-case studies of

implementation. The areas selected were the Integrated Urban Project of the

Northeastern Area (Comunas 1 and 2) and the Integrated Urban Project of Comuna 13.

Fieldwork took place between August of 2011 and August of 2012 in five separate

rounds. Methods included document analysis, semi-structured interviews, focus groups,

cognitive mapping, and observation. A total of 132 semi-structured interviews were

conducted: out of these, 61 were with key informants including planners, policy makers,

politicians, and NGO actors; 26 with local leaders and key community actors at the

Northeastern Area; and 21 at Comuna 13. I also conducted eight focus groups with

various groups of residents at the Northeastern Area, and ten of these at Comuna 13.

Interviews were typically one hour long, while focus groups lasted approximately two

hours and took place in community spaces adjacent to PUI interventions, such as the

library-parks, schools, community organizations or NGOs. All interviews and focus

groups were conducted and fully transcribed in Spanish.

6 Emulating Geertz (1973) proposed ethnographic method of ‘thick description’ Clarke (2005) proposes

the term ‘thick analysis’ as the desirable outcome of situational analyses conducted in GT approaches.

27

Figure 1.1

Medellín, Comunas and Corregimientos

1.4 Research setting

Medellín is the departmental capital and main metropolitan region of Antioquia.

It is also the second largest and wealthiest city in Colombia, with a population of

2,214,494 inhabitants and an estimated 3,312,165 for the metropolitan area. Between

2001 and 2011 Antioquia contributed nearly 14 percent of Colombia’s Gross Domestic

Product (GDP), half of which was produced in Medellín. Medellín’s GDP in 2012 was

US$16.9 million. Despite its economic dynamism, the last census (2005) established that

28

12.4% of Medellín’s residents (approximately 273,000) could not meet their most basic

needs, and that 17% of the population lived in inadequate housing (approximately 85,168

units).7

Medellín is located on a narrow valley, called the Aburrá Valley, and upland hills

that expand along the Medellín River. Medellín’s altitude varies from 1,500 to 1,800

meters above sea level, although some peripheral low-income settlements reach 2,100

meters. The administrative area covers 1,165 square kilometres; out of this area, 28.7% is

designated as urban; 1.3% are zones of urban expansion; and 70% is rural. The city’s

population density (persons per square kilometre) is 3,001.5. Medellín is administratively

composed of six zones, which are divided into sixteen urban districts called comunas,

and five rural townships, called corregimientos. Neighbourhoods represent the smallest

territorial unit: there are 249 legal neighbourhoods accepted by the Planning Department

(by Decree 346 of 2000) and even more settlements not yet recognized as such. Many of

these informal neighbourhoods are located in the highest elevations of the northeastern

area of the valley, where slopes typical gradients range between 25% and 40% and

households face constant risks of landslide or flooding (Alcaldía de Medellín, 2011).

Administratively, Colombia is a unitary country organized in three levels of

government: national, departmental and municipal. The local government is structured in

executive, legislative and judicial powers. Colombia is subdivided in 32 departments and

the capital district of Bogotá. Each Department is led by an elected Governor and an

elected Departmental Assembly. Municipalities are presided by a mayor who represents

the executive power and is elected by popular vote for four-year single terms, as mayors

7 Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadistica (DANE), “Censo 2005”, DANE (online), available

from: www.dane.gov.co.

29

cannot be immediately re-elected. A Municipal Council (composed by 21 members in

Medellín) exerts political control over the mayor’s administration. Judicial faculties are

enacted by municipal courts, which are controlled by the national government.

Figure 1.2

Medellín, Antioquia, Colombia

30

Local governments are in charge of providing services such as water and

sanitation, waste management, urban planning, parks, sports and recreation, mobility,

and the delivery of health services and primary and secondary education.

Although the police and other public forces are dependent on the National

Ministry of Defense, in 1991, mayors and governors gained some responsibilities over

“citizen security,” which opened the doors to the integration of “safe cities” strategies,

“citizenship culture” programs, or pacification through military intervention, within

urban policy framings. In cities, mayors are chiefs of police but remain subordinate to

the president in decision-making concerning security (Gutierrez et al, 2009).

1.5 City Management

Medellín’s urban management scheme is composed by the Mayor’s Office, the

Administrative Planning Department, and 15 adjunct Secretarias (or units): Social

Welfare, Citizenship Culture, Social Development, Education, Evaluation and Control,

Government, Finance, Public Works, Health, Administrative Services, Roads and

Transit, Education, Women, General, and Private. By the end of 2011, the municipality

employed 15,944 staff members: out of these, 0.4% were directors; 0.6% were advisors;

6% were technical employees; 13% were administrative assistants; and 80% were

professionals (Ministerio de Hacienda, 2012).

The municipality also owns 31 decentralized agencies delivering a variety of

services, including commercial corporations and special purpose bodies. Medellín’s

state-own companies escaped the privatization “wave” that took place in the 1990s in

other Latin American cities, primarily because most of them have proved to be

31

financially strong, efficiently managed, and have remained close to the citizenry

(Guerrero, 2011). Moreover, these companies generate important capital income for the

city.

Medellín’s sources of revenue are based primarily on taxes, including: a property

tax; a business tax (industry and commerce); a fuel surcharge; user fees; inter-

governmental grants and transfers from the national government (that pay primarily for

health, education and special purpose projects); and capital revenue. Historically, the

largest sources of income were intergovernmental transfers and property taxes. However,

capital income grew substantially during Fajardo’s and Salazar’s administrations. This

happened because of the surplus generated by its publicly-owned companies, in

particular, the Public Utility Companies of Medellín (Empresas Públicas de Medellín, or

EPM).

1.5.1 Empresas Públicas de Medellín or EPM

EPM is a multi-utility corporation owned by the city, and it is considered a good

example of a well-administered and financially viable public service provider with a high

record of network extension to low-income households and growing profits from its

national and international portfolios. Founded in 1955, EPM delivers water and

wastewater utilities, energy, gas and telecommunications. As the entity in charge of

delivering basic services, EPM has been historically relevant to Medellín’s urban poor,

combining a governance model that Furlong (2013) describes as “a nuanced consumer-

citizen approach to public service provision” (p. 13). EPM’s business model balances

cost recovery while promoting solidarity across income groups through cross-

subsidization.

32

Besides basic service provision, EPM also sells services to other Colombian and

international cities. As a result, it has become a highly profitable business. In 2012, 65%

of Medellín’s local finances were generated by the city, while 23% of Medellín’s total

income came from EPM’s financial surplus transfers (Ministerio de Hacienda, 2012). It

is thus important to underscore the relevance and institutional strengths of Medellín’s

service provision agencies, particularly, the role of EPM as a key institution in the city’s

governance transformations.

1.6 Structure of the dissertation

The dissertation is structured into eight chapters, where Chapter One accounts for

this introduction. The objective of Chapters Two and Three is to examine the origins of

socio-spatial inequality and exclusion. More specifically, Chapter Two offers a historic

account of the city’s eras of growth and development and examines the factors shaping

Medellín’s socio-spatial fragmentation. I argue that during the city’s most crucial years

of urban expansion and in the backdrop of deindustrialization, an elitist urban regime

captured the benefits of planning and naturalized socio-spatial divisions. Chapter Three

takes a situated look at the process of informal urbanization, using Comuna 13 as an

example. In the voices of its residents, I show that, although Comuna 13 is not the

poorest area in the city, uneasy state-society relations, its geographic characteristics, and

the proliferation of violence have contributed to its stigmatization.

Chapter Four illuminates state-society relations in the late 1980s and 1990s. It

connects the local junctures of crisis to decentralization reforms and to other political and

institutional transformations of the state that were negotiated in the late 1980s and 1990s

33

at the national level. While these changes did not imply any immediate transformations,

they nevertheless encouraged new activism and created deliberative rounds of state-

society interactions. For such activism to occur, however, there was a strategy on the part

of the national government that contributed substantially to increase the governing

capacities of the local state in response to Medellín’s social crisis: the Office of the

Presidential Advisor for Medellín and the Metropolitan Area (OPAMMA) (1990-1997). I

argue that OPAMMA contributed to unlock political action at the local level: it opened

up new instances of participation and provided tools for activist communities and

citizens to mobilize change. In particular, planning emerged as a crucial arena for the

(non-violent) negotiation of urban conflict constituting a key precedent for social

urbanism. In this chapter, I also point to several examples of urban experimentation and

bottom-up planning in Medellín that are directly linked to social urbanism, revealing as

well the important role of the national government in helping municipalities to realize the

democratizing promise of decentralization.

Chapter Five details the formation of the Citizens Commitment Movement and

the election of mayors Sergio Fajardo and Alonso Salazar. I detail how, through the

political process, these mayors institutionalized many of the ideas and plans that emerged

from participatory spaces during the 1990s. This chapter also outlines the political

rationality of social urbanism and provides an explanation to why the mayors were able

to implement wide reforms.

Chapter Six focuses on social urbanism’s governance institutions and its key

planning tool: the Integrated Urban Project (PUI). It explores its logics and benefits, and

why it constitutes an attractive yet controversial instrument for urban-upgrading. The

34

chapter demonstrates how PUIs are built through legal exceptions and discusses the

implications of this approach.

Chapter Seven presents a comparative analysis of the implementation of PUI

programs at the Northeastern Area and Comuna 13. Based on my findings, I conclude

that, while at the Northeastern Area PUI there are some signals of improvement, the

results at Comuna 13 are more nuanced. I explain this difference through an analysis of

security issues in Comuna 13. I argue that, despite social urbanism’s redistributive

agenda, residents of Comuna 13 continue to be heavily criminalized by the police, and

that violent state and non-state forces impose a “gray area” of governance that continues

to truncate the desired changes that PUIs claim to pursue. The final chapter discusses

some of the benefits and limitations of social urbanism for integrating divided cities.

35

Chapter Two

From Industrialization Experiment to Divided City:

Privatized Planning, Economic Dislocation and Urban Decay

Medellín can be identified as a city of paradoxes because:

- Its urban structure presents an acceptable quality, but it is shaped by an acute

spatial segmentation that confines about one million people away from

community facilities, to areas of high-risk, or with signs of apparent

deterioration.

- It is recognized in Colombia as a city with the greatest advances in urban

planning and in its competitive platform but, at the same time, it is identified

as a city of great social imbalances...

- The city has important technological advances in telecommunications and

health facilities. Simultaneously, it presents proliferating informal activities,

income instability and insecurity, and a poor health care coverage.

- Citizens take pride in its work culture but at the same time, the city suffers

from one of the highest unemployment rates in the country.

- …It is a city with great vitality, expressed in the sense of belonging and the

warmth of its people, but remains at the forefront of crime rates and violence.

(Alcaldía de Medellín, 2006, p. 90)

The excerpt above, from the support document to Medellín’s 2006 Territorial

Ordering Plan (POT, as per the Spanish acronym), reveals the city’s sharp contrasts and

can be closely associated to what Sassen calls “fragmented topographies,” where “state-

of-the-art glamour zones speak the language of disconnection from poverty zones”

(Sassen, 2011, p. 127). These divisions are characterized, on the one hand, by a

precarious landscape in the outward hillsides of the valley; and on the other, spaces of

luxury, technology, securitization, and advanced capitalism, which consolidate most

visibly in the affluent surroundings of the city’s financial district. These disparate

scenarios constitute a “spatial regime” that frames, constrains and regulates social life. In

turn, this spatial regime shapes the experiences of different social groupings in the city,

36

which are not just physically but also symbolically distant. Paradoxically, iterations of

Medellín as a site of urban inequality, crime, differentiated citizenship, and

fragmentation are somewhat specific to the city’s recent history. In the early decades of

the twentieth century, Medellín embodied urban ideals of industrial progress,

meritocracy, upward social mobility, and modernity (Roldán, 2003). Later, around the

mid-twentieth century, Medellín epitomized the glowing promises of Latin American’s

import substitution industrialization reform (Farnsworth-Alvear, 2000).8

This chapter addresses the distinctive circumstances that transformed Medellín,

from a prosperous industrial metropolis into a divided city. As historian Mary Roldán

(2003) puts it: “Understanding the sources of Medellín’s “wounding” requires peeling

back numerous layers of urban history over several decades” (p. 129). Following

Roldán’s cue, in this chapter I excavate Medellín’s urban history, paying particular

attention to the factors contributing to urban growth and decay. A historically grounded

consideration is coupled with a spatialized view to address the question of how the city’s

“spatial regime” was produced. As Gotham (2003) argues, “social life not only occurs in

‘temporal regimes’ but also in ‘spatial regimes’ that structure, order and regulate human

lives” (p. 733).

The chapter is structured as follows: first, I examine Medellín’s rapid change

from small town to industrial metropolis throughout the twentieth century. This process

was marked by entrepreneurialism and rapid urbanization growth. Second, I shed light

on the privatization of planning through the exclusionary capture of formal processes and

8 At the crux of this experiment was the idea that Latin America’s emerging economies could industrialize

autonomously and reduce their external dependencies on international hegemonic powers via state-led

development, national markets, and protectionism.

37

institutions concerned with changes and regulations over urban space by Medellín’s

business elites. The third section looks into the peripheralization of low-income housing.

Space becomes a site of social struggle for disposed rural migrants who resort to self-

help housing alternatives; in doing so, they participate informally in the construction of

the city. Next, I explore the causes of economic dislocation, which started in the 1970s,

and the parallel expansion of the drug industry and urban violence, which led to deeper

seclusion of the middle and upper classes and the spatialized stigmatization of the urban

poor.

2.1. The Rise of Colombia’s First Industrial Experiment

From the date of its foundation in 1616 until the late nineteenth century, Medellín

remained a small village with a predominantly agrarian economy. Sunk in the Andes

(Figure 2.1), Medellín was geographically isolated and experienced a slow population

growth when compared to its neighbouring townships. In the late 1800s, new locational

advantages provided the Aburrá Valley with energy and transport infrastructure that

enabled Medellín to grow and develop as an industrial hub. These “geographic

breakthroughs” (Drummond et. al., 2012, p. 146) included, first, the construction of a

new regional railroad (Ferrocarril de Antioquia) in 1875 that opened a route into the

Caribbean Sea via the Magdalena River; second, the discovery of coalfields nearby; and

third, the construction of hydroelectric plants in the area. Regional transport

infrastructure and energy availability would radically change the trajectory of the

township (Parsons, 1967).

38

Figure 2.1

Location and Topography of Medellín and the Aburra Valley, Antioquia

Source: (DAPM, 2011, p. 18).

From an economy of coffee farming and gold mining, Medellín quickly

transformed into a modern city of trade and industry, apt for the accrual of value.

Crucially, local capital formation allowed the city to industrialize without direct foreign

investment. Gold and coffee trading acted as a ‘business school’ for the early local

entrepreneurs, who later embarked on light-manufacturing ventures (Botero-Herrera,

39

1996, p. 92). Capital formation set Medellín apart from other emerging subnational,

industrial economies in the region. The eager capitalist drive sparked local

entrepreneurship and contributed to forging a regional reputation of success, giving rise

to a new class of meticulous self-made businessmen.9

2.1.1 Industrialization and Modernization (1899-1940)

Medellín’s industrialization expanded on the backdrop of Import Substitution

Industrialization (ISI) policies and production to supply the national market. The

negative impacts of The Great Depression on Latin American economies, and the need to

reduce local dependencies on international markets, prompted the Colombian

government to adopt ISI as the main economic development tool. Starting in the 1930s,

ISI offered industrialists a sheltered market that included tariffs on imports, soft loans,

government subsidies, and infrastructure provision. As a result, between 1945 and 1974,

the incipient manufacturing sector grew at an average annual rate of 7.3% (Ocampo et

al., 1987, p. 273). By 1947, Medellín concentrated 17.3% of jobs in manufacturing, the

largest share of industrial jobs in the country (Sánchez-Jabba, 2013, p. 193).

Notwithstanding a heavy reliance on textiles, attempts to diversify the economic

base included the production of cigarettes, beer, coffee packing, chocolate, processed

foods, glassware, metallurgy and ceramics (Restrepo, 2011, pp. 22-23). Thus, Medellín

9 It is important to note that the paisas –a self-adopted demonym for individuals from Antioquia–built their

cultural identity on the premise of a morally superior ethos, which they invoked to differentiate themselves

from other regional identities. As Hylton (2007) remarks, “These paisas—‘countrymen’ (…)—were united

by a tenacious regional-chauvinist ideology: hard-working, light-skinned Catholic conservatives, identified

against the ‘lazy’ and undisciplined indigenous and Afro-Colombians in the south” (p. 73). The myth of

the paisa identity became a foundational project promoted by the early patriarchs, and later on, by the

patronage elites (Uribe, 2006). In the early twentieth century the regional stereotype was one of “the

nation’s sharpest businessmen and pragmatic technocrats, a region of aggressive colonizers” (Roldán,

2002, p. 11). Paisas were also perceived as family-oriented (Restrepo, 2011); parochial, anti-Bogotá

(Mendieta, 2011, p. 173); and driven by a civic spirit (Botero-Herrera, 1996).

40

established itself as the second largest local economy in the country after Bogotá,

becoming the ‘poster child’ of the Colombian modernization agenda and a magnet for

migrants (Farnsworth-Alvear, 2000). Figures 2.2 and 2.3 below illustrate how the city’s

rising economy reflected on the rapid expansion of the built environment.

Figure 2.2

Medellín's Urban Area, 1908

Source: Medellín, Departamento Administrativo de Planeación, courtesy of Carlos

H. Jaramillo.

41

Figure 2.3

Medellín's Urban Area, 1947

Source: Medellín, Departamento Administrativo de Planeación, courtesy of Carlos

H. Jaramillo.

2.2 Urbanization and Population Growth

With its industrial growth, Medellín benefited from concurrent public investments,

becoming a cluster of regional government, financial services, higher education and

specialized health facilities (Toro, 1988). Migration to Medellín was motivated by four

principal factors: schooling, businesses, political activities, and the search for better

economic prospects (Ramirez-Patiño, 2011, p. 221). Undoubtedly, as Gilbert (2013, p.

486), asserts, the Latin American city of the early twentieth century offered a much

better quality of life in terms of access to basic services, education, and infrastructure

than those afforded by rural lifestyles –and this is still the case–.

42

The appeal of the city translated into rampant growth. As Table 2.1 illustrates, in

1905 the city had a population of less than 60,000, while in 1951 the population size had

multiplied by six, reaching almost 360,000 inhabitants. The 1950s and 1960s were,

however, the decades of highest dynamism, with population growth rates of 11.2% and

12.1% respectively per decade. As such, in just thirteen years, between 1951 and 1964,

the city doubled its size. By 1973, the Census counted 1,163,868 residents in the city.

Table 2.2 illustrates Medellín’s growth at the metropolitan level. It shows that, since the

early 1980s to this day, the population growth rate has been higher in the larger region

than in the core city.

From 1947 on, since La Violencia, recurring cycles of violence in peripheral towns

added yet another layer to the rural-to-urban migratory push. Forcibly displaced rural

populations seeking refuge in the more anonymous environment of the city (Roldán,

2002) played a significant role in Colombia’s urbanization process in the 1940’s, in the

1950’s, and then after. At the same time, a process of rural restructuring and land

concentration to increase farming production contributed to the growing waves of rural-

to-urban migration (Betancur, 2007a). Throughout the region, rapid urbanization put

unprecedented pressure on cities, overwhelming their capacity to create new jobs,

infrastructure and affordable housing (Gilbert, 1998).

43

Table 2.1

Medellín’s Population Growth (1883-2013)

Census Year Population

Medellín

Annual

Growth Rate

1883 37,237 -------

1905 54,946 4.76

1912 71,004 2.92

1918 79,146 1.15

1928 120,044 5.17

1938 168,266 4.02

1951 358,189 11.29

1964 791,589 12.10

1973 1,163,868 4.70

1985 1,480,382 2.72

1993 1,834,881 2.39

2005 2,216,830 2.08

2013* 2,417,325 0.90

Source: The author’s own calculations with data from Gobernacion de Antioquia,

Departamento Adminisitrativo de Planeación, Anuario Estadístico de Antioquia

(2008).

*Projected population by DANE.

Table 2.2

Medellín's Population Growth (1964-2005)

YEAR Population

Medellín

Population

Metropolitan

Area

Metro.

Growth

Rate

Urban

Extension

Ha.*

1964 791,589 1,110,908 ---

1973 1,163,868 1,613,910 4.53 4,700

1985 1,480,382 2,121,174 3.14 8,330

1993 1,834,881 2,689,709 2.68

2005 2,216,830 3,306,490 2.29 24,496

Source: The author’s own calculations with data from Gobernacion de Antioquia,

Departamento Adminisitrativo de Planeación, Anuario Estadístico de Antioquia

(2008).

*Data from Palacio (2012, p. 109)

44

2.3 Planning and Ordering the City

One particular characteristic of Medellín’s city politics throughout the twentieth

century was the open capture of local and regional governments by bipartisan patronage

elites, who conferred a mix of market rationale and philanthropic paternalism to the

logics of the state (Botero-Herrera, 1996). In this section, I point to the role of urban

planning in consolidating the interests of an urban regime led by the business and

political elites who governed through local institutions. I provide three examples of how

that happened: first, through a private foundation that assumed planning powers with the

consent of the mayor and Council; second, through betterment levies, an urban

development financing tool that pushed low-income residents outwards and provided

infrastructure to the business elites who were willing to pay; and thirdly, through a

modernist Master Plan (paid by betterment contributions) that neglected the informal

expansion of the city, concentrating infrastructure in the formal areas of the city. The

blurred line between public and private spheres created the conditions that steered most

of the city’s investments into strategic infrastructure projects to the benefit of the

“business class;” but less attention was paid to the growing need for affordable housing.

As Fiszbein (1997) notes, until the late 1980s, municipios in Colombia had few

administrative responsibilities, thus, they lacked legal process and resources to support

urban planning programs. Some municipalities only had budgets to administer street

lightning and slaughterhouses. Decentralized agencies of the national government and

parastatals were in charge of providing public services, but given its early

industrialization, Medellín demanded utilities, public services, and infrastructure when

national agencies were unable to deliver them. In a rather slow and highly centralized

45

bureaucratic context, local business lobbyists and private capitals were the agents that

mobilized urban planning initiatives (Botero-Herrera, 1996).

In 1899 local elites founded a charitable urban planning institution: the Society

for Public Improvements (Sociedad de Mejoras Públicas, or SMP). The SMP was driven

by both the local business community and the political elites who aspired to modernize

the city.10 Hylton (2007) notes that the SMP was a visionary enterprise: it appeared three

decades prior to the establishment of New York City’s Regional Planning Association.

When the national government had just begun to set up the first utilities companies in

Bogotá, the capital city, SMP’s initiatives levered Medellín’s modernization agenda.

Certainly, SMP gave the city a clear advantage when compared to other local economies

in the region: Medellín installed an electricity generator by 1897; street lighting by 1898;

a government-supervised slaughter-house by 1911; a sewage treatment plant by 1913;

public transit routes with trolley cars by 1921 (Hylton, 2007, p.73); and an airport by

1932. In the period 1934-64, Medellín per capita investments in basic services were over

eight times higher than those of other municipalities in Antioquia, and the delivery of

basic services was better than in most other cities in Colombia (Furlong, 2013).

In addition, the SMP also advocated for housing initiatives for the working

classes they employed, projects that were often financed through private capitals.

Between the 1920s and 1930s, some working class neighbourhoods were planned for and

built in close proximity to industrial areas. These new communities had access to basic

10 The origins of the SMP go back to an 1899 meeting that united Medellín’s “most candid and influential

people” who argued, “Medellín would only start taking the shape of a real city if a ‘Society of

Improvements and Ornament’ were to be constituted to push public officials to do the work” (SMP, 2013).

46

services, trolley routes, and roads. (Departamento Administrativo de Planeación

Municipal [DAPM], 2011, p. 29).

2.3.1 Privatized Urban Planning?

Despite being a private enterprise, the SMP began to acquire the powers of a

municipal planning authority. The SMP not only had multiple powers to regulate urban

space but also to raise compulsory contributions. As Botero-Herrera (1996) argues, the

SMP was a concrete expression of the hegemony imposed by the business elite, which

conflated public and private interests. Over the years, SMP’s activities and functions

included restricting animals from paved roads, issuing development permits, and

decision-making regarding the creation of parks, the canalization of rivers, and the

conversion of rural to urban land. The SMP also became an active force of displacement

via downtown renewal projects, the upfront clearing of slums in strategic locations, and

the destruction of heritage buildings. In essence, the SMP imposed spatial

transformations geared to make space for office buildings, hotels, and other projects

perceived as compatible with the elite’s aspirations for urban modernity. Moreover, local

business lobbyists gained great influence over conversions of rural to urban land and

public works initiatives. Real estate speculation was facilitated by the unlimited power of

the SMP and the privileged information it granted to elites regarding proposed changes

to urban space.

2.3.2 Financing Urban Development: Betterment Levies and Displacement

In the 1920s, a local betterment fee (contribución de valorización) was instituted

in Medellín (Municipal Decree 25 of 1921 and 63 of 1938) to recoup the costs of public

investments. At the time, municipal finances were precarious and these contributions

allowed the city to recapture investments by charging landowners whose property was

47

adjacent to proposed public work projects. Charges were calculated based on the future

economic returns of urban development. In 1951 the mayor imposed Decree 636, which

stated that new infrastructure was to be financed exclusively through site-specific

betterment levies.

Betterment levies can be progressive planning instruments when driven by

equitable urban development goals (Shoup, 1983). Crucially, valorización allowed

Medellín to invest in infrastructure that the city could not afford otherwise. In fact,

following Medellín, valorización was replicated extensively as a “best practice” by other

Colombian cities, including Bogotá. However, its local application also contributed to

skewing urban development, as “valorización tends to benefit middle- and high-income

families over low-income families” (Kim, et al., 2012 p. 200). As Shoup (1983, p. 142)

argues: “Financing public works by betterment levies is equivalent to requiring owner-

occupants to receive a public service and pay for it (through the levy) or else move out.”

While betterment levies are an efficient land management financing tool, as a

result of their logic, most of the city’s investments were steered into strategic

infrastructure serving those willing to pay: the propertied class. Meanwhile, large

segments of the population who could not afford the tax, and those who were not

property owners and were charged higher rents, were displaced to underserved areas, and

covertly excluded from the benefits of urban planning (DAPM, 2011, p. 71).

2.3.3 Aspirations of Urban Modernity: Medellín’s Pilot Plan (1951)

In the late 1940s, the city’s business community and other civic forces got

together to demand the formulation of a master plan that could reflect the progress of the

city and transform it into a modern metropolis. The plan, locally called the “Pilot Plan”

was commissioned to the New York-based firm Town Planning Associates. Josep Lluís

48

Sert (a Spaniard) and Paul Lester Weiner (a North American), the firm’s partners, visited

Medellín in 1947 and produced a detailed study of the city through a series of urban

planning proposals (DAPM, 2011). Wiener and Sert’s plan was approved by City

Council (Municipal Decree 683) in 1951 and was ratified in 1959 as Master Pilot Plan

(Plan Director, or MPP). The goal of the MPP was to project Medellín as a modern and

functional city. In accordance with CIAM’s (International Congresses of Modern

Architecture) precepts, the MPP recommended segregated land uses (industrial,

residential, commercial, and institutional zoning) to replace local mixed-used practices.

It also proposed linear parks, the canalization of the Medellín River, the beautification of

riverbanks, and the construction of sports venues, specifically, a soccer stadium. At the

regional level, the MPP recommended adopting a metropolitan urban governance

arrangement connecting multiple centralities (Schnitter, 2007).

From its onset, the MPP was set to serve a limited portion of the population; for

example, the MPP was almost exclusively concerned with areas of legal development as

opposed to areas of informal growth. Correspondingly, the MPP, as well as its

enactment, was to be paid via betterment fees. It therefore catered strongly to the needs

of privileged social groupings, prioritizing road infrastructure for private automobile

circulation and recommending the razing or relocation of downtown “slums” in order to

make room for La Alpujarra, a modern administrative centre. Most crucially, the MPP

failed to anticipate or to take into account that it was informal urbanization, and not the

MPP, what was to drive most of the city’s future expansion. While socio-spatial

fragmentation cannot be exclusively attributable to the plan, its implementation certainly

reflected class divisions in the territory, reinforced the status quo, and evinced growing

49

distances between social classes. Meanwhile, the informal city sprouted creating a

particular urban form associated to auto-construction.

In sum, a regime of socio-spatial inequality was produced and normalized during

the city’s golden years of urban planning and economic growth. The SMP, along with

exclusionary uses of betterment fees financing, and the effects of the MPP, played a

crucial role in consolidating the business class’s and the political elites’ hegemonic

control over urban space. Vested interests transformed into effective norms, rules, and

spatial dispositions that infused the way that the city was thought of, planned, and built.

From this period, at least three characteristics set the basis of the city’s future indelible

urban divide: first, the upfront cooptation of business lobbyists over urban planning

endeavours; second, pervasive real estate speculation; and third, the naturalization of

displacement tactics, in the names of economic “efficiency” or property rights, that

regulated the urban poor to underserviced and risk-prone peripheral hillsides.

2.4 The Peripheralization of Low-income Housing: Policies, Programs and

Actors

Until the 1940s, the construction of working class housing was subject to the

availability of private development land: “In many cases, construction was rudimentary,

custom made, or through auto-construction” (DAPM, 2011, p. 83). With a rising demand

land prices skyrocketed, giving way to speculation. Alongside the emergence of real

estate development firms, unaffordability created a parallel informal market—one of

illegal partitions and clandestine urbanizations. Initially, municipal authorities reacted by

applying more strict development codes and hardening the enforcement of planning laws

and regulations. Enforcement had little effect on the production of massive informal

50

settlements, which involved pirate developments and spontaneous land invasions

(Betancur, 2007b).

The emergence of barrios populares (low-income neighbourhoods) was marked

by two different processes, differentiated by whether or not residents qualified for

government support. On the one hand, there were low-income districts designed for the

working class, which received a minimum of planning and service provision. Residents

with jobs who had lived in the city for a minimum of five years qualified for self-help

housing through government-sponsored programs. Beneficiaries were given construction

materials and provided with some minimal planning services, public amenities, and

utilities (Betancur 2007; Villa 2007). Municipal programs such as Casitas de la

Providencia (Little Houses of Providence), created in 1956 by Agreement No. 69 to

eradicate slums, had the mandate to build some serviced social housing units; however, it

also directed the relocation of inner city slums and derelict districts to peripheral areas.11

The Institute for Territorial Credit (Instituto de Crédito Territorial or ICT), active

between 1939 and 1973, was perhaps the most significant social housing actor, building

23,166 total units over three and a half decades (Gómez et al., 1991). The Catholic

Church and private charities acted as social housing developers as well, with smaller

roles.12 The general tendency was for social housing to be built or relocated to the city’s

peripheral rings, beyond the Medellín River (the city’s main geographic barrier), and

outside of the MPP’s planned modern core (García, 1990).

11 Slums in concentric locations such as: La Alpujarra, el Cementerio Universal, La Iguaná, San Benito, La

Inmaculada, Calle Barranquilla, y la Estación Villa were razed/relocated by the Little Houses of

Providence program. 12 The Church developed two serviced neighbourhoods: Barrio de Jesús and San Vicente de Paúl.

51

On the other hand, there were large numbers of unemployed and recent

newcomers who did not qualify for any public support, and governments hoped that they

would eventually abandon the city and return to the countryside. In fact, the National

Law for the Eradication of Slums (1968) prohibited municipal administrations from

providing any type of services to informal settlements and encouraged evictions in order

to prevent slum formation (Villa, 2007). Local governments did not intervene to address

the housing need, with the excuse that they would be violating private property rights or

planning norms (Betancur, 2007b). Improvements to dwellings, as well as access to basic

services, mostly depended on self-help initiatives.

2.4.1 The Logics of Property Rights in the backdrop of a Weak State

Under the Colombian legal framework, before the Urban Reform of 1989 was

enacted, the state did not have a mandate nor the effective capacity to improve access to

housing, basic services, or to reinstate the rights of displaced populations, particularly if

those were deemed illegally settled. In this respect, it was a very weak state because of

the lack of legal norms, resources and capacity. Nevertheless, property rights were

fiercely protected by a strong civil law tradition. Under a liberal legal orientation, the

Colombian Constitution of 1886 (in force until 1991) and the Civil Code interpreted

individual autonomy as a value superior to equality and solidarity. In this realm, private

property was understood as an acquired right –almost an absolute right– not to be

infringed by the state (Bonilla, 2011). Constitutional amendments were made in 1936

and 1989 to recognize property as a social function. The intention was to enable, first,

agrarian reform and, second, urban reform legislations, respectively. During Lopez

Pumarejo’s presidency (1934-1938), the law of 1936, was in fact, envisioned to

transform the nature of the Colombian state, increasing its power of intervention for the

52

purposes of land redistribution. This was one of Lopez Pumarejo’s aim with the

Revolución en Marcha (Revolution on the Marc), his political program of government.

In the Civil Code, however, the concept of property was not updated accordingly. As a

result, conflicting definitions over the concept of property contributed to equally erratic

state interventions in terms of rural and urban land redistribution (Bonilla, 2011).

In the context of rapid rural-to-urban migration, property rights and civil law

logics prevented, therefore, a role for the state in providing access to dignified housing

and basic services to urban migrants without means or property. As services were

attached to legal housing, the state found no responsibility in providing services to

individuals who were occupying land illegally. The uneven way state services and

resources were distributed, underpinned distinctive spatial relationships by which

inhabitants in legal housing were considered to be of the city; while squatters were seen

as being in the city, but not of the city (García, 1990).

2.4.2 Informal urbanization

The phenomenon of self-help housing is not unique to Medellín, but it became a

characteristic of the Latin American city during the ISI years. To be sure, low-income

migrants to Medellín and other metropolitan areas in the country have typically accessed

housing via self-help and the illegal acquisition of land partition. These settlements were

typically characterized by illegal tenure, precarious dwellings, and violations of land-use

regulations (Betancur, 2007b). As opposed to informal urbanization processes in other

Latin American cities where squatters took possession upon arrival of a patch of empty,

usually government-owned land, in Medellín and other Colombian cities it was common

for squatters to pay intermediaries or pirate developers for the ‘right’ to settle in an

53

illegal subdivision.13 From there, newcomers would incrementally build their property in

underserviced land, this being the only route for many families to secure housing.

In 1958, the municipality identified 64 informal settlements equally distributed as

a peripheral ring along the eastern and western borders of the city. An additional 54

“pirate” development subdivisions were also identified. By the late 1950s, informal

urbanization amounted to approximately 8,600 dwellings with a total of 55,100 residents,

thus housing approximately ten percent of the city’s population. Yet, informal

urbanization grew the most during the 1960s, as existent shantytowns densified and 20

new core informal settlements emerged, growing to represent 16% (118,826) of the

city’s population in 1973, and 22% in 1976 (DAPM, 2011, p. 84-85). Even though a

formal spatial regime dominated Medellín’s downtown and other planned areas, the

agency of the urban poor should be understood through their contestations to these

exclusions via self-help urbanization.

2.5 Economic Crisis and Urban Decay

Medellín’s rapid growth and over-reliance on internally protected markets

brought about new challenges to the city. Hylton (2007) explains that given its

characteristics, Medellín’s ISI experiment was prone to collapse. First, it relied heavily

on government subsidies and protectionism. Capital investments were usually borrowed

or accessed from a national development fund dependent on coffee exports, which

13See Perlman (2004) for informal urbanization in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and Moser (2009) for the case of

Guayaquil, Ecuador.

54

governments repurposed for subsidies in manufacturing. As coffee prices dropped in the

1960s and 1970s, governments’ capacity to support industries declined. Second, national

markets were small. The purchasing power of the Colombian working class was

significantly constrained, so only upper rank workers could be thought of as consumers.

Third, in Medellín, most economic sectors were controlled by family monopolies, and as

such, these sectors lacked the benefits of competition, which might have encouraged

better prices and higher quality goods.

Beyond these factors, a clear determinant of industrial decline and widening

urban inequality was the increased adoption of market-friendly reform and liberalization

policy (Betancur, 2007a). Attempts to liberalize were selectively undertaken during the

1980s, with full intensity in the early 1990s (Jaramillo, 1992). Colombia’s economy

maintained a favourable performance between 1970 and 1993 (with an annual average

growth of 4.4 percent), second only to Brazil (5.1 percent) in Latin America. Similarly,

during the international debt crisis and the economic recession that hit Latin America

during the 1980s, the Colombian economy was affected the least when compared to

other countries in the region (Berry, 1997). The tragic fate of Medellín was unleashed,

however, when amidst the economic recession, the government of President César

Gaviria (1990-1994) adopted an abrupt outward-oriented strategy to attract foreign

investment. This strategy reduced tariffs on imports and liberalized the labour market.

With the rise of Asian economies as more competitive producers and the almost

immediate flood of cheaper imports, many of Medellín’s industries, as they functioned,

became hardly viable.

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2.5.1 Urban Inequality and Informality

Berry (1997) argues that during previous years of growth, Colombia had

remarkable achievements in the reduction of poverty. Income inequality decreased

between the early 1970s and 1980s in urban areas and for the nation as a whole.

Similarly, there was a decline in the income inequality gap between genders and among

people with education differentials. With liberalization reform, however, sharp increases

surfaced in the Gini coefficients among earners and individuals. According to the

National Planning Department (DNP), inequality exacerbated between 1991 and 1999,

when the share of the richest 20% in personal income rose from 61.3% to 65.4% while

the share of the poorest 20% fell from 3.2% to 1.6 %. Figures 2.4 and 2.5 demonstrate

that the ratio between the wealthiest 20% population segment (quintile 5) and the poorest

20% (quintile 1) increased from 19.1 to 42.1. Likewise, the Gini went up from 0.546 in

1991 to 0.600 in 1999. In recent years, inequality trends in Colombia have shown slight

improvements but urban inequality is still high: in 2005, the urban Gini was 0.55 (Lopez-

Castaño & Nuñez-Mendez, 2007, p. 63). Between 1993 and 2008, Medellín’s average

income-based Gini was 0.51 (UN-Habitat, pp. 17-18). 14

In the early 1990s, despite having the highest regional concentration of wealth in

the country, Medellín bore the highest unemployment rates, particularly among youth

populations (Riaño-Alcalá 2006). Medellín’s manufacturing decayed and the city was

unable to absorb its surplus labour, which translated into a massive informalization of the

economy (Betancur 2007a).

14 According to the State of the World Cities 2010/2011 Report by UN-Habitat (2010, pp.15-16), between

1993 and 2008, Johannesburg was the city in the world with the highest income-based Gini at 0.75. In

Latin America, Bogotá, Fortaleza and Belo Horizonte had the highest at 0.61; while Caracas had the lowest

at 0.39. Beijing had the lowest Gini in the world at 0.22.

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Figure 2.4

Household Income for the 20% poorest and 20% wealthiest in Colombia (1991-

2005)

Figure 2.5

Quintiles 1 and 5 and Urban Gini Coefficient in Colombia (1991-1999)

Source: Lopez-Castaño and Nuñez-Mendez (2007, p.63).

57

2.5.2 The Rise of the Globalized Illegal Drug Trade

The rise of the narcotics businesses created new socio-spatial divisions, as the

upper classes secluded themselves for safety reasons, and low-income youth from the

poorest areas of the city became territorially stigmatized.

In the 1980s, Colombia became the single largest producer of cocaine in the world,

with the fastest growing share in illegal smuggling and marketing operations. By 2000,

Colombia also reached the largest share of coca crops (over Peru and Bolivia), typically

located in remote rural territories with no state presence. As Thoumi (2002) asserts, “in

no other country has the illegal drug industry had such dramatic social, political and

economic effects” (p. 102). In the backdrop of Medellín’s economic crisis during the

1970s and 1980s, the illegal drug industry took off as a highly profitable and rapidly

expanding business with low entry barriers for unskilled “entrepreneurs” (Roldán,

2003).15 The illegal drug industry affected Medellín’s local economy by generating new

sources of highly concentrated income during a recession. Economic impacts translated

into distortional investments, consumption, and land values (in the form of a real-estate

boom) that occurred as an effect of drug dealers’ money laundering needs (Thoumi,

2002).

The first generation of drug dealers established themselves as a new class of rich

men with low levels of education, lacking social status but living extravagant and

luxurious lifestyles. As Roldán (1997) suggests, narcos embodied the frustrated

ambitions of a whole generation whose families migrated to the city following the

promise of better economic prospects. Instead, they found unemployment and poverty.

15 The business was structured as an oligopoly where only a small number of organizations had access to

international routes and distributors, but the production itself involved a large number of smaller units and

intermediaries who distributed and processed coca paste (Melo, 1998).

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Indeed, drug dealers personified a collective desire to leap over the seemingly

unbridgeable socio-spatial divisions in the city. In a way, their economic power gave

narcos access to many of the spaces occupied by the upper classes, particularly those that

could be anonymously accessed through economic transactions.16

At the same time, Pablo Escobar, the most notorious Colombian drug-dealer of all

times, engaged in a war against the Colombian state, which resulted in indiscriminate

terrorism and violence in cities and the targeted assassinations of policemen, journalists,

politicians, prosecutors, human rights activities, academics, and high profile politicians.

Although drug-related crime became a national issue affecting all levels of government,

during the 1980s only two organizations gained notoriety in the international drug

markets: the Medellín and Cali cartels. These organizations were not the only ones in the

business; nonetheless, their sophisticated modus operandi overshadowed smaller

trafficking cells (Thoumi, 2002). As a criminal consortium, the Medellín “cartel”

centralized the operations of several criminal organizations in a single web of allies

locally dubbed the “Envigado Office.” The Envigado Office has had a hierarchical

structure; it recruited its lower cadres in peripheral low-income neighbourhoods, training

armies of underage men as sicarios (assassins) to execute the orders of higher

commands (Salazar, 2010). As bosses were captured or killed, the “Office” has

perpetuated itself through the promotion of lower commands to leadership posts (Lamb,

2010).

16 It is important to mention, however, that a characteristic of the impacts of the drugs industry in Medellín

is that the business elites did not mixed themselves with drug-dealing structures; in fact, they closed to

doors and excluded narcos from accessing traditional social institutions, such as the country club, the

Chamber of Commerce, elite’s schooling, and the like. This contrasts with the experience of Cali, where

the elites were more lax, and even got themselves involved in drugdealing operations (Restrepo, 2011).

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The “formal” beginnings of drug-dealers’ urban warfare can be historically placed

in 1989, after the assassination of Luis Carlos Galán a prominent presidential candidate

of the Liberal Party. This tragic event prompted Liberal President Virgilio Barco to

declare war on Pablo Escobar. Barco organized an elite squad of public forces (recruited

from outside the city to prevent infiltration) called the “Search Bloc” (Bloque de

Búsqueda) with the objective of bringing down the cartel. As Escobar’s security army

was made up by impoverished youth from the upper hillsides of the city’s valley, state

violence against youth escalated. Escobar retaliated by launching a war on the Search

Bloc and the Colombian state itself: politicians, public forces, and the judiciary, were

targeted and killed by the hundreds. Just in 1990, 150 car bombs were set off, and 500

police officers were assassinated in 1990-91. There were over 6,000 homicides in the

city in 1991 and again in 1992 (Hylton, 2007; Riaño-Alcalá, 2006). With a daily average

of 19 violent homicides and a violence rate of 381 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, in

1991 Medellín’s urban violence became “its own league” (Ortiz, 2000). Organized

violence become further complicated by the merging of former allies and subordinates to

Escobar, who in 1993, joined with right-wing paramilitary forces against Escobar’s

structure (and leftist militias, academic and human rights activists as well) while seeking

higher participation in the city’s criminal businesses (Hylton, 2007). The scaffolding put

in place by drug syndicates to secure their routes and assets created a platform that

allowed entrenchment into other criminal operations.

Altogether, the diverse types of criminal actors and activities, which were

unrelated at first, quickly intertwined. Warfare in the marginalized areas gradually

reached all neighbourhoods and affected all social strata. Pécaut (1999) argues that a

60

relative lack of reaction by local, national, and international authorities, as well as by

public opinion, allowed violence and terror to be trivialized in everyday life, gaining

inertia: “the marked continuities in the forms of violence led that violence to be

perceived as given, rather than something new” (Pécaut, 1999, p. 142). In response to

rising insecurity, the elites followed a strategy of contention and seclusion. On the one

hand, the elites continued to promote the socio-spatial disconnection between the

formally planned areas of the city and the peripheral barrios; and on the other, they

purposely secluded themselves, avoiding exposure to the under-classes in securitized

enclaves such as gated communities and privatized public spaces like social clubs or

shopping malls. In the meantime, the police and other public forces led what Hylton

(2007) called “a ferocious wave of repression against comuna dwellers” (p. 83), as

between twenty to forty young men fell in confrontations with the police each weekend.

Social stereotyping and the stigmatization of low-income male youths,

particularly in the Northeastern Area (comunas 1 and 2) and in Comuna 13, deepened

further socio-spatial divisions as youth from these areas of the city inspired fear and were

denied jobs and opportunities (Pilar Riaño-Alcalá, 2006). As Wacquant (2008) suggests,

socio-spatial inequality gives way to “territorial fixation” and stigmatization based on

place of residence. In this context, the ideal of citizens as equals acting within a

democratic rule of law, with substantive rights, responsibilities, or a political voice,

hardly materializes. Indeed, the active mechanisms involved in sustaining sharp social

differences bring to the front questions of citizenship, politics, and the role of democracy

vis-à-vis urban development.

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2.6 Conclusion: A Divided City

This chapter serves as a background for understanding the structural factors as

well as the historical and spatial legacies contributing to Medellín’s acute socio-spatial

divisions. It also constitutes an example of “how the apparatus of planning produces the

unplanned and the unplannable” (Roy, 2005, p. 156). While the contemporary observer

may confer much of the city’s crisis to drug-related violence, a longer-term examination

of how urban planning regimes were established and enacted, and how socio-spatial

exclusions have been historically made normal by planning institutions, provide crucial

elements for evaluating, in the chapters to follow, the prospects and limits for urban

change.

Friedmann (1987) points out that in societies and systems of government where

capitalist values and individualistic views of justice operate over solidarity, and private

property dictates the allocation of goods and services in the city, the morality of space or

spatial justice paradigm is dictated by a market rationality, which appears as an almost

natural phenomenon. In the same vein, the process of urbanization in Medellín and the

city’s policies for informal squatters defined the housing problem in terms of the

property system. The high urban influx of rural migrants without property, taking place

since the 1950s, produced a privatization of the benefits of urban growth and a

socialization of the burdens, generating unbridgeable socio-spatial abysses. Violence, in

turn has been dialectical: it is a cause of social decomposition but also the outcome of a

historically divided city.

I have argued that the development model adopted through Medellín’s process of

modernization–from small town to industrial city–was characterized by the prevalence of

62

the private over the public interest. City plans and regulations subordinated urban

planning to the tacit objectives of the middle and upper classes. They acted as a

“centrifugal force” that constantly displaced or relocated the urban poor from central

areas of the city to the peripheral hills of the valley (García, 1990). In that manner,

planning contributed to disconnect the urban poor from the developments, public spaces,

routes, and habitats frequented by those living in the “city of asphalt.” The shortage of

affordable housing and constant evictions from downtown “slums” led newcomers to

squatting, pirate developments, land invasions, and self-help housing in slopes, ravines,

and geologically unstable lands. Conversely, middle and upper class neighbourhoods

grew in the central-western and southern areas of the city, with full access to the benefits

of a modern and functional city. This urbanization dynamic gave way to a distinctive

form of socio-spatial inequality that is closely associated to the city’s topographic

locational disadvantages.

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Chapter Three

Enclaves of Socio-spatial Relegation

I mean, here in the comuna, there are many educated, capable people, but they’re

excluded just because they’re from Comuna 13. There are people who think, ‘Ah,

from Comuna 13? Those are criminals, they’re from the combos [gangs], they’re

this and that.’ Let me tell you, I have two children, and neither of them has been

able to find jobs. They’ve sent out their resumes, they both finished high school,

they’re good boys. At times, they’ve been hired for some odd jobs but for short

term–one month, two months. But a good opportunity? No! Just because they’re

from Comuna 13. (Isabel, pers. comm., 17/09/2011)

This chapter details the construction of Medellín’s urban peripheries as spaces of

socio-spatial relegation: stigmatized places situated at the very bottom of the

metropolitan hierarchy of the polarized city (Wacquant, 2008, p. 1). In the previous

chapter, I examined how structural transformations throughout the twentieth century,

such as rapid urbanization, deindustrialization, liberalization and the rise of the drug

economy, led to an acute urban decay during the 1980s and 1990s. This urban crisis

interacted with an exclusionary socio-spatial regime imposed by the business elites. At

the end of the millennium, the outcome was that of a highly fragmented, violent, and

polarized city. This chapter adds three important aspects to an understanding of the

production of Medellín’s “socio-spatial injustices” (Soja, 2010). The first one illustrates

how structural processes, and concrete planning decisions over the city’s territorial

ordering, shaped exclusionary urbanization patterns. Central to these complexities are

differentiated interpretations of citizenship, under which those who live in informal

settlements are assumed and treated as “squatters,” “invaders,” or “moradores”

(dwellers), but not as citizens with full rights. The second one examines the

entanglements between social organization, violent actors, and micro-politics. The goal

64

is to illustrate how, despite a strong reliance on solidarity ties and informal

collaborations among neighbours–in other words, social capital– the dichotomies of

participation/patronage; informality/formality; legality/illegality; and security/insecurity

intertwine in the daily struggles for survival. The third aspect is the role of the state and

urban policy in how it defines marginal spaces as a particular type of “problem-solving”

arena (Ong, 2011), contributing to particular symbolic and material constructions of low-

income neighbourhoods.

Using Comuna 13 as a case in point, I review the process of socio-spatial

peripheralization of the urban poor. Comuna 13 shares many characteristics with other

low-income urban enclaves elsewhere in Latin America. These spaces typically

concentrate under-employment, low educational coverage and attainment, chronic

divestment, high crime, and drug-dealing activities (Auyero, 1999a). Within the

landscape of violence in Medellín, however, criminal dynamics in Comuna 13 have been

particularly complex given the multiplicity of actors seeking territorial dominance. The

confluence of guerrillas, such as FARC and ELN; of drug-related actors with rightist

paramilitary backgrounds; and of youth gangs operating at the block level, renders

Comuna 13 a distinctive unit for analysis on its own. Comuna 13 is a prime example of

how, after mounting violence and state neglect, in the 2000s, securitization discourses

were invoked to transform a space of institutional abandonment into a domain of urgent

state action. Prior to the implementation of social urbanism in 2004, policy cycles for

Comuna 13 evolved from a thin state presence and discretionary interventions (1990-

2000) to securitization and (para)militarization (2000-2003).

65

The chapter is divided in six parts, where the first section describes the local

context with an emphasis on geographic and urban form considerations. Drawing from

interviews and focus groups with leaders and long-time residents, in the second section I

reconstruct the short history of urbanization in Comuna 13, which dates back to 1978,

paying attention to the process of urbanization and residents’ collective struggles to

access services in Comuna 13. The third part examines social capital formation,

collective action, incipient political organizations and patronage. The next section shows

how various types of organized criminal actors have engaged in contestations over

territorial control, followed by urban policy responses for the periods studied.

3.1 Placing Comuna 13, San Javier

Comuna 13, also known as San Javier, is located in the Centre-Western Zone of

Medellín, a zone administratively composed of two other districts: Comuna 11 (Laureles

Estadio) and Comuna 12 (La América). Within the Centre-Western Zone, each of these

districts developed under dissimilar legal statuses and planning prescriptions. Comuna

11, for instance, is representative of Medellín’s early planning efforts (dating to the

1930s) and the mid-century spirit of the city’s functional MPP of 1951. Renowned

modernist architects Paul Lester Wiener and Josep Lluis Sert designed Comuna 11 in a

“garden city” style: as a low-rise residential area with a circular layout, segregated

zoning, ample avenues favouring automobile navigation, quick access to the city’s

downtown core, and linear parks (Schnitter, 2007). Comuna 12 was, in turn, devised as a

working class community equipped with planning infrastructure, social services, and

urban amenities, including a streetcar route by 1930. With time, both comunas

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consolidated as segregated and autonomous districts, maintaining their residential

character and catering to middle classes.

In contrast, urban development in Comuna 13 is somewhat recent. The comuna

was mainly urbanized through pirate subdivisions, squatting, and land seizures in the

late 1970s, as 5,000 households settled in over a five-year period. At the time, this was

considered Latin America’s largest land invasion (Aricapa, 2005). Five neighbourhoods

were founded out of this event: La Independencia I, II and III; Nuevos Conquistadores,

and El Salado.This rapid settlement process involved a great mix of immigrants sharing

conditions of extreme poverty.

As illustrated in Figure 3.1, Comuna 13 is currently composed of twenty

neighbourhoods, which have been formally recognized by the city’s planning

department. To the north, Comuna 13 is adjacent to Robledo (Comuna 7); to the east it

limits with La America (Comuna 11) and Laureles-Estadio (Comuna 12); and to the

south and west are two corregimentos or rural districts: Alta Vista and San Antonio,

respectively. Comuna 13 has an area of 7 km2 and an estimated population of 139,000

(Alcaldía de Medellín, 2011a). The topographic characteristics of Comuna 13 are fairly

distinct from the rest of the Centre-Western Zone. Both Comuna 11 and Comuna 12 are

located in the plain and more central territories of the city’s narrow valley. Comuna 13,

instead, is incrusted in a rugged topography. Some of its uneven hills reach 1,650 meters

above sea level with slopes of over 50 percent of inclination, as illustrated in Figure 3.2.

In the 20 de Julio neighbourhood, for instance, 95 percent of the land has gradients of

more than 30 percent (Alcaldía de Medellín, 2011a).

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Figure 3.1

Comuna 13, San Javier and the Centre-Western Zone

Given these features, neighbourhoods such as Juan XXIII, La Quiebra, Las

Independencias, El Salado, Antonio Nariño, Nuevos Conquistadores, Corazón, and

Blanquizal cover large extensions declared as “non-recoverable high-risk zones”

(Alcaldía de Medellín, 2011a). According to the city’s Master Plan, prohibited in these

areas are: “the provision of roads, infrastructure and public services that promote the

consolidation of new housing settlements or facilitate the opening of new areas for this

purpose” (Concejo de Medellín, 2006). However, unplanned growth has further affected

the geological stability of the terrains, increasing the risks of landslide and leading to

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overcrowding. As depicted in Figure 4, practically very little or no public space is

available, other than a labyrinthic system of narrow stairs and alleys.

Figure 3.2

Dwellings Built On Unstable Terrains with High Gradients in Comuna 13

Photo by Luisa Sotomayor.

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Figure 3.3

Landscape in Independencias II


3.2 Stories of Arrival

The history of Comuna 13, as told by old-timers and newcomers, is a history of

adversity:

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I am from Independencias III. I arrived 34 years ago to Comuna 13; my family

was one of the first to invade here. We came from Castilla, but the upper areas of

the hillside here in Independencias were occupied by people coming from many

places: some displaced by violence in the towns, some had been evicted from

downtown Medellín…people of all colours and sorts. It was quite a mix. It was

very difficult at first because there was nothing but dirt, and the police would

come every now and then to beat us up, destroy our shacks, try to kick us out.

Eventually, after killing a man, they got themselves into trouble and left us alone

for a while. But the population was very diverse and there were bad people with

major social problems, who came to impose their rule, and one had to adapt to that

system (Miriam, pers. comm., 21/09/2011)

In the early days of Comuna 13, inhabitants learned to cope with at least five

types of risks: first, failure to meet the basic conditions of daily subsistence, which was

aggravated by the city’s deindustrialization and related unemployment; second,

environmental hazards such as landslides and flooding in the rainy season; third, threats

of eviction, imprisonment, or police brutality; fourth, potentially escalating conflicts

with neighbours; and fifth, lurking criminality (focus group, 04/03/2012). As Carolina,

who arrived at age 25 with her three young daughters, recalls:

When I got here in March of 1979, this was a turf war. Everyone trying to secure

their own patch, but also protecting themselves from neighbours’ bad habits

because people would just throw their little bags with ordure, not minding if there

was someone around… Here you couldn’t walk because it was all dirty, the kids’

feet full of fungi. It was horrible, the lack of water and electricity, kids playing

with candles and torches. There were many robberies. And the police? Not even in

pictures. It was a very hard life at the time. (Carolina, pers. comm., 20/09/2011)

Moreover, relations between squatters and public authorities were uneasy,

involving bullying and violent attempts of eviction. The failures of the state to provide

security and guarantee basic rights in Comuna 13 are partly explained by the state’s

intrinsic limited capacity, but also, by a differentiated treatment of Comuna 13’s

residents. Such “differentiated citizenship” (Holston, 2007) was supported with legal

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arguments. To the eyes of governments and the local elites, squatters were infringers of

planning regulations, and most importantly, of property rights (García, 1990). As such,

spatial practices and ways of inhabiting have historically defined, to a great extent, the

precarious citizenship status and the factual reclamation of the rights of Comuna 13’s

residents. For instance, many of the new settlements are not even recognized as falling

within the city’s administrative jurisdiction (this makes them different to other areas of

self-help housing in the city), and because large extensions are labeled “terrains at-risk,”

governments are forbidden from providing residents with basic services.

Given their standing as “invaders,” the new settlers are also rejected by

inhabitants of adjacent neighbourhoods. In turn, newcomers are also apprehensive;

machete fights among neighbours are frequent (long-time male resident, pers. comm.,

18/09/2011). Many migrants to the city have witnessed violence in one of the many

episodes of the Colombian political conflict, as was the case for Isabel:

We came from Urabá when things got difficult, escaping the heat [violence]… I

always say that I came to this neighbourhood because life had held a bad fate for

me. I arrived on the 15th of December of 1980. When I arrived, this place was

gloomy, horrible, scary. Everywhere I looked, everything around me meant death,

displacement, grief, sadness. I thought this would be my end. And I seriously

don’t know why I never left. (pers. comm., 17/09/2011)

As this quote depicts, narratives of displacement and the search for a safe haven

are common to the multiplicity of histories that residents tell about their reasons for

arrival to Comuna 13. Comuna 13 became one of Medellín’s last frontiers to be

colonized by the urban poor in their struggles to secure housing, whether escaping the

political violence taking place in the Colombian countryside or eviction from the inner

city. However, violence as a strategy of conflict resolution was also transposed from

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rural areas to the city, where, in the absence of a rule of law, violence acquired new

logics. Newcomers to Comuna 13, such as Isabel, quickly realized that life in the city

would result in equally uncertain and perilous dangers as those she thought she had left

behind in Urabá.

Contrary to interpretations of squatter settlements as a place of arrival and

transition into a better life in the city, for many residents of Comuna 13 there have been

few opportunities for moving out to other areas of the city. The late urbanization of

Comuna 13 was marked by the city’s deindustrialization and inability to absorb a

growing surplus of unskilled labour. For many residents of Comuna 13, these difficulties

meant that they would need to turn strategies of economic survival into permanent

arrangements, mostly but not always, within the informal economy. As a result, many

people living in Comuna 13 are long time residents; Comuna 13 is the place where

children and grandchildren are raised. This is confirmed by the 2010 Quality of Life

Survey, which found that 74.47% of Comuna 13’s residents have lived there all their

lives.

An important factor mentioned repetitively during interviews and focus groups,

in order to make life bearable despite the difficulties, is the construction of collaborative

ties among neighbours and the development of a sense of community. Indeed, incipient

institutions of collective action define the agency of Comuna 13’s residents and their

active participation in transforming the city.

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3.3 Key actors in development: Women’s groups, social capital and

institutions

Notwithstanding the high levels of violence and distrust, and the many

difficulties confronted in the processes of arrival to Comuna 13, ties of solidarity and

social cohesion developed among neighbours, particularly among women. These ties led

to initiatives of collective action and incipient social organization that residents tapped

into to get by. Struggles to access water and electricity are representative of these

dynamics, as a long-time female resident of 20 de Julio explains: “Despite the

difficulties, we got together with some ladies and formed a women’s committee. Based

on our work, we achieved drinking water and electricity. That was in 1983, or so” (pers.

comm. 20/09/2011). A female leader from Independencias provides a higher level of

detail about neighbourhood actors involved and collaboration in accessing and

managing drinking water and electricity:

In Independencias III we established a women’s group. ( ... ) Doña Lucia

Caicedo who is not longer with us…led the group. She was a real leader, she

was ‘la potencia,’ she helped us to organize. For over three years, she started

giving us little pieces of tube and wire that she got from some construction

workers that she knew. She gave us many bits, and she told us to save them. At

some point, many of the households already had accumulated enough wires and

tubes... Then Don Daniel connected the tubes to a large tank up in La Torre.

What a joy! But there was very little water and so each household was given a

turn at a particular time of the day: 'from such hour to such hour it's your turn'.

We had to take care of the little water we had, and so we had to shut the tap to

give a turn to the next neighbour. I mean, these were very caring women, despite

all the violence that we had and all the difficulties, these were very

compassionate and generous people. Electricity was installed the same way.

First, we had to make our own candles, go to sleep at six pm… then each

household got but a single light bulb. (Carolina, pers. comm., 20/09/2011).

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3.3.1 Convites

Convites (gatherings) refer to a similar process characterized the construction of

private dwellings, betterment projects, and small-scale community infrastructure.

Historically, given the lack of state-led planning or private developers, these projects

relied on unpaid local labour through convites, a local type of collective action

arrangement involving the sharing of food. Convites are informal social institutions by

which a group of families gather during a weekend to work on a project. Women usually

take the leadership in organizing and inviting neighbours to a soup kitchen. During the

convite, neighbours help each other with the construction or improvement of a private

dwelling. Sometimes, convites are also organized to improve a community amenity.

Convites are seen not only a social institution of collective action, but also, as an

opportunity for families to meet new neighbours and socialize:

Convites were good, very welcoming. Usually two or three families would get

together and we’d cook a big pot of sancocho for everyone... After a family has

organized their land and levelled the terrains for construction, then the women

organize a convite. Women are the managers and organizers, and for women, this

is also a way to get acquainted with others. Those who are new to the

neighbourhood feel the collaboration of the women right away (Margarita,

18/09/2011).

Convites are also an example of empathy, where the logics of solidarity and

reciprocity among neighbours shape much of the construction of urban space:

For many of the shacks that are in very bad shape, basically falling apart, women

try to organize in order to help these families, and through convites we lend each

other a hand (Carolina, pers comm, 20/09/2011).

Convites are also scaled-up from the neighbours’ level to larger projects at the

community level. During a focus group conversation with residents of El Salado,

participants recalled the collective construction of the local primary school, an important

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landmark in the process of neighbourhood consolidation and an important step towards

achieving the dream of providing better opportunities for children:

Participant 1: We didn’t have a school at the time, but we took classes in the

atrium of the Church. We sat on the floor, but school was cancelled in the winter

because the water flooded all over, so it was a very difficult thing.

Participant 2: When I arrived here, I was able to take third grade at the Pedro J

Gómez school, which was built by parents themselves to address the lack of

space at the Church… Each of the parents provided a brick, everyone around

here contributed, and that’s how they built it. Every week or so or whenever

possible, people contributed material and one step at a time was how they built

it. (focus group, 30/03/2012)

3.3.2 Community Action Boards

In Colombia, action boards emerged informally in the late nineteen-century in

rural zones where the state had a weak presence and neighbours had to organized and

establish links with politicians to lobby for resources. As such, these boards were

emblematic of grassroots action and participation. In 1958, through Law 19, Community

Action Boards (Juntas de Acción Comunal or JACs) gained institutional recognition as

legal and political bodies with the ability to execute public budgets. Law 19 mandated

departmental and municipal governments to encourage participation through JACs in

community development projects, particularly, in the construction and improvement of

roads, bridges, housing and access to basic services (Article 23). Roughly thirty percent

of Colombia’s infrastructure has been built through JACs projects in underserviced

villages or urban areas (Valencia, 2008). Usually, local governments provide

construction materials or small budgets, while JACs supply local labour, including JAC

members’ own unpaid time.

In Comuna 13, JACs have played a crucial role in the provision of basic

community infrastructure. Several JAC members interviewed for this research explained

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in detail their roles and leadership trajectories related to securing resources for public

works projects. From the paving of roads, to the construction of schools, health centres,

or land titling initiatives, JAC members commend themselves for most collective

attainments; they are highly visible and locally praised by neighbours. Thus, JACs also

carry a high level of influence and political capital.

Despite local admiration for these leaders, JACs have also been controversial;

they are inevitably embedded in pervasive favour-trading or clientelistic relationships.

JAC members are perceived as power brokers with the most direct linkages to the

political system. Because the needs of the poor are seldom represented, JACs interact in

vote-bank politics, posing community demands in exchange for communal or personal

benefits. For example, it is common to find strong political support for local candidates

in mayoral and city council elections whose political platform would counter the

interests of those same poor communities that voted for them.17 Counter-intuitively, JAC

members often express dissatisfaction for participatory programs that aim to increase

democratic participation or that would spread resources more broadly throughout

different organizations (such as the city’s Participatory Budgeting Program). Some

leaders interviewed saw “invited” participatory democratic programs as a less optimum

scenario for spreading public resources, even in instances when direct democratic

mechanisms are implemented to secure fairness in allocation. According to these leaders,

17 The origins of clientship relations through JAC have an important precedent in a law of 1968, by which

senators were granted the benefit to provide ‘parliamentary aides’ at their own personal discretion. This

law distorted the objectives of community action, as in order to access these aides JACs became

subordinated to clientship relations (Valencia, 2008). Although the 1991 Political Constitution eliminated

these aides and a large number of laws regulate JACs to prevent patronage, clientele logics have been

naturalized as political common sense, particularly in regions where state institutions are very weak.

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personal trajectories are more legitimate than direct elections, because leaders are “better

informed”. As such, JAC represent a form of direct participation, but also hold an

ambiguous relationship with emerging forms of democratic participation.

3.3.3 The Public Utility Companies of Medellín (Empresas Públicas de

Medellín or EPM)

An important actor in the development of informal neighbourhoods and its

legalization is the EPM. In Medellín, the legalization of informal neighbourhoods have

gone hand in hand with local leaders’ engagement of EPM, and the provision of plans

with low-interest loans to the community to extend the networks. In 1958, EPM adopted

a model of differential tariffs that cover the costs of network expansion. Connection fees

are therefore stratified, so that wealthier residents subsidize the urban poor through

cross-subsidies across six different price tiers. Tariffs are assessed based on land values,

the value of the residential unit and the size of the connection. In the 1960s, this model

was replicated across Colombia and cost recovery for connections became mandatory,

proving an important example of a model that provides the utility company financial

viability but that is also based on solidarity, and arguments of the “public good”

(Furlong, 2013).

Since the late 1950s, EPM started working in extending service connection to

informal neighbourhoods. Under a program named Habilitación de Viviendas (or Fitting

out of Dwellings), which started in 1964 and is still active today, EPM has installed

250,953 residential connections to low-income households working directly with JACs.

EPM charges users for these connections, who pay a fraction of the cost every month

through a low interest loan (at a 0.5, 1, or 2 percent over 120 months for water and 100

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months for electricity). In these community projects, EPM also provides funding for

small community improvement projects (Furlong, 2013).

To recap, residents of Comuna 13 endured many difficulties in the process of

accessing housing and basic services, including exposure to multiple environmental

risks, crime, conflicts, and socio-economic vulnerability. Nonetheless, incipient social

organization, typically led by a group of women who mediate as “problem solvers”

(Auyero, 1999b), helped these communities to achieve some of the most basic needs,

such as shelter, and cope with some of the everyday harsh realities of unemployment,

educational exclusion, lack of income, and the city’s critical shortage of affordable

housing. Different types of institutions of collective action enabled communities to

improve access to basic needs, from convites as the most informal types, and JAC-led

processes with higher degrees of political formalization and power brokerage involved.

The role of EPM was key in this process. By extending service networks to self-built

communities EPM helped the interests of the urban poor by providing access to basic

services and contributing to speed up the legalization of informal neighbourhoods.

It is important to note that, across Latin America, informal urbanization was a

mechanism that helped cities facing rampant urbanization, like Medellín, to cope with a

housing crisis for which the city had no other option available. This leads Gilbert (2013,

p. 493) to assert that, although informal urbanization is often associated to urban deficits

and disorder, “In reality, self-help housing has saved most Latin American cities from

disaster.” Along the struggles to secure basic services, as the following section explains,

the “violence-security nexus” (Davis, 2010) has, undeniably, been the most pressing

issue residents have had to cope with.

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3.4 The Construction of Comuna 13 as a Dangerous Place

A striking paradox is that, although planning ordinances historically forbade the

urbanization of Comuna 13’s at-risk terrains, local politicians have since 1978 directly

intervened as brokers in the mushrooming invasions of the upper hillsides (PRIMED,

1995, p. 79). Not surprisingly, once these politicians are elected they abandon their

promises, and residents with illegal tenure are unable to reclaim the provision of

municipal services through the political process or via administrative procedures

(Aricapa, 2005). As a result, extensive territories in Comuna 13 have grown outside of

the legal codes, administrative powers, and aspirational formalities of the Master Plan

and the city’s planning regulations. The urbanization of the Centre-Western Zone was

predicated on a process of peripheralization. While locational advantages are

concentrated in Comunas 11 and 12, in Comuna 13 heightened exposure to

environmental risk and a lack of access to services and opportunities create deep socio-

spatial injustices.

But was the construction of Comuna 13 as a space of socio-spatial relegation the

result of uneven and exclusionary growth? As mentioned earlier, the process of

peripheralization in Medellín is not unique to Comuna 13. Roughly half the city’s

population lives in “self-help” neighbourhoods with different degrees of consolidation

(Echeverri & Orsini, 2010). Contrary to Bogotá, where socio-spatial fragmentation

followed a strict North/South pattern, or to Rio de Janeiro and Caracas where pockets of

poverty can be found adjacent to luxury zones, in Medellín, like in La Paz, a thick ring of

poverty wraps around the hills of the Aburrá Valley, where the city sits. Barrios

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populares are ubiquitous in the mountains, except for the southern hills of El Poblado,

the high-rise upper middle-class ward that also serves as a corridor to the elite suburbs.

Figure 3.4

Middle Class Area near San Javier's Metro Station, Comuna 13


Among the low-income wards, Comuna 13 is not the poorest. Comunas 1 and 2,

in the Northeastern Zone, in fact, rank lowest in the city’s Human Development Index,

followed by Comuna 13 (Alcaldía de Medellín, 2007). There are positive aspects to

Comuna 13 that are not equally existent in other low-income districts. For instance, new

immigrants, including Afro-Colombians from the Pacific coast, have contributed to

shaping Comuna 13 in heterogeneous ways. Comuna 13 is also well known as a cradle of

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young hip-hop movements, of award-winning break-dancers showcased in national

reality shows, and of street theatre. It is the most ethnically diverse and arguably the

most culturally vibrant ward. This comuna also has a small “social mix” in the area

surrounding the San Javier Metro station (as illustrated in Figure 3.4), where lower-

middle-income families reside.18 Still, Comuna 13 carries the deepest territorial stigma,

occupying a notorious space in Colombians’ mental cartographies of violence. So why

was Comuna 13 stigmatized and relegated to the bottom of the socio-spatial hierarchies

of the city, given that it was not the worst-off and shared many troubling circumstances

with other comunas? How did Comuna 13 gain a local and national stigma as a

homeland of violence?

3.4.1 A geographical paradox

As Sánchez et al. (2011) argue, a “geographical paradox” has played out against

Comuna 13. On the one hand, the intricacy of its hilly topography, its borderland

character between urban and rural, and the lack of accessible infrastructure marginalize

the comuna from municipal and departmental government operations. On the other hand,

its location is favourable to criminal actors: it provides them with a quick way in and out

of the city without being noticed. It also provides access to an underground corridor for

the trafficking of drugs and arms between the south of the country where drugs are

produced and the route to the sea via Antioquia’s Urabá. Urabá is a region with a history

of social mobilization and historically contested by rebels, that most recently, has been

controlled by paramilitary-armed groups (Ballvé, 2012).

18 Comuna 13’s “social mix” is expressed as follows: 45.3 percent of the residents are considered

extremely poor; 40.1 percent are categorized as poor; 4.5 percent middle-income and the 0.1 percent of the

residents are classified as middle and upper-middle income (Alcaldía de Medellín, 2011a).

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Among the structural and contextual determinants of urban violence and

inequality in Comuna 13, it is also crucial to examine the role of urban policy and the

language of the state with reference to designated problem areas (Dikeç, 2007). Through

official accounts or portrayals of problems and individuals in relation to a territory, a

“state’s statements define the ‘proper place’ of things and people” (Dikeç, 2007, p. 16).

In doing so, urban policy attaches particular meanings to those social groupings

inhabiting territories of policy intervention (Wacquant, 2008). This is the case of urban

policy practices in Medellín, which have contributed, sometimes inadvertently, to the

symbolic and material construction of Comuna 13 as a dangerous place.

The following section details the historic construction of Comuna 13 as a

dangerous place. I argue that the dynamics of violence in Comuna 13 are closely tied to

the nature of local governments’ involvement in Comuna 13, given its geographic

isolation, rendering Comuna 13 desirable to violent actors and making the presence of

this state in society often violent and traumatic. The scarce presence of state institutions

heightened the stigmatization of its residents, particularly of young males. The complex

problems of Comuna 13 are addressed in the 1990s through a policy of conflict

management through peace pacts and discretionary urban upgrading; and in the early

2000s, through militarization, urban warfare, and other forms of repression.

3.5 Heterogeneous forms of violence in Comuna 13

Scholars of violence, such as Pécaut (1999), argue that contemporary violence in

Colombia is polyvalent. The dynamics, actors, and motivations involved are highly

varied, and this heterogeneity of violence “prevents it from coalescing along a single

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axis of conflict” (Pécault, 1999, p. 143 emphasis in original). A prime example of this

heterogeneity is Comuna 13, where violence involves legal and extra-legal actors with

multiple motivations and agendas. It is exogenous, as it replicates the actors and

dynamics of the national conflict, and localized in the form of neighbourhood petty

crime, youth gangs, “social cleansing,” and vigilante fronts. The different actors and

types of violence “overlap” or “cascade” into new configurations (Franco & Navas,

2013). These actors also interact with community organizations, JACs, local leaderships,

and political institutions, and adapt to the evolution of crime and governance in the city,

helping to sustain dysfunctional democratic institutions (Arias, 2010). The factors

common to these violent dynamics in Comuna 13 are, first, a weak but selectively

repressive state; second, a constant struggle among armed actors for territorial control

over (in)security provision, strategic illegal markets, and routes (Angarita et al., 2008);

and third, a place-based stigma of criminality, which excludes young people from

accessing alternative paths (Riaño-Alcalá, 2006).

3.5.1 Non-state violent actors

3.5.1.2 Youth Gangs, Vigilantes, and Marxist Militias

In the early 1980s, youth gangs arose in various peripheral neighbourhoods. As

Isabel recalls, “There were many robberies; mostly, these were bands of youngsters

bullying, robbing, and terrorizing the people” (pers. comm. 17/09/2011). In turn,

vigilante fronts appeared to counter banditry and petty crime, carrying out “social

cleansing” in day shifts. Isabel continues:

But these bands don’t lead themselves, you know? There’s always a chief, a higher

command. So they [vigilantes] came, killed the chief of the gang, and then went

after the youngsters. They called it a “social cleansing,” but for us, although we

didn’t agree with the bands, it was something very painful … these were kids from

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the community that were maybe ill-advised and chose a wrongful path... but they

didn’t have to kill them like that. (pers. comm. 17/09/2011)

Between 1986 and 1998, local leftist urban militias under the name of Comandos

Armados del Pueblo (United Commandos of the People, CAPs), claimed territorial

control over the upper neighbourhoods of Comuna 13. These militias were

fundamentally anti-youth gangs and gained local recognition as a legitimate authority,

performing judicial, policing, and development functions (Ceballos & Cronshaw, 2001).

3.5.1.3 Drug-related Violent Actors

In parallel to the proliferation of gangs, vigilante fronts, and Marxist militias, new

criminal ventures related to the illegal drug trade, as detailed in the previous chapter,

emerged particularly in Comunas 1 and 2, but spread in Comuna 13 and to other areas of

the city. This type of violence involved youth gangs, sicarios (hit-men) and larger

networks connected to the Envigado Office, and more recently to paramilitary militia.

3.5.1.4 Guerrillas and Paramilitaries (1998-2003)

Between 1998 and 2002, left-and right-wing insurgent organizations, historically

rooted in rural areas, coincided in their interest of conquering Comuna 13. The Fuerzas

Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia,

FARC) and Ejercito Nacional de Liberacion (National Liberation Army, ELN) were the

first of these groups to arrive in Comuna 13. Their rightist adversaries, a paramilitary

umbrella organization with a drug-related background, the Autodefensas Unidas de

Colombia (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, AUC), arrived in 1998 in the form

of the Cacique Nutibara Bloc. Leftist and rightist rivals warred for territorial control

(IPC, 2005).

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3.6 Local Government’s Responses (1990-2003)

Historically, state institutions, national and local, including bureaucracy and the

legal system, had very little visibility and legitimacy in Comuna 13. JACs linked

collective action to the political system and the local government, but otherwise, the

presence of formal municipal institutions was tenuous, as Jorge Melguizo, the former

Director of Medellin’s Social Development and Cultural Divisions, asserts:

“20 years ago, there were JACs, but the mayor did not even know what was going

on in these neighbourhoods, municipal administrations did not include these

neighbourhoods into their development plans, their programs or calculations.

These areas were simply invisible to the state" (pers. comm., 20/11/2011).

Furthermore, conflicts were self-regulated, and the upper hillsides of Comuna 13

were off limits to police (Aricapa, 2005). In the early 1990s, the municipality encouraged

truces and demobilization among militia. “Peace pacts” were promoted in Comunas 1

and 2, in the North-Eastern Zone of Medellín, with Milicias del Pueblo (Militia of the

People, MP), a popular revolutionary militia. Militias operating in Comuna 13, however,

were not included in the demobilization process, even where there was the same level of

urgency, as in Comunas 1 and 2, for a conflict management approach. In Comuna 13,

only a few small-scale temporary peace pacts were promoted but there was no

demobilization. The policy of peace pacts accorded between municipal and national

authorities and Medellín’s militias were political decisions that re-affirmed the diluted

power of the state. They de-escalated difficult situations but left underlying issues of

power and state illegitimacy unsolved. As the state was unable to control the outcomes of

these agreements, many ex-combatants were killed or lived under constant threat, and

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others joined new violent ventures, leaving stigmas around criminality and the

underlying drivers of violence unchanged (Gutierrez & Jaramillo, 2004).

At the city level, in the 1990s, there were important initiatives promoted by the

national government, charities, foundations, and international developmental actors,

particularly, the programs led by the Office of the Presidential Advisor for Medellín and

the Metropolitan Area (OPAMMA) (1990-1997), which are described in detail in

Chapter 4. With an emphasis on social policy, participation, and various areas of

programming for youth, OPAMMA had a positive impact in promoting community

resilience and social development. However, these programs catered more heavily to the

Northeastern Area of the city, where social organizations were stronger and communities

were better organized to bargain with governments and development actors for resources,

programs and upgrades.

Concerning the municipal government, however, in the1990s, mayors were

invested in expanding roads and infrastructure. Specifically, the construction of a metro

line took centre-stage in local politics. The arguments in pro of the metro were not just

technical; the metro was expected to generate local pride, accelerate modernization, and

revitalize public space. Proponents argued that the metro would help to unite the city,

and therefore, help to curve the violence (Stienen, 2009). Despite the metro’s present

benefits to the general public, the project was characterized by poor planning and a

troubling financing scheme that translated into lengthy delays. The difficulties involved

in project completion, and a resulting debt crisis, distracted politicians from other areas

of urban policy (Leyva, 2010) and left them with few resources to invest in needed

programs and services.

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3.7 Securitization and (Para)militarization (2000-2003)

In the early 2000s, with the escalation of FARC presence in Comuna 13 Mayor

Luis Pérez (2001-2003) called for militarization. Pérez argued that the political conflict

of the countryside had transposed itself into Comuna 13, and as such, the army, and not

the police, should act as the entity in charge of repelling insurgency. As Pérez told a

journalist: “My position is radical, there cannot be forces here other than the police and

the army, and they have to sweep” (El Tiempo, October 20, 2002). Several attempts at

“sweeping” took place in the final months of Andrés Pastrana’s presidency (1998-2002)

but were unsuccessful in securing territorial control. Military operations involved, first,

Operación Otoño (February, 2002), next Operación Contrafuego (February, 2002), then

Operación Mariscal (May, 2002), followed by Operación Potestad (June, 2002) and

Operación Antorcha (August, 2002) (Angarita, et al., 2008; IPC, 2005). Finally, Pérez

asked for 2,000 troops and a permanent level of militarization. Pastrana ruled this idea

out, but was in the last days of his presidency and was unable to support this decision

(Aricapa, 2005).

Contrary to the “left-turn” that characterized national politics in Latin America in

the late 1990s, in Colombia a right-wing securitization ideology was on the rise (Avilés,

2012). Some of the precedents of this ideological radicalization were rooted in the

failures of the Pastrana-FARC peace talks. Between 1998 and 2002, FARC intensified

kidnappings, massacres, and other expressions of violence to level the bargaining field

with the government. Mainstream media demanded a firm approach in dealing with

FARC (Rochlin, 2012). In addition, the resources injected by the U.S. war on drugs and

Plan Colombia revived previously unviable forceful response options in policy circles. In

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2002 Colombians elected Alvaro Uribe Velez - with the slogan “firm hand, big heart.”

Uribe’s ideology aligned clearly with the rhetoric of the U.S. War on Terror. Most

crucially, Alvaro Uribe is currently the subject of at least three criminal investigations

under charges of alleged sponsorship of paramilitary groups dating to the time when he

was the governor of Antioquia in the period 1995-1997. Within his jurisdiction, Uribe

promoted a program of licensed private security services that were dubbed “Convivir.”

These alleged private security squads received orders from the AUC leaders, which

consolidate the power of paramilitaries in Antioquia, and allow the AUC to expand their

territorial control to the departments of Cesar and the Magdalena Medio region.19

In 2002, less than a month into Uribe’s presidency, a Presidential Decree (No.

2929 of 2002) created “Zones of Rehabilitation and Consolidation.” Under this

exceptional statute, the national government sought to expel insurgent groups from the

Caribbean Region and from the Department of Arauca. The implementation of the ZRCs

came with civil rights restrictions alongside increased powers for public martial forces.

For instance, foreigners were prohibited from living or circulating in ZRCs, public

authorities (the Governor or a military mayor) could access or use private property

without a warrant, and local citizens were mandated to attend to any demands around the

provision of professional or technical services as required by the public martial forces.

Although Comuna 13 was not officially declared a ZRC, the measures implemented

would follow those prescriptions (IPC, 2005).

19 Although there were attempts to dismiss the processes, the Supreme Court ratified the validity of judicial

investigations (Semana, January 14th, 2014).

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3.7.1 Operación Orión, October 2002

With Uribe as president, Perez had free reign. October 16, 2002 marked a

watershed moment for Comuna 13: over four days, 1,500 troopers from combined state

forces entered into the comuna on foot, in tanks, and from helicopters. This spectacular

display of power was dubbed Operación Orión - Pérez’s longed-for forceful takeover of

Comuna 13. In Colombia’s long history of war, Orion is unique not only because of the

extreme level of violence deployed, but also because it affected a dense ward of 139,000

inhabitants. According to official numbers, there were 11 civilians killed, 200 wounded,

and 243 taken under arrest in the first four days of military engagement. Residents and

human rights organizations assert, however, that 50 people were killed, and aside from

the detainees, over 150 residents disappeared (Bedoya, 2012).

Orión was followed by an intense surveillance and militarization that lasted

several months. Selective killings and daily curfews were imposed, regulating residents’

routines. Public forces occupied abandoned dwellings in the area, some dressed as

civilians in order to conduct intelligence assignments (community leader, pers. comm.,

17/09/2011). Many residents, including children, and young men in particular, were

treated as suspected criminals (Sánchez, et. al., 2011), which deepened the stigmatization

attached to the community (Angarita et al., 2008). As one community leader from

Conquistadores expresses, residents where harshly criminalized by the troops:

The purpose of Orión was to violate the rights of us all. When the helicopters

arrived we had to tuck into corners so that the bullets wouldn’t reach us because

they pierced through the walls. It was a war against the community not against

the militia, because the [leftist] militia had already left or they went into hiding,

they didn’t expose themselves on the streets. But us, the community, we were the

ones who had to pay in Orión, and our only crime was to be poor and live in these

neighbourhoods. (community leader, pers. comm., 09/21/2011)

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Celebrated by many as a military success, it was revealed soon thereafter that

many of the alleged informants working in cooperation with the armed forces during

Orión were members of the Cacique Nutibara. Many innocent people faced unjust

detention stemming from false confessions. Research findings by the Comisión Nacional

de Memoria Histórica (National Commission for Historic Memory, CNMH) suggest that,

in the shadows of Orión, a deal was crafted to impose a new social order under

paramilitary rule. What followed next was the reconfiguration of social order and

territorial control in Comuna 13.

While the Uribe-Perez nexus’ political motivations to retake Comuna 13 were

led by a securitization ideology, Orión also evinced the notoriously low capacity of the

state, which until 2003, had a very low level of legitimacy in Comuna 13, had failed to

deliver basic services to a large number of residents, and enforce the rule of law. Local

actors advocated for intensified social development programs, but as a former director of

an NGO noted, “the call for state action was one built on human rights, bottom-up

planning (…), local economic development, meaningful participation” (pers. comm.,

12/15/2011). Such activism contributed to mobilize a new era of urban policy

interventions in the form of social urbanism. Understanding how these radical changes

took place, nonetheless, require an examination of the local impacts of parallel

decentralization processes. It also points to how urban planning emerged as an alternate

field where multiple actors met to negotiate urban conflict with a view towards the future

of their territories. These processes are explained in the next two chapters.

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3.9 Conclusion

I have argued that Comuna 13 has been constructed, from afar and from above, as

a space of relegation - an outcome of the interacting violence, inequalities, differentiated

citizenship and exclusionary dispositions that are characteristic of Colombia’s urban

system, and that, in Medellín, converge at the precarious urban margins. Untangling the

dynamics that constructed Comuna 13 as a space of socio-spatial relegation take us back

to how Colombian institutions have been historically built on a recalcitrant defense of

property rights. Private interests, indeed, have shaped cities like Medellín at the expense

of a rising number of dispossessed households. A peripheralization process, following

Lefebvre (2003[1970]), secludes the urban poor, exposing them to multiple risks, and

limiting their access to those jobs and opportunities available to better-off social classes.

At the same time, Comuna 13 has been articulated repeatedly through changing urban

policy regimes, and a dispute for socio-spatial control involving various types of violent

actors and (para)policing entanglements.

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Chapter Four

Creating Spaces of Planning Experimentation:

Decentralization, New Solidarities and State Transformations

We are increasingly seeing two things, first, the formation of a “league” of social

movements; and second, the consolidation of these movements, that now interact

as political actors, and have become much more strategic in raising and bargaining

their demands. (…) This transition of the social movements has been characterized

by a stronger connection to the territory. The collective construction of common

goals is now more articulated around hopes over planning the future of their

territory. … What has changed is social movements’ connection to planning. (Jairo

Foronda, pers. comm. 07/03/2012)20

The literature that has been written so far in relation to Medellín’s

“transformation” highlights the role of independent mayors and “good governance”

practices as the main causes of urban reform (e.g. Bateman, et al. 2011; Fukuyama &

Colby, 2011; Devlin, 2010). However, except for the work of Stienen (2009), the role of

social movements and state-society activists’ networks in making planning

experimentations possible has been overlooked. Highlighting the role of social agency in

mobilizing the state seems almost counterintuitive given the pervasiveness of violence

and its devastating effects on the social fabric of the city. Notwithstanding, actors

interviewed illuminated social urbanism through local histories of activism, social

movements, key actors, and networks. Behind the mayhem, since the mid-1980s, an

underlying process of democratization opened opportunities for social change in cities,

as new democratic spaces were formed because of decentralization, which enabled social

20 Jairo Foronda was a former social leader who was appointed in 2004 as Coordinator of the municipal

Participatory Planning and Participatory Budgeting Programs, to later become Assistant Manager of the

Social Development Division at the municipality. He passed away in May of 2013.

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organizations, activists, and dissenters to challenge the state rather than disengage. Civil

society actors thus acquired a central role in the struggles again socio-spatial injustices.

But how might one reconcile the structural marginalization of the urban poor, described

in the previous chapter, while recognizing the agency of citizens pursuing changes?

Constructing opportunities for social change can begin with a simple redefinition

of problems and identities, an opportunity that can emerge at times of crisis (Evans,

1997). As Susser and Schneider (2003) point out, it is during critical junctures when new

institutional arrangements are pursued and when collective action is invoked towards a

creative redefinition of urban problems. Spaces of invited or invented participation are

often cited as sources of democratic innovation. According to Fung and Wright (2000),

the reflexive and situated knowledge of ordinary citizens, traditionally excluded from

decision-making, can contribute to transform social systems through deeper democracy

when this knowledge is incorporated into the reconceptualization of problems and the

formulation of new solutions. But collective responses to critical situations can work in

multiple directions; a policy change does not automatically imply an improvement or a

transformation of power relations, only a change in the context, the modes of

intervention, and perhaps the rules of the game (Li, 2007). For instance, the

implementation of participatory programs does not achieve social justice in itself, and

despite its potential, if instrumentalized as a mechanism to fabricate consent it can

actually create adverse outcomes (Cooke & Kothari, 2001; Miraftab, 2003; Robins et al.,

2008). Social innovation at times of crisis thus requires fundamental changes in social

relations that can overcome the status quo (Moulaert et al., 2005). But such changes still

require an opportunity to act.

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Referring to the spaces where social innovation for inclusive governance may

emerge, Gonzalez and Healey (2005, p. 2061) highlight the methodological importance

of searching for those concrete sites of interaction “where ideas are expressed, strategies

played out, decisions made and power games fought out”. As ordinary people interact in

these spaces, they “learn the discourses, practices and values embedded in established

governance processes. They may also seek to challenge and change them” (Gonzalez and

Healey, 2005, p. 2061). This chapter examines the spaces that enabled participation and

the reconfiguration of resistance practices contributing to new understandings of the

social functions of planning. First, I underscore the social learning that resulted from

community organizing experiences and activism in the previous decades. Second, I

address how, as a result of the demands for democratization and the negotiations over the

political conflict, the Colombian state went through a series of modernization reforms,

notably decentralization, which unlocked opportunities for increased local autonomy and

democratic governance. The third element, which is the key aspect for understanding the

innovative aspects of social urbanism, points to a normative reconfiguration of the

planning field, which is invigorated by instances of civic participation. Out of this

context, bottom-up planning innovations emerged that even if initially discretionary and

politically unsustainable, were later re-launched within the logics of social urbanism

within the political system under a formal and more comprehensive framework.

4.1 Social Movements and Barrios Populares as Social Laboratories

The history of participatory planning and civic engagement in Medellín is rooted in

the experiences of local leadership and community organizing that first transpired in the

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1960s in barrios populares. In Medellín, collective action has been integral to Medellín’s

self-help urbanization process. Residents have improved and consolidated their

neighbourhoods through collective efforts of mutual assistance and associational

practices. It is important to mention that in the locally perceived absence of the state,

self-improvement associational practices were greatly influenced by the ideologies and

interventions of extra-state institutions and individual actors (students or professionals

providing popular education or technical assistance) who were locally perceived as

development agents. Marxist insurgent organizations also sought to build a social base in

working class neighbourhoods and informal settlements. Indeed, the 1960s and 1970s

were characterized as an epoch of great ideological disputes, which outsiders sought to

settle in impoverished communities. As a result of external influences and interventions,

grassroots organizations absorbed discourses from progressive Catholicism and

Liberation Theology doctrines, the Communist Party, labour unions, human rights

activists, students’ movements, and leftist guerrillas. As Jorge Blandón, a community

leader in Comuna 2 explains:

We were a laboratory for many things; here we had a strong influence of the

liberation theology, of guerrilla movements, but also, of gringos’ “Plan for the

Americas” which were attempts to block off the Leftist by coopting our

Community Action Boards. That left us with many lessons and invited us to learn

continuously about our mistakes. (Jorge Blandón, pers. comm., 01/03/2012)

Overall, three recurrent themes that provided foundational leitmotifs to Medellín’s

urban social movements were, first, observation of human rights; second, the

construction of popular participation and local autonomy, and third, basic service

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provision21. These demands, which were also expressed in other regions throughout the

country, found some response in the concurrent processes of state modernization that are

detailed in the following section: decentralization, the 1991 Political Constitution and a

new Urban Law.

4.2 Political Exclusion and Violence in Colombia

For decades, political scientists have observed that one of Colombia’s most

salient paradoxes is that it has maintained a very unusual case of political and macro-

economic stability with unparalleled levels of political violence (Gutierrez & Stoller,

2001). Indeed, “voting and violence have coexisted in Colombia before the country was

fully formed” (Taylor, 2009, p. 5). In contrast to most other countries in the region,

Colombia did not endure frequent coups d’état, nor did it bear long episodes of

authoritarian rule.22 Instead, the rise to power of democratic governments was usually the

outcome of legal elections where political competitors and their rivals followed equal

rules (Bejarano & Pizarro, 2002). The praise for Colombia’s long electoral tradition is

obscured, nonetheless, by civilian governments’ recurrent use of violent tactics to restrict

dissent and impose order and obedience from above. Until 1991, violence was

21 There were also professionals and non-profit organizations that advised squatters in the process of auto-

construction. In the 1960s, housing movements and squatters received technical assistance from a national

umbrella organization called Central Nacional Provivienda. Neighbourhoods like El Popular and Santa

Lucía were founded with Provivienda’s support, which helped squatters organize and strategize prior to a

collective land invasion (Gómez et al., 2010). National housing movements were well organized and

retained a high level of autonomy but were not very cohesive and organizations dissolved once specific

needs were fulfilled (Maria Clara Echeverría, pers. comm., 08/06/12). 22

Latin America’s political landscape for the most part of the nineteen and twentieth centuries was one of

frequent coups d’état (Mainwaring, 1999; O’Donnell, et. al., 1987). During episodes of authoritarian

ruling, civil freedoms and political participation were suppressed. Thus, Colombia’s political trajectory

appears somewhat different from most other countries in the region.

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persistently deployed to sustain a restricted bipartisan system that excluded alternative

voices and social forces from participation in politics (Palacios & Safford, 2001).

Political violence and uneasy state-society interactions can be illuminated

through the nature of state institutions, the type of political regime, and the legal

prescriptions of the 1886 Constitution (C-1886), which ruled until 1991. The C-1886 is

described as “oriented toward small, non-interventionist government, individual rights,

and an overarching commitment to property rights” (Angel-Cabo & Lovera, 2014, p. 1).

Colombia is a unitary country; in the C-1886, it was structured with a centralized system

of government and a strong executive branch. Local and regional governments were

organized according to a three-tier government structure but most instances of decision-

making were based in Bogotá, the capital city. This structure served the regime of

presidencialismo and a “zero-sum” party system that restricted political power to the

hands of a Liberal/Conservative duopoly (Pizarro, 2005). Thus, as Bejarano (2011)

argues, the elite-led Liberal and Conservative parties assumed functions of state-

formation and army building in the context of an invisible and weak state and recurrent

political conflict.

At the regional level, mayors were appointed by departmental governors, who in

turn were appointed by the president. Bogotá’s mayor was directly appointed by the

president. City councillors were democratically elected every four years and could be re-

elected. As such, Council had great influence over local budgets and the mayor’s agenda,

which made them prone to patronage and clientelism. Decentralized agencies of the

central government were in charge of providing basic public services such as water,

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electricity, and social services, but their coverage and level of service was typically

substandard (Restrepo, 2009; Fiszbein, 1997).

To control for regime instability, military actions against dissenters were

deployed as mechanisms of social control. Thus, the military has played a crucial role in

restraining dissent as the army retained a great deal of autonomy in the management of

public order (Bejarano & Pizarro, 2002). In this respect, although Colombia did not

endure long and open military dictatorships as experienced by other countries in the

region, presidents have had the authority to suspend citizens’ rights and liberties alleging

“siege” and “state of exception” provisions (Uprimny & García, 2006). Ostensibly, these

special powers retained by the executive branch were originally conceived as temporary

measures to be invoked under extreme circumstances. And yet, between 1949 and 1991,

the country experienced an aggregate total 30 years of “exception” (Ramirez, 2010).

This restricted and repressive regime fuelled much of the social turmoil and

political violence that characterize the recent history of the country; it polarized social

movements, shifting the strategies of the movements and of potential political actors

outside the Liberal/Conservative duopoly towards illegal forms of participation:

Despite Colombia’s formal democracy, social movements of the 1970s and 1980s

were repressed through the use of states of exception, producing unintended

consequences, including the strengthening of insurgent groups on the left, and

dirty-war activities on the right, leading to the emergence and subsequent

consolidation of paramilitary forces. Illegal forms of political participation took the

place of the social movements that struggled against the abuses of military regimes

and for the restoration of democratic structures in other parts of Latin America.

(Ramirez, 2010, p. 85)

Consequently, relationships and encounters between social organizations and the

state in Medellín’s barrios populares where typically uneasy, if they occurred at all. Not

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only was the state’s presence and legitimacy in the barrios very low, but also it gradually

became physically unfeasible. Given the growing territorial control asserted by militias,

youth gangs, and other violent actors, districts such as Comuna 13, or Comunas 1 and 2,

fell largely out of the police’s actual perimeter of influence.

4.3 State Modernization: A Window of Opportunity

4.3.1 Decentralization

Decentralization policies throughout the global south are often associated with

the pressures from multi-lateral bodies, such as the IMF and World Bank, to adopt

economic structural adjustment and other neoliberal policies (Beard et. al., 2008).

However, as Berry (1997) and Falletti (2010) point out, this was not the case in

Colombia. Having escaped economic crisis, the adoption of a decentralization policy in

Colombia started foremost as a political process and was connected to genuine demands

for local autonomy and democratization; even so, neoliberal economic reforms (such as

privatizations, autonomy of the central bank and employment flexibilization) were

certainly intended to be implemented along the way (Restrepo, 2009).

The adoption of decentralization reforms was motivated by social and political

conflict. Decentralization in the 1980’s came mainly as a response to FARC’s demands

during the first cycle (1984-1987) of peace negotiations under the presidency of Virgilio

Barco. The Army of Popular Liberation (Ejército de Liberación Nacional or EPL), a

Marxist-Leninist guerrilla, had also promised to join peace talks on such grounds. There

were also popular demands for social change and local elections. In cities, for example,

the poor quality and inadequate provision of services were reasons for social unrest

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during the 1970s and 1980s. Massive protests were triggered by a profound crisis of state

legitimacy. Recurrent civic strikes paralyzed the economy, and consequences were not

easily mitigated (Fiszbein, 1997). This added up to the pressures by leftist guerrilla

militants (M-19 and others) who promised to join peace talks in exchange for the

democratization of state institutions.

The first decentralization reform was therefore political. This democratizing

process started in 1988 with the popular election of mayors for two-year terms. Although

this was a first step towards enabling higher local autonomy, the processes deepened

with the adoption of the 1991 Political Constitution (C-1991), which conferred actual

political, administrative, and financial powers to municipalities and departments.

Decentralization meant a fundamental change in inter-governmental relations, conferring

cities a great deal of power and autonomy. Fiscal and administrative decentralization was

initially based on the transfer of 45 percent of the national state’s income, representing

about ten percent of the GDP in 2000, to local governments. Local governments acquired

the responsibility for education, health, water, sanitation, roads, and agriculture, among

others (Fiszbein, 1997; Falletti, 2010).

4.3.2 The Political Constitution of 1991 (C-1991)

The Political Constituion of 1991 or C-1991 was an unprecedented participatory

project in Colombia and represented a historic political rupture. The changes adopted in

the late 1980s were still timid and turmoil was once more evinced in August of 1989

with the assassination of Luis Carlos Galán. In this conjuncture, a student initiative

calling for a National Constitutional Assembly dubbed the “Seventh Ballot” was

unusually agreed upon by various sectors of society. Similarly, civic pressures, and new

compromises acquired in the negotiations over political conflict with FARC, EPL and

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M-19, opened up spaces of participation to alternative forces and groups traditionally

excluded from politics (Murillo & Gómez, 2005). With the aim to recover the legitimacy

of state institutions, t he C-91 included representatives from all sectors of society into the

National Constitutional Assembly.

Altogether, the C-91 constituted a new “social contract”: the C-1991 proclaimed

an extensive bill of rights and defined a model of state closely associated with

interventionist social democracy models. It invited the formation of new political parties

and embraced a highly decentralized system of government, promoting direct democracy

and enacting new rights for underrepresented populations, particularly for afro-

descendants and indigenous groups. While the political system preserved its unitary

form, the C-1991 redefined the state as: “A State of Social Right… decentralized, with

autonomy of its local jurisdictions” (República de Colombia, p.1). As such, it defined the

municipality as a primary and autonomous unit of government. The new constitution

also established a Guardianship Act (Acción de Tutela) to guarantee a rapid response by

the state to citizens’ requests for the protection of basic rights.

Despite its progressive spirit, the C-91 has been described as an aspirational

charter: it grants social rights that are barely fulfilled in practice because the state lacks

the effective capacity to guarantee them (Angel-Cabo & Lovera, 2014). In particular, the

state has continued to be inadequate in the protection of human rights and in the

enforcement of the rule of law.23 It is also very limited in the provision of social and

economic rights enshrined in the constitution (Bejarano, 2011).

23 Following the adoption of the new charter, the continuation of violence against union members,

journalists, politicians, social organizations and vulnerable groups in Colombia is revealing of

democracy’s pressing limitations in the protection of rights and political inclusion. For instance, between

1992 and 2013, 41 journalists were murdered. Out of these, 88 percent of the cases have met with complete

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4.3.3 Urban Reform Legislation

The radical constitutional reform that took place in Colombia and the changes in

urban law, parallels the experience of Brazil’s 1988 Constitution, which is also

characterized by an extensive bill of rights, and the adoption of the Statuto de Cidade

(Caldeira & Holston, 2005; Fernandes, 2007). With regards to Colombia’s urban reform,

significant changes to address the challenges of urbanization took place with the

approval of Law 9 of 1989, Law 388 of 1997, and through the C-91. While previously

the C-1886 enshrined individual freedom and private initiative as a superior value over

solidarity and equality, the new legislation proclaimed that common welfare prevails

over individual interests and establishes the rights to dignified housing, to public space,

and to a healthy environment. Notably, the protection of private property (Article 58) and

the rules to access to it (Article 60) changed under the new logic of the state, as it now

enables municipalities to implement particular tools to enforce the social and

environmental functions of property.24 Property rights are therefore balanced with the

public interest and the protection of the environment. Similarly, urban reform legislation

provided tools for a fairer distribution of externalities among the different intervening

actors in urban development, particularly concerning sustainable development, risk

management, and the conservation of natural resources (Piedrahita & González, 2010).

impunity; 10 percent with partial justice; and only 2 percent with full justice (CPJ, 2013). By the same

token, according to the New York Times (Romero, April 14, 2008) between 1985 and 2008 over 2,700

union leaders and union members were assassinated. Despite a decrease between 2000 and 2009,

Colombia continues to bear by far the highest rates of violence against organized labour in the world

(Mejia and Uribe, 2011). Although there were fewer victims in recent years, reported death threats were on

the rise. Rochlin (2011) calls this environment a ‘politics of fear’, by which selective murders “(…)

convey a message to a far wider audience than the direct victims of violence. It is a warning to the

country’s working class not to organize or to make further demands” (p. 13) 24 Although the social function of property was established in 1936, municipalities lacked the tools,

capacity and resources to apply it.

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Within the many changes brought about by urban reform and the C-91, three of

them were of particular significance to urban communitarian bases and social

movements who were already planning their communities through self-help processes:

first, the C-91 highlights the public function of urbanism; that is, it requires citizen

participation in the development of urban policy, particularly, in decision-making

affecting quality of life (Article 40). Second, although since 1989 municipalities gained

the capacity to buy urban land for social housing development, the new constitution goes

further by giving municipalities the mandate to supply essential services to all residents,

including those living in informal settlements. It also mandates local governments to

prioritize municipal spending based on social needs, so that in theory, the poorest areas

of the city are to receive the largest investments (Jaramillo, 2009). Third, the C-1991

recognizes citizens’ rights to public space and proclaims that the state is to become a

guarantor of such right and its fulfillment within the logics of the common welfare

(Article 82).

Even if just formally, the processes of decentralization, democratization, and the

new urban legislation constituted a new platform for mobilizing change towards social

justice in Colombian cities. This legal framework not only opened the door for

alternative social actors to participate in planning scenarios and to engage in previously

nonexistent collaborative processes vis- à-vis the state; but it also transformed the notion

of governance relocating ordinary citizens as the objects of planning policy into planning

agents themselves through their own appropriations of planning and in their democratic

engagements with the state.

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In reality, a large gap between the legal framework and the actual practice has

characterized the grounded interpretations of the new legislation, as Pérez (2011) points

out in his study of Bogotá, mainly because in the process of planning policy

implementation “the devil is in the details” (p.8-9). The more progressive applications of

this framework are yet to be realized; the case of social urbanism in Medellín should be

understood as an outcome, but also as an exception to general trends in the country.

4.4 New Civic Society Actors

It was in a hopeful environment for the possibilities of social change that social

organizations, former guerrilla militants, and other alternative forces transitioned into

new political parties and civil society organizations. For instance, grassroots groups, that

had previously defined themselves as “anti-state,” adopted the goals of “purposely

confronting and engaging the state as critics in order to transform it” (Elkin Perez, pers.

comm., 26/09/2011). Some of these organizations became closer to what Abers (2000)

describes as combative organizing in the context of urban Brazil: “Founded on a

conception of equal rights and citizenship, combative organizing involves broad-based

citizen mobilizing geared towards pressuring the state to provide the benefits without

compromise” (Abers, 2000, p. 34). In the new context of democratization, the practices

of these groups are akin to Miraftab’s (2009) description of the insurgent practices of

squatter movements in South Africa, which following Holston (2007), she defines as

insurgent practices:

They [squatters] use formal spaces when they are advantageous, and defy them

when they prove unjust and limiting. When formal channels fail, they innovate

alternative channels to assert their citizenship rights and achieve a just city.

(Miraftab, 2009, p. 38)

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Similar strategies were used by social bases in Medellín to maintain autonomy

while taking advantage of the newly available institutional channels. The crisscrossing

exercise between strategies of formal participation and alternative mobilization, many of

which involved the state, marked an active era of engaged participation in planning

practice where residents of self-built communities defined the future of their territories.

In doing so, they also redefined the meanings of planning.

In parallel, many former community organizers, activists, and professionals, who

had been previously involved in barrios populares by providing technical assistance,

popular education, or conscience-raising activities, organized as non-governmental

actors. The history of Corporación Región illustrates the transitions of these actors into

formally constituted NGOs. Región is one of Medellín’s largest and most prominent

think tanks. The retrospective view offered by Rubén Fernandez, the director of

Corporación Región at the time of the interview, is revealing of such a shift, which was

largely political and ideological. In 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, and in the early

1990s, in the context of the C-1991 and local peace pacts with militias (see Chapter 2),

militants, activists, and organizers on the Left transitioned to constitute civic society

organizations, as Rubén Fernandez continues,

We decided to create Corporación Región as a result of a series of debates that

took place on the Left and among the social movements. The fall of the Berlin

Wall was not only an anecdote for us; it represented a breakpoint, the failure of a

worldview. In fact, we founded Región in 1989 but, as an NGO, we started

working a year later, in 1990. Based on these discussions, we decided that our

focus would be guided by three key components: The first one is our ideal of

democracy, which should be socially and economically progressive. The second

one is a full rejection of violence, that no political purpose can be legitimized

through violent means. One thing that we saw in our work with these

neighbourhoods, especially with the militias, was that social justice projects

legitimized by violent actions naturally turn into asymmetrical and authoritarian

relationships… society ends up entangled in the same dynamics of the military.

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And the third leg of our ideology was territory: a focus on urban and regional

development with Medellín as a referent. (pers. comm., 02/12/2011)

Intellectual debates marked the strengthening of the local civil society

infrastructure. Alongside Corporación Región, various similar professional NGOs, such

as Corporación Viva la Ciudadanía (Long Live Citizenship); the Escuela Nacional

Sindical (National Guild School); the Instituto Popular de Capacitación (Popular

Training Institute); Corporation Conciudadanía (Co-Citizenship); Antioquia’s Federation

of NGOs; Entre Todos (All Together); among others, adopted a mandate oriented to

strengthening local organizations and participation grounded on aspirations of

democracy: a straight outcome of the compromises achieved in the C-1991 and of the

increased democratization afforded by the decentralization process. These organizations

became key actors in development who have supported the struggles for reclamation of

rights of marginalized segments of the population.

4.5 Encountering the State

In Medellín, the popular election of mayors and the new local powers did not

initially altered the influence of the traditional Liberal and Conservative parties (see

figure 4.1), or mayors’ and City Council’s capacity to govern. According to Leyva

(2010, p. 275-276) there were three primary reasons for this: First, the democratic

mayors, Juan Gómez Martínez (1988-1990) and Omar Flórez (1990-1992) governed with

a very limited budget due to the city’s large debt (65% of the municipal budget in 1988

and 44% in 1990). Second, Colombia’s investment per capita in 1990 was very low: only

8.7% of the national GDP (in comparison, the average for Latin American countries in

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1990 was 20.2%). The third reason was patronage and urban politics primarily involving

Council. Councillors had the decision-making authority over neighbourhood planning

and regularization, including the provision of services and amenities. Throughout the

1990s, the municipal development plans mentioned goals of social development and

violence reduction, however, the actual spending was primarily characterized by road

maintenance and municipal administrative costs.

In this scenario, the formative processes of the state and bureaucratic technically

capacity, in other words, the local “governing capacities” (Stone, 1993) grew from

outside the state through civil society organizations and the role of the national

government.

4.5.1 The, Office of the Presidential Advisor for Medellín and the

Metropolitan Area (OPAMMA)

In response to drug-related violence and low levels of state legitimacy, President

Cesar Gaviria (1990-1994) adopted a dual strategy to counter crime, including selective

repression and law-enforcement, and a policy of peace pacts with leftist militias along

with a social development approach. To lead this overarching policy, Gaviria appointed

the Office of the Presidential Advisor for Medellín and the Metropolitan Area

(Consejería Presidencial para Medellín y su Área Metropolitiana, or OPAMMA). 25

OPAMMA was an ad-hoc advisory council to the president with the mandate to build

partnerships with NGOs and international assistance agencies, and to implement social

25 Presidential Councils are typically constituted to advance policy priorities. They are perceived as a

means to bypass the bureaucratic process and expedite decision-making by the executive on a pressing

public policy concern. This prerogative gives the president the power to create presidential councils and

dissolve them by decree. A legacy of Colombia’s intense presidencialismo, presidential councils are

usually issue-based. Up until the creation of OPAMMA, presidential councils had never before been

appointed to a specific city because such a decision could potentially conflict with the authority of the

mayor.

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and participatory programs in low-income areas. OPAMMA provided direct funding to

community-based initiatives; implemented social programs; developed partnerships with

international cooperation agencies such as the German and French development banks;

promoted participatory planning workshops led by grass-roots organizations in informal

areas; and sponsored urban forums and roundtable discussions.

Maria Emma Mejía was the first Presidential Advisor for Medellín (1990-1993).

As the former manager of Gaviria’s presidential campaign, Mejía’s “high-rank” status

signaled the importance of OPAMMA to the president. OPAMMA was autonomous

from Medellín’s city politics, which gave Mejía political autonomy to trace her own

agenda but weakened the role of the local government. According to Jorge Orlando

Melo, OPAMMA’s Presidential Advisor for the period (1993-1995), in this exceptional

context of crisis and competing authorities, the relationships between OPAMMA and the

mayors were polite but uneasy. At the end, the lack of local capacity to formulate or

implement policy pressed the mayor and councillors to accept OPAMMA’s program

experimentations (Mauricio Cadavid, pers. comm., 10/12/11).

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Figure 4.1

Political Timeline 1988-present 26

26 In 1988, two-year terms were established for elected mayors. In 1995, this period was expanded to three

years, and since 2003, mayors are elected for four-year terms.

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4.5.2 New spaces for participation: Rethinking the city

Maria Emma Mejía has been commended for adopting a participatory mandate,

and established a series of seminars, thematic roundtables, and open forums. The goal

she set was to develop a sphere of deliberation that would bring together into a

conversation the different sectors of society within a socio-spatially divided city. At the

time, “it was accepted as common sense that the deeply divided urban society could only

be reconciled by pulling down established social walls and by crossing territorial

boundaries” (Stienen, 2009, p. 120), Mejía’s role in promoting such state-society

encounters was significant, as Professor Maria Clara Echeverría asserts,

Maria Emma found that local communities were very delegitimized and

instrumentalized by the state; that participation basically meant building their

own home but not participating as decision-makers. Maria Emma calls the NGOs,

the universities, municipal planners, and calls many community organizations.

There was a tension between those [organizations] who didn’t want to get

“hooked,” while others wanted to find avenues for dialogue with the state, or new

possibilities through such dialogue. And right there, many opportunities to

strengthen community based organizations opened up with the unexpected

support from the state, through a person who had a great capacity to understand

and apply the new laws about direct democracy, and who used those laws to

strengthen local identities and self-empowerment, and who I believe was genuine

and not manipulative of local organizations. (pers. comm., 08/06/2012)

In Jorge Orlando Melo’s view, the seminars gained attention from previously

recalcitrant sectors, such as the business class and the more conservative factions of the

Church:

The seminars were very successful, María Emma mounted an extraordinary call:

she had all of the paisa businessmen sitting in the first row, the top 20 priests of

the city, all NGOs, academics, delegates from all the communities across, and 40

or 50 student activists linked to urban development concerns. That was a really

remarkable time, really extraordinary. (pers. comm., 18/08/2012)

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Maria Clara Echeverría, however, gave a more nuanced perspective of these civic

encounters, pointing out that the private sector and the upper classes participated

somewhat reluctantly:

I think it is [was] a time of much communication and dialogue, and it was more

difficult for certain sectors, particularly the upper classes, the private sector,

which at some point started sending delegates. The role of traditional politicians

was also weak. Obviously, those who constantly joined the roundtables were the

NGOs, academics, and the low-income communities in full, and participation

from these sectors was continuous. (pers. comm., 08/06/2012)

Constant participation from non-state sectors traditionally excluded from

planning processes demonstrated they were eager to engage the state. These public

discussions are fully documented through published proceedings under the title

“Medellín: Alternatives for a Future” (1991; 1992; 1993; 1994; 1995). Specific thematic

fora were established about employment, territory, gender, education, youth, and public

space, among others. The proceedings themselves are revealing of the broad

deliberations that took place and of the compromises that emerged from these dialogue.

Grassroots, street hawkers, demobilized militia and former gang members, union leaders,

students, women’s groups, and others, gained visibility through these debates. The logic

of participation soon infused a counter-hegemonic dynamic into the city’s bipartisan

politics and spheres of power, where traditionally excluded actors and social groupings

could build solidarities by voicing their grievances, some of them, as Stienen (2009)

argues, even becoming “opinion leaders.”

Through OPAMMA, opportunities for participatory planning also opened up,

changing the language, aims and function of the planning practice, and influencing future

urban practitioners in the city. From a technical endeavour concerned with the formal

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aspects of city building (development permits, statutory norms and procedures), planning

opened up to more developmental functions and new normative meanings involving the

aspirations of residents of informal communities in shaping the future of their territories.

The connections between grass-roots processes, universities, NGOs actors, and planners

working for OPAMMA–who local leaders perceived as socially minded or progressive

officials– consolidated a new vision for squatter settlements where the razing or massive

relocation of these communities was no longer seen as an option. Instead, residents of

squatter settlements were increasingly seen as central actors of their own development.

These incipient instances of state-society synergy did not imply a sudden “change

of heart” on the part of the National Government; rather, it evinced a “stick and carrots”

management approach to urban violence. At the same time that the National Government

aimed to rebuild its’ legitimacy with Medellín’s local communities through OPAMMA,

these communities were subjects of intense police violence. While pursuing its warfare

against the Medellín cartel in the period 1989-93, public forces would often kill over

fifty low-income youth in a weekend (Riaño-Alcalá, 2006). As the National

Government harassed and inflicted extreme violence on marginalized communities,

particularly, in the Northeastern area of the city, it also sought to reclaim legitimacy.

In these adverse circumstances, what enabled OPAMMA some success was the

work and commitment of the advisors, the planners, and officials, who were highly

invested in the goals of the office. They demonstrated interest and capacity to build

relationships of trust with local leaders and community groups, often acting as “equity

planners” to defend the rights and interests of marginalized groups, connecting their

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political views and moral values to their everyday practice. The following section

provides a few examples of the synergies that emerged out if this scenario.

4.6 Planning Experimentations

4.6.1 Zonal Planning as Radical Planning Practice

One of the most significant accomplishments of the state-society interactions that

took place via OPAMMA was the institutionalization of grassroots democratic

innovations such as Zonal Planning: spontaneous initiatives that started in the self-built

areas of Comunas 1 and 6 to formulate a development plan for the northeastern and

northwestern zones of the city. These initiatives faced many barriers. The communities

could not count on resources, and the participatory processes were intermittent and

lengthy. Moreover, key leaders and participants involved in the local mobilization of the

plans became themselves victims of violence, leaving the plans without documentation.

Planners at OPAMMA heard about these initiatives, as Mauricio Cadavid

recounted,

In 1990, people in Comuna 1, coming from El Popular, Santo Domingo and the

Northeastern zone, they told us they were planning their community, and we

thought that it was important for OPAMMA to support them, and for this type of

process to trickle up and spearhead all over the city. There were at the time some

discussions at City Council about providing urban planning for the peripheral

neighbourhoods but we thought that the response to urban marginality by

traditional politicians wasn’t enough.... We faced a predicament. On the one

hand, we were going above city council, taking a political risk by disregarding

their democratic mandate. On the other hand, we thought it was important to

encourage a genuine grassroots process like that. So we told community leaders:

“Go ahead! Develop a plan, think about your needs but work with the community

and the local organizations.” We thought that if councillors were challenged from

the bottom-up, they would eventually catch up with the community. (pers.

comm., 10/12/11)

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In order to complete these plans, OPAMMA helped organizations in Comunas 1

and 6 with resources and building partnerships with NGOs and universities. This

decision was controversial. By supporting grassroots planning, OPAMMA was

potentially encouraging a deconcentration of the planning scheme and could be

interpreted as undermining of the legitimacy of the representative political system

because councillors were in charge of presiding over planning issues. However,

OPAMMA’s planners thought that Zonal Plans would provide communities with tools to

bargain with local politicians and administrators. Zonal Plans were also understood by

residents as valuable efforts to rebuild and document their collective history in their own

terms and to express their aspirations concerning the territory and its development.

Under the new legal framework established by the C-1991, and invoking the

public function of urbanism, OPAMMA adopted a “radical planning” practice by

supporting local planning initiatives. Based on these experiences, in 1996 (MA 043 of

1996) these initiatives were formally integrated within the municipal planning system. In

2004, local plans acquired more force, as a newly created unit within the Municipal

Planning Department was assigned the responsibility of supporting communities in the

elaboration of Local Development Plans.

Table 4.2 provides a summary of the different local development plans completed

in the Northeastern and Northwestern areas of the city, the organizations involved, and

funding origins for these initiatives. At the time of fieldwork, all of Medellín’s districts,

both urban and rural, including El Poblado, the upper-income district, had developed a

local development plan following participatory guidelines.

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Table 4.2

Participatory Planning Processes in the Northeastern and Northwestern Areas

Comuna Start

Date

Lead Organization(s) Name of the Plan Funding Technical

Assistance

Northeastern Zone

1 1994 Corporación Con-vivamos Alternative Zonal Plan “PAZ”

(peace)

Community

resources

-

1 2004 Corporación Con-

vivamos; Coopeuno;

Corporación El Megáfono

Local Development Plan of

the Comuna 1 Popular

Participatory

Budgeting

-

2 2004 Corporación Con-vivamos

Corporación Nuestra

Gente

An Open Map to the Life

Proposals of the People

(2007-2019)

Participatory

Budgeting

M

Municipal

Planning

Department

3 2006 Fundación Sumapaz Local Development Plan

2006-2016: Participatory

Construction of Profiles with

a Human Rights Approach

Community

resources;

Participatory

Budgeting

-

4 1995 Mesa de Trabajo por la

Paz y la Conviviencia

Local Development in

Comuna 4

Community

resources

Institute of

Popular

Training (IPC)

Northwestern Zone

5 2005 Community Action Board Routes for the Development of

Comuna 5 up to 2017

Participatory

Budgeting

School of

Habitat,

National

University

6 1994 Corporación Picacho con

Futuro; Cooperativa la

Esperanza; Corporación

Cívica Nuevo Mundo

Paths for Development PRIMED;

IPC;

Fundación

Social

School of

Habitat,

National

University

6 2005 Comité Sendas;

Community Action Board;

Corporación Picacho con

Futuro

Strategic Plan City Building

in Comuna 6, 2006-2015

Participatory

Budgeting

School of

Habitat,

National

University

7 2005 Asorobledal,

CorpoIguaná, Corporación

Ambiental Los

Cucaracheros, others

Participatory Diagnosis of the

community and Development

Plan for Comuna 7

Participatory

Budgeting

Independent

professional;

Municipal

Planning

Department

Source: Author’s elaboration with data from interviews and document collection.

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4.6.2 Programa Integral de Mejoramiento de Barrios Subnormales (PRIMED)

and the Núcleos de Vida Ciudadana (Cores for Citizenship Life or NVC)

Between 1993 and 1997, under broad partnerships coordinated by OPAMMA,

including the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the Federal Ministry of

Cooperation of Germany Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KFW), two participatory

neighbourhood improvement programs were implemented: the Programa Integral de

Mejoramiento de Barrios Subnormales, PRIMED (Comprehensive Neighbourhood

Improvement Program) and the Núcleos de Vida Ciudadana (Cores for Citizenship Life

or NVC). These two programs constituted important precedents for social urbanism.

Both PRIMED and NVC used participatory in-situ upgrading and development

frameworks that were regarded as innovative at the time.

PRIMED was financed with a soft loan from the German Bank for Development

and Reconstruction and a mix of local and national funds. Its goals were concerned with

improving and developing new housing, expediting land titling processes, and providing

neighbourhood amenities. PRIMED executed a budget of US $34 million over four years

(1993-1997), and benefited 51,000 people, roughly one fifth of the population living in

squatter settlements for a total of fifteen neighbourhoods (PRIMED, 1995). According

to Betancur (2007b), the most important outcome was “the acceptance of informal

settlements as a given and the willingness to work with them – rather than manipulate,

oppose, ignore or harass them” (p. 5). Despite some success, it lost political support from

conservative mayor Juan Gomez Martinez (1998-2000) and was stopped before

completion as one of many examples of “discontinuous public policy” (Echeverri &

Orsini, 2010, p. 137). One of the main critiques was the difficulty to coordinate the

action of the different intervening agencies, and the slow bureaucratic processes

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associated to land titling (César Hernandez, pers. comm., 24/09/2011). Overall, the

administration of multisided partnerships implied a big effort for the local government

that, according to Jorge Orlando Melo (pers. comm., 18/08/2012), did not translate into

additional votes for local politicians because people associated these programs to

OPAMMA and not to the mayor or councillors.

The NVC program was in charge of providing or expanding civic, educational,

and cultural public spaces “with the goal of integrating …the provision of social and

administrative services, [and] amenities to articulate the community with various public

and private institutions” (quoted in Dapena, 2006, p. 46). NVCs were designed to fulfill

the role of community centres providing access to cultural, civic, and educational

opportunities. Within the same participatory logic, NVCs were expected to be designed

and appropriated by local communities; they were conceived as local development poles

connected through a system of sidewalks, structured around a multi-purpose public

building with workshops for vocational training activities, a shop, and a post office.

Thirteen NVCs were built in total. However, once OPAMMA was ended, the

municipality did not assume the operation costs, and soon enough these buildings faced

deterioration. In turn, the municipality decided to download the responsibility (without

resources) for managing these spaces to community organizations, and the spaces fell

into disrepair a few years later.

4.6.3 Other Proposals: Urban Revitalization

Considerations about urban redevelopment oriented towards connecting the

peripheral informal districts to the modern city were recurrently discussed during

OPAMMA public fora. For example, a cable-car project with tourist and recreational

purposes that would connect the city’s centre to sightseeing places was discussed and

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rejected at a meeting. But from this discussion, another voice proposed cable cars as a

transportation option for the urban poor, linking informal neighbourhoods located in

high-gradient inaccessible hills (Juan Carlos Posada, former OPAMMA planner, pers.

comm., 22/03/2012). Years later, this idea was picked up by the Metro Company and

reformulated as Metrocables, a rapid transit technology to increase the metro’s ridership.

4.7 Strategic Plan for Medellín and the Metropolitan Area (1997)

OPAMMA was slowly reduced to its international assistance partnerships –such

as PRIMED and NVC– when Gaviria completed his four-year term in 1993, Escobar was

killed, and president Ernesto Samper (1994-1998) lowered the profile of the advisory

office. However, many of the lessons and ideas that emerged during the OPAMMA fora

and discussions were condensed in the Strategic Plan for Medellín and the Metropolitan

Area (1997), an initiative by the municipal administration to build on the roundtables and

Alternativas de Futuro Seminars, and create a participatory compromise about the city’s

future. The strategic plan was conceptualized as a vector to rethink the city’s industrial

past and trace new directions for development.

The Strategic Plan brought together delegations from all sectors of society, with

the private sector gaining a more prominent role than it had in previous participatory

experiences (Soledad Betancur, professional planner and researcher at IPC, pers. comm.,

02/03/12). In contrast with previous deliberatory experiences, the plan required that

participants come to a consensus. In response to the calibration and negotiation of

interests among the different stakeholders, a vision of “growth with inclusion” was

adopted as a guiding principle for the plan. This vision was worded as follows:

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To make of Medellín and the metropolitan area an integrated and inclusive region

located in the best corner of America; characterized by the competitiveness of its

economic sectors linked to the global economy; an educational city that is

socially cohesive, environmentally responsible and culturally active; an

international example of a metropolis that overcomes its difficulties through

dialogue and cooperation. (Quoted in Bravo and Echeverría, 2009, p. 58)

On the one hand, the strategic plan accepted the need for changing the economic

development model of the city. Recognizing that the city’s industrial past was by then

long gone, the plan accepted the position advocated by the business elites for pursuing a

strategy of integration into a new economy. This proposal was geared towards

encouraging the growth of financial services, the education sector, and the development

of new technologies through a variety of strategies, emphasizing internationalization and

the creation of new connections to the global economy. The allusion to the city’s location

in “the best corner of America,” which is rather a geographically contentious statement,

refers to the city’s goal of improving its regional integration with Antioquia’s economic

goals. In the 1990s, the Department of Antioquia started promoting itself as the “best

corner of America” as a way of promoting foreign direct investments.

Alongside the goals for economic growth, the plan incorporated a strong

framework for improving social inclusion, socio-spatial equity, environmental

sustainability, and improved opportunities for social development. Trade unions, social

activists, leftist intellectuals, journalists, human rights NGO actors, and other non-profits

such as Región, the IPC and the National Guild School (Escuela Nacional Sindical)

came together to mobilize goals of a solidary local economy, spatial inclusion, and

redistribution (Clara Inés Restrepo, pers. comm., 12/15/2011). As a result of the need to

achieve a consensus, the main goals of the plan were ambivalent –if not contradictory–:

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partly invoking the adoption of urban neoliberal restructuring, while at the same time

calling for higher social inclusion and redistribution. A double movement took place,

through which, the educated middle-classes, and private foundations such as

ProAntioquia (the guild representing the interests of the private sector in public policy),

and the Chamber of Commerce got closer to the interests of social movements who had

in turn become less radical appealing to their class interests. As a result, previously

dissimilar forces coincided in a “progressive” inter-class coalition.

Despite representing a watershed compromise, the Strategic Plan of 1997 was

never implemented, since new national legislation replaced the functions of old strategic

plans with three new requirements for city planning: territorial ordering plans, master

planning, and development plans proposed by mayors in the programs of government.

The dream of internationalization with inclusion, however, was reasserted by the

subsequent municipal administrations to follow, reflecting the current double-sided spirit

of the desired urban transformation in Medellín.

4.8 Conclusions

The purpose of this chapter has been to detail the instances where urban

experimentation and inclusive social innovation emerged in Medellín. It focuses on

agency, collective action, and the possibilities for social change, which emerged at a time

when crisis was at its deepest. It argues that, in response to the crisis, but partly because

of contingency, participatory spaces that did not exist in other Colombian cities were

initiated by the state in Medellín. In these new spaces of democratic state-society

interaction, new social actors such as Corporación Region and the IPC, and grass-roots

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organizations such as Picacho con Futuro, Corporación Con-Vivamos, Nuestra Gente,

the National Guild School, among others, became influential. Similarly, Medellín saw

the emergence of a “reflexive class” (Betancur, et al., 2001): layers of left-wing middle

class professionals, educated in the local public universities, such as Universidad de

Antioquia and Universidad Nacional, who organized into networks of activists who

engaged with OPAMMA and developmental agencies outside the state. Social leadership

and activism increased. Similarly, social organizations and NGOs, such as Corporación

Región, received a great deal of international cooperation funds for development projects

and social research. As a result of their participation, networking and growing social

capital, former leftist combatants, leftist intellectuals, and student leaders came to occupy

important posts in new circuits of power, in government, in academia, in the media, as

international consultants, and in local and international NGOs. By this, they gained

increased connectivity at various scales of action (Stienen, 2009). Key to these

developments is the fact that actors in society but also within the state constructed

activist and professional networks around planning experimentations. These actors

reclaimed planning as an avenue of experimentation to subvert socio-spatial oppressions;

or in other words, they created a demand for “radical planning” (Friedmann, 1987).

Alongside the emergence of activists’ networks, new social programs and slum

upgrading initiatives, a process of institutional change was already in motion in the field

of planning. Conventionally conceived as a top-down and merely technical bureaucratic

practice, during the 1990s, planning emerged in Medellin as a political field, as a

democratic endeavour, and as a potential avenue for social change. In a conflict-ridden

city, planning became a renewed mechanism to negotiate conflict, as excluded sectors of

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society expected that by accessing planning scenarios they would reclaim their rights and

be able to fulfill their aspirations for recognition as important actors of territorial

development.

Although OPAMMA has been presented in a relatively positive manner, it is

important to reinstate that it followed logics of pacification and compensation to counter

the effects of the repressive arm of the state. In that sense, Evans’ (2002)

conceptualization of the state apparatus is useful to shed light on the contradictory logics

evinced by military repression, on the one hand, and profound deliberative participation,

on the other. Evans (2002) asserts that although the state tends to impose uniformity,

state authority is split into different orders of government that sometimes overlap.

Therefore, the state can play a variety of roles that are often contradictory, some pushing

change forward, others restricting or opposing change. Following from this, it means that

“(…) mobilized communities can have an impact in certain areas of deliberation and

decision making within given agencies” (Evans, 2002, p. 21) even when national

governments pursue different agendas. Thus, it shows the state as a multifaceted entity

that is multiple, complex and contradictory.

Finally, the experimentation that took place with Zonal Plans, PRIMED and

NVCs enabled planners to learn from their political and technical successes and failures,

and identify new ways of implementing urban upgrading by looking at national and

international experiences, considering new managerial models to overcome obstacles,

and acknowledging the value of self-built forms and recognizing the logics of informal

urbanization.

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Chapter Five

Leadership, Urban Politics, and New Political Rationalities

We paved the road for a lot of innovative work that was already being done by

civil society and we created the channels that were needed for the construction of

public policy. In many fields, there were important programs going on, but the

issues and actors involved were not visible or close to the government. Many

civil society initiatives were succeeding not only without government support,

but also in spite of the government, or even against the government because the

barriers were paramount. A specific example is the development of LGBT policy.

This population had no representation in City Council or in City Hall (…) and

when we took power we became their allies. This also happened with many other

activists’ groups and NGOs: we worked with them as partners. (Jorge Melguizo,

former Director of Social Development, Municipality of Medellín, pers. comm.,

20/11/2011, emphasis by author)

In the previous chapter, I showed that in the early 1990s, while Medellín

confronted its deepest turmoil, the Presidential Advisory for Medellín and the

Metropolitan Area’s (PAMM’s) roundtables and open forums provided a space for

reflecting upon the city’s structural troubles and social ruptures. This collective exercise

had many important outcomes, including: first, a higher level of public awareness of

right to the city struggles by the urban poor; second, the strengthening of human rights

NGOs and grassroots organizations; third, a rising production of social research carried

out in local universities, NGOs and think tanks; and fourth, the emergence of networks

of activists and urban practitioners sharing ideas about new projects for the city. These

outcomes materialized in rising dynamism within civil society.

Nonetheless, the demand for radical planning that transpired out of these

processes was disconnected from urban politics; and by extension, as Jorge Melguizo

explains in the quote above, it was far from materializing in concrete urban policies and

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programs. In fact, given the legacies of an urban system based largely on legal and

economic property rights arguments, right to the city claims were rarely, if ever,

incorporated within urban political agendas. Furthermore, considering the city’s

bipartisan political scenario—and the still-recent adoption of municipal elections—there

was neither a political party nor a progressive platform that would genuinely incorporate

right to the city demands and the emerging local innovations. Lack of political

organization to mobilize policy was evidently an initial barrier to connect a rising

number of activist citizens to government:

At first, we were part of a movement that for many years had no organization.

Yes, we were a large group of committed people, but we didn’t have a (political)

party life, and we didn’t meet regularly, we didn’t act in block before City

Council, or before the city. So who capitalized on our activism? No one. (Clara

Ines Restrepo, Director of Medellín’s Botanical Garden and member of

Compromiso Ciudadano, pers. comm., 12/15/2011)

Municipal bureaucracy, in turn, usually worked in isolation from social actors.

Decentralization had already created a potential “structure of opportunity” for local

actors to mobilize reform through the political process, but civil society movements had

not yet reacted to such opportunity. Participatory politics did not interact or had an

impact on instances of representative democracy.

In discussing the structural transformations of state power that have taken place

via decentralization reforms in the global South, Baiocchi and Checa (2009) raise

important questions about the possibilities and conditions for “bottom-up democratic

innovations” to be “translated into meaningful democracy-enhancing policies” at the

local level (p.2). Although decentralization conferred local governments across Latin

America a great deal of autonomy, it is less certain whether the parties and politicians in

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control of such autonomy will use it to extend their own power, and therefore, accentuate

power inequalities, or whether they will embrace more democratic programs and

improve service delivery to redress those disparities. These authors point to “a proper

combination of a civic mobilization with a civic party willing to translate such

innovations into policy arenas, and in particular, the relationship that the party

establishes with civic innovation” (p. 2). In Colombian cities, however, where traditional

parties have often lacked interconnections with the civic movements, and where the

characteristics of presidencialismo tend to replicate themselves at the municipal level,

the hopes and prospects for institutionalizing changes and civic innovations have been

typically placed on the persona of the mayor.

This chapter examines the specific political and institutional conditions that made

possible the incorporation of democratic urban experiments and redistributive planning

policy into Medellín’s local governance arrangements. It also details how coalitions were

formed, the types of innovations that emerged, the overarching political rationalities

involved, and the redefinitions of urban problems that underpinned such innovations.

The new logics and capacities acquired by the local state are best exemplified by the

adoption of “social urbanism” as an urban development policy. I show that a disparate

mix of entrepreneurial governance doctrines, such as efficiency, optimization and public-

private partnerships, along with the adoption of “socially progressive” policy oriented to

goals of redistribution, participation, social recognition of marginalized groups, and the

promotion of spaces for social encounter, brought about a new “political rationality”

(Rose & Miller, 2010) to the local administration—in a way that enabled the adoption of

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a wide-scope urban reform agenda oriented to socio-spatial justice and

internationalization.

5.1 From Civic Actors to Political Movement: Changing Urban Governance

and Local Politics

In 1999, supporters of the participatory movements, including activists,

academics, trade union forces, neighbourhood associations, and previous political

outsiders, constituted a civic network turned political project: the Citizens’ Commitment

Movement (Movimiento Compromiso Ciudadano, or MCC). According to key actors

involved, the movement was motivated but the crisis of violence and poor city

management, the lack of political alternatives, and the retrenchment of formal channels

for participation that occurred when OPAMMA and international assistance agreements

were abolished. The formation of the CCM also responded to a window of opportunity

that surfaced for new political forces in the context of decentralization, and to the fact

that, under the traditional Liberal and Conservative Parties, local governments had

advanced very slowly to deliver the promises of decentralization (Restrepo, 2009).

Voters were disengaged. Whereas decentralization was expected to generate a better

quality of local government, less corruption, enhanced democracy, and a higher level of

responsiveness to local needs (Campbell, 2003), Medellín’s traditional political forces

had reacted by recurring to clientelistic tactics already employed in the popular election

of City Councillors. The elected administrations of the 1990s reflected an unchanged

bipartisan bureaucratic structure and ongoing corruption (Leyva, 2010).

Additionally, in the 1990s, the municipality suffered from a debt crisis caused by

the troubled construction of the first line of its metro system. As Stienen (2009) suggests,

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local politicians and the elites were firmed believers that the Metro would help restore

order: it would generate local pride, accelerate modernization, revitalize public space,

and integrate the city. The Metro was expected to connect the city’s north and south

traversing through an elevated concrete viaduct. Although construction was approved in

1982 and public works started in 1984, execution was disorganized, turning “Medellín’s

inner city into a vast construction field for ten years” (Stienen, 2009, p. 118). Poor

financial planning, lengthy delays, and rising import tariffs complicated completion.

Between October of 1989 and December of 1992, the Metro Company, the agency in

charge of the project, put a three-year halt because it ran out of funds. Although the

initial financial estimates were calculated at US$623 million, by 1987 costs had reached

US$2052 million. The national government, in its role as guarantor, had to incur into

additional and controversial loans to rescue the Metro (Brand & Dávila, 2011). In

November of 1995, the Metro finally opened to the public. In committing to the Metro,

however, mayors had very few municipal resources left to invest in other programs.

The disconnection between the growing needs of citizens and those in power

contributed to widespread electoral apathy in municipal elections. In fact, between 1988

and 2000, Medellín exhibited the highest national rates of voting abstention in municipal

elections: an average of 61.2% among potential voters. This compares to a national

average of 49.7% in the same municipal contests, and was notably above the trends in

national elections.27

27 In the presidential elections of 1998, abstention among potential voters was 40.98%, rising in 2002 to

53.53% and to 54.95 in 2006 (El Tiempo, June 18th, 2014).

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Table 5.1

Abstention in Mayoral Elections (1998-2000)

Municipality Voter abstention %

(Among Potential Voters)

Medellín 61.2

Cali 59.8

Bogotá 59.6

Cucuta 56.4

Pereira 55.4

Cartagena 54.7

Ibague 53.0

Manizales 52.7

Barranquilla 51.8

Bucaramanga 51.3

National average 49.7

Source: Adapted from Pening (2003, p. 138)

Original data from Registraduría Nacional del Estado Civil.

Gradually, however, local politics gained weight among voters and organized

social forces. Although the first mayors to be democratically elected during the 1990s

were locally perceived as just “one more figure among many” (Leyva, 2010, p. 278),

Medellín’s mayors acquired prominence with the increased transfers of administrative

responsibilities and fiscal resources to the local government. In 2003, as the city was

relieved from an important portion of the Metro’s financial burden, municipal finances

increased substantially, from annual municipal incomes of $583.569 USD million in

2003, to $999.342 in 2005, to $1936.026 in 2010 (Figure 5.1). With a higher budget and

new administrative capacities, the local government became a highly desirable post for

new political forces (Dávila, 2009).

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Figure 5.1

Medellín’s Municipal Revenues in USD (Millions) 1995-201028

Source: Own elaboration with data from Secretaria de Hacienda, Medellín.

5.1.1 A Colombian model of urban change: Bogotá’s transformation

The transformation Bogota experienced during the 1990s was a point of reference

for Medellín, considering the possibilities of a better quality of governance under the

leadership of independent mayors. Bogotá’s mayors Antanas Mockus (1995-1997 and

2001-2003) and Enrique Peñalosa (1998-2001) have been commended for implementing

wide-ranging fiscal, transport, violence reduction, and citizen culture reforms through a

technocratic managerial style (See Ceballos & Martin, 2005; and Gilbert, 2006). Before

Mockus and Peñalosa took office, however, Bogotá faced a number of challenges that

28 At an exchange rate of 0.000531 (www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/exchange/daily-converter/) Accessed:

August 10, 2014.

137.529

263.376336.654 378.072

583.569

999.342

1331.217

1936.026

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

Total Income Tax Revenue Non-tax Revenue

http://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/exchange/daily-converter/

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Gilbert (2006) describes as a “severe crisis” (p. 393), including the following three

issues: electricity blackouts in 1992 and decline in utilities provision; the escalation of

crime rates; and symptoms of widespread corruption, primarily, in City Council. One of

the main concerns were the city’s finances:

[T]he city was effectively bankrupt. In 1992, when the city tried to borrow money

abroad, the national government refused to guarantee the loan. In response, local

creditors stopped advancing payments even on existing loans (Gilbert, 2006,

p.393-394).

In 1992, the elected Liberal mayor Juan Martín Caicedo Ferrer was ousted on

corruption charges. Another Liberal mayor, Jaime Castro, replaced Caicedo Ferrer.

Castro was an experienced politician known as a proficient administrator, who helped the

city balancing the books. In 1993, Castro got approved a new special normative

framework for Bogotá: Bogotá’s Organic Statute (Estatuto Orgánico de Bogotá). This

Statute curtailed the unaccountable powers of the municipal Council, which was

characterized by patronage and clientelistic relationships. This move increased the

mayors’ decisionmaking authority. The new “super powers” of the mayor, along with the

impact of the 1991 Constitution, transformed voting patterns in the city. In 1994, voters

elected the most unconventional political candidate: philosopher and mathematician

Antanas Mockus (Gutierrez et al., 2009).

Mockus developed and implemented an agenda of “Citizenship Culture” (Cultura

Ciudadana), taking a pedagogical and cultural approach to promote conviviality.

Citizenship Culture emphasized citizens’ rights and duties, and incorporated a security

dimension. Mockus’ Citizenship Culture was successful in reducing violent crimes, and

soon became a blueprint urban policy in Colombia. Mockus was followed by Peñalosa,

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an independent politician, who continued many of Mockus’ policies but emphasized

spatial planning. Peñalosa is credited for implementing a transit policy that ameliorated

traffic dramatically: including Transmilenio, a Bus Rapid System now replicated in cities

around the world, and a gamut of traffic management measures that reduced commuting

times. At the time, Bogota also became famous for the pedestrianization of major

roadways and the installation of bike path networks. Mockus was elected as mayor once

more in 2001, and by the end of his tenure in 2003, the city was running with a

technocratic governance style and was in much better shape.

Since 2003, Bogotá’s voters have elected Leftist mayors Luis Eduardo Garzon

(2004-07), Samuel Moreno (2008- May 2011 currently in prison for corruption charges,

and replaced by acting mayors Maria Fernanda Campo and Clara Rojas) from the Polo

Democrático Alternativo or PDA, and more recently, Gustavo Petro (2011-2015) from

Progresistas – a Left-leaning movement outside the PDA. Mayors from the Left have

sustained some aspects of the agendas promoted by Mockus and Peñalosa, but their

focus has been on improving education, climate change adaptation, and overall, reducing

segregation of the impoverished South of the city.

Currently, the results of a decade of Leftists governments are the subject of much

debate. With evidence of rampant corruption–particularly during Moreno’s

administration–, lack of continuity on transit policy, and fierce resistance from the elites

to Petro’s territorial ordering plan, urban conflict has recently heightened, and locals

hardly perceived Bogota as a “model city” any longer (Revista Semana, July 24, 2014).

Despite Bogota’s recent upheavals, the urban policies adopted during the 1990s provided

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hope to city administrators and mayors around the country, including Sergio Fajardo in

Medellín.

5.1.2 Charismatic Leadership

In words of Sergio Fajardo, the leader of the Citizen’s Commitment movement,

and elected mayor of Medellín in 2003, the reasons for organizing the movement “were

very simple”:

… Individual efforts to provide ideas, to participate, and to support public policy

(…) came after many years as individual frustrations. This, to say that as an

academic, despite the efforts of writing an article, our ability to influence society

remains minimal, and to recognize that politicians are the ones who make the

most important decisions in a society, whether we like it or not. (…) We decided

to build an independent civic movement and seek power, for starters, as a mayor

of Medellín (pers. comm., 06/06/12)

Fajardo was an upper class, US-educated university math professor at

Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá, who gained his PhD from the University of

Wisconsin-Madison. Fajardo had also worked for local newspapers, such as El

Colombiano and El Mundo; wrote opinion columns for El Espectador (national

newspaper), and Dinero (national business magazine); and worked in radio shows

(Caracol radio and Blu radio). Before joining politics, Fajardo had no previous

affiliations with traditional political parties. When Alvaro Uribe was the Governor of

Antioquia (1995-1997), Fajardo was one of four experts appointed to participate in

Antioquia’s Peace Facilitation Commission (Comision Facilitadora de Paz de

Antioquia). Later, Fajardo directed Antioquia’s Science and Technology Centre and

participated in a commission of notables to provide recommendations on education

(Fajardo, pers. comm., 06/06/12). As a politician, Fajardo identified himself as an honest

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and independent citizen, outside of the traditional bipartisan political machines and the

patronage networks that were prevalent in Medellín (Fukuyama & Colby, 2011).

Fajardo ran unsuccessfully for Mayor in 2000, obtaining only 60,000 votes and

placing third in the race. Unlike Bogotá, Medellín’s electorate has historically been

highly conservative, with voters’ support for Alvaro Uribe Vélez and his political party

(the Democratic Centre) among the highest in the country.

A mix of street politics, charisma, frequent media appearances, and the

endorsement of influential NGO actors, intellectuals, and the young elite, helped Fajardo

win in 2003 with the highest voter turnout in the history of the city (208,541 votes

followed by a candidate of the Conservative Party with 100,931) (Medellín, 2008).

Governing with an approval rate of 90 percent, Fajardo found loud support among

various social classes and interest groups. Such support allowed him to embark in urban

reform (Dávila, 2009).

As Fajardo points out, the difference between the cases of Medellín and Bogotá

was that in Medellín, the idea was to build a principled civic movement and a vision for

the city, instead of building on individual leaderships, as was the case in Bogotá:

Right from the beginning we made a very judicious analysis of the city, which we

had studied from different angles. Many members of the movement were active

participants in the Strategic Plan for Medellín … But how do you construct an

independent civic movement? We had no reference in the world of Colombian

politics. The closest example was Anthanas Mockus but his experience was very

different from ours because … he was invited to become a candidate, what I

mean is that Mockus’ experience was not about building a civic movement but

about building a persona in relation to the context of the city. Mockus didn’t

build on a process of first creating knowledge about the city in order to build a

movement that would mobilize that knowledge. So in our case, we had to get

together to build our guiding principles, but we already had a vision of the city

and of the transformations that we wanted to achieve. (Fajardo, pers. comm.,

06/06/12)

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Anchoring Medellín’s urban reform on a movement would help the city secure

the sustainability of the changes the movement wanted to implement. In 2008, Fajardo

was replaced because of the term limit by Alonso Salazar, Fajardo’s chief of staff (2008-

2011). Salazar was a social researcher and journalist who had written extensively about

youth violence and criminal networks and participated in OPAMMA initiatives. Salazar

gave continuity to the policies established by his predecessor, although he did not

achieve the same levels of popularity and was the target of repeated accusations of

political interference on elections by traditional political elites (Gutierrez et al., 2009).

The “virtuous cycle” of “alternative” mayors ended in 2011. Like Bogotá, it lasted a

period of eight years, with continuation on many policies by Aníbal Gaviria (212-2015),

and an emphasis on conveying internationally the successful experiences of the city.

5.2 A Multi-Class Progressive Regime

Examined through the lens of urban regime theory, these state-society

interactions and informal arrangements achieved via Fajardo’s and Salazar’s leaderships

and including multiple participating actors exemplify an urban regime where the capacity

to govern emanates from coalitions formed among diverse social classes and interests

groupings with dissimilar objectives but who coalesce into a regime agenda. As Stone

(1993) asserts, these regimes can focus on different levels of growth, and incorporate

community oriented actors to support a “middle-class progressive regime” where there is

little if any bottom-up contestation.

Fajardo’s program of government brought forward a vision for the city

that had been debated during the 1990s, which mainly, aimed for internationalization

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with inclusion. Many of the leading NGO actors who were part of the MCC movement

held key decision-making and leadership roles in both Fajardo’s and Salazar’s

administrations. As such, the features that characterized the urban development model

adopted during Sergio Fajardo’s administration were those discussed and negotiated

during the roundtables and forums run through OPAMMA. Between 2004 and 2011, the

local state experienced an “NGOization” of government, as NGO actors, along with

community organizers and academics, but also private sector professionals and leaders

came to occupy key government posts.

5.3 Good Governance in the Valley

As a member of the MCC told me: “our ideology is to work with transparency.”

Given the popularity of neoliberal discourses of “good governance” as a development

tool (Grindle, 2012), and perhaps because of the high level of ideological polarization in

Colombia, Fajardo and Salazar refused to identify themselves with either Leftist or

Rightist politics. Instead, good governance tenets, such as a culture of transparency,

participation, efficiency, evidence-based policy, communications, and civic

accountability, were reiteratively stressed by planners and policy makers during

interviews. As Goldfrank and Schrank (2009) note, in Latin America’s municipal

politics, there has been a higher affinity of these practices with examples of governments

with social democratic orientations.

These fourteen commandments were established by the MCC as their political

and ethical backbone:

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MCC’s 14 Principles of Public Management

1. Public funds are sacred.

2. Public management is transparent. Public servants are accountable for

everything they do, with whom they do it, when they do it, and how they do

it.

3. We do not accept bureaucratic transactions of political power nor favour

economic interests.

4. We do not use state power to buy consciences and silences.

5. Municipal authorities teach by example, and that is our main tool for civic

transformation.

6. Planning without improvisation.

7. Efficiency, economy and efficacy in all programs and projects.

8. Relationships with the community are open and clear and are nurtured

through opportunities for citizen participation.

9. The public interest prevails over private interests.

10. Public servants working in the Municipal Administration are honest,

capable, and committed to the city project.

11. The city’s development is a compromise between local government and all

citizens.

12. Solidarity and cooperation are the basis of relationships between the city

and the region, the department, the nation and the international community.

13. Trust among people who ran the administration is essential to guarantee the

legitimacy of the state.

14. Life is a supreme value and there is not a single idea or purpose that would

justify the use of violent means. (Alcaldía de Medellín, 2008, p. 16)

The communication of these guiding principles as non-partisans stances was

fruitful in generating a great deal of trust and signaling to the public that the “reformers”

were committed to “clean” the municipal administration from previous corruption and

clientship practices. As a result of increased trust in government, the Fajardo and Salazar

administrations substantially improved their municipal finances, first, by updating the

cadastral survey and adjusting property tax charges and, second, by refining the

management operations of the Empresas Públicas de Medellín (Medellín’s Utilities

Company, or EPM) (Guerrero, 2011).

5.3.1 Institutional strengths: The Utility Company of Medellín (EPM)

In the period 2004-2011, EPM became one of the city’s institutional strengths

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and a pivot to urban reform. EPM already had a history of supporting the urban poor by

providing access to basic services, but it gained even more relevance to the public when

it became highly profitable for the city. During the government of Luis Perez (2001-

2004) EPM ran into trouble due to corruption. In a controversial move, Fajardo changed

the whole Board, and implemented a meritocratic policy to access positions within EPM.

As a result, EPM improved its profit margins substantially (Gutiérrez et al., 2012).

Fiscal buoyancy became highly visible to citizens, who received improved

services and benefited from larger social investments. Between 2008 and 2011, EPM

transferred surplus profits to the municipality for a total of USD $1.4 billion for an

average annual contribution of 21% of the city’s revenue. This represent USD $167.80

per capita of investment, which is higher than national government investments per

capita in the city through inter-governmental transfers (USD $162). Good finances

allowed the Salazar administration to invest 86% of its total budget in projects and

programs, the highest percentage in the country (see Table 5.2). EPM surplus incomes

are invested in social programs in the areas of education, health, roads and infrastructure,

public spaces, sports, and arts and culture. (MCV, 2012).

Table 5.2

Income and Expenditures per Capita in the Largest Colombian Cities, 2011

($USD)

City Total Income Total Investment Debt

Medellín 682 691.9 5.83

Bogotá 620 469.39 20.66

Barranquilla 606 581.7 7.95

Cali 357 300.4 20.13

Source: Adapted from MCV (2012, p.121)

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Other examples of good governance in city management include the

implementation of programs such as a Results-Oriented Budget. With the technical

support of the World Bank and USAID, the municipality trained staff and systematized

all of its operations in a way that allowed citizens to evaluate in real time the progress

and delays with regards to the implementation of the Municipal Development Plan

(Gomez et al., 2009). Furthermore, the Human Development Index and data from a

Quality of Life Survey was used to evaluate performance, which further served to

reassure citizens that progress was being made. According to a World Bank researcher,

Fajardo “broke up clientelistic political networks, raised tax receipts, improved public

services, introduced transparency fairs, established civic pacts, and restored a citizen’s

‘sense of hope’ as reflected in comprehensive, annual independent surveys” (Guerrero,

2010, p.3). With the books balanced and an unprecedented popularity for a mayor,

Fajardo gained the trust of previous skeptics, helping to elect Salazar to continue his

program, drawing partnerships from the private sector, and attracting some direct foreign

investments.

5.4 “Synergistic” Relations: Inter-Class Coalitions and Public-Private

Partnerships

I say there is magic when you can involve in the same city-project the largest

employers, the unions, the NGOs who have the most knowledge and experience

in themes of violence and conviviality, university students, journalists, and

people in the cultural sector, because those are groups that don’t traditionally talk

to each other, and linger in non-productive discussions between Lefts and Rights,

but they are not willing to talk to each other. That type of magic emerged during

the campaign, and then translated to the government…. There was not a

particular formality in the process of establishing partnerships; these were the

result of mutual trusts. (David Escobar, former private secretary to Fajardo, pers.

comm., 03/08/12)

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The progressive regime, involved a wide-range of actors and interest groups who

became partners with the local government. An example of Fajardo’s ability to gain

political adherence by broad sectors, is the way in which his budget and development

plan, “Medellín: A commitment for all citizens” were almost unanimously approved in

the City Council (by Decree 03/04). The plan was ratified by general consensus,

notwithstanding that only two out of the twenty-one elected councillors belonged to the

Citizens’ Commitment Movement (David Escobar, pers. comm., 03/08/2012). Not only

did Fajardo gain the highest approvals from the economic elites, but was also able to

secure financial resources and draw involvement from economic leaders, managers, and

entrepreneurs into his social projects under an agenda of “corporate social responsibility”

(Restrepo, 2011). Notably, Fajardo received significant donations from private

foundations, such as Fundación Fraternidad, whishing to contribute to his education

program.

Fajardo’s program of government “Medellín: a Commitment for all Citizens”

identified education as the primary axis of social development, investing 40 percent of

the municipal budget in improving the quality and coverage of education. In response,

CEOs and high-profile managers joined the Empresarios por la Educación program,

organized by a private foundation representing large businesses. By participating in this

program, high-skilled businesspersons volunteered time to improve the management and

leadership of teachers and principals in underachieving schools. They also helped train

municipal staff in other initiatives, such as the library park projects. Public and private

universities and private high schools became partners as well (Monica Sandoval,

Director of Empresarios por la Educación, pers. comm., 15/13/11). Large donations

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were also received from the private sector to support Fajardo’s Quality Schools program,

which were used for renovating, updating, and building new schools in underserved

areas of the city. Two additional noteworthy partnerships are Ruta N, a cluster for

innovation, and Culture E, a local development program to encourage the development

of small-business entrepreneurship, involving universities, the Chamber of Commerce

(as a donor), the municipality, and private foundations. Similar partnerships were

established to finance the development of the Explora Park, a science and technology

centre, and Fajardo’s system of Library Parks in peripheral neighbourhoods, who are

operated by non-profit service providers such as Comfama. Public and private

universities had an important role as well, providing technical capacity and engaging

community based organizations.

5.5 Redistribution and Socio-Spatial Inclusion: Redefining the City as a

Problem-Solving Arena

According to Rose and Miller (2010), an analysis of how government

operates should involve an understanding of the types of knowledge, moral judgements,

and views of those involved in regimes of power with regards to how they understand

their own power: in other words, how governments interpret “what needs to be done” for

them to govern effectively. In this exercise, theories, conceptualizations, and

explanations of problems and plausible solutions reveal how the threads of power are put

to work through policies, programs, and projects under a particular regime. Similarly, the

practices of policy-making leave a gamut of “sensible evidences” (Dikec, 2007) (such as

statements, statistical analysis, maps, policy briefs, working papers) that are used in the

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process of translating a political rationality into the various activities of governments:

“Governing a sphere requires that it can be represented, depicted in a way which both

grasps its truth and re-represents it in a form in which it can enter the sphere of conscious

political calculation” (Rose & Miller, 2010, p. 280).

Figure 5.2

Sergio Fajardo’s Handwriting: Medellín’s Transformation: ‘Medellín the Most

Educated’

Source: Courtesy of Carlos H. Jaramillo.

Figure 5.2 is a picture of Sergio Fajardo’s handwriting that I came across many

times when attending presentations and talks by municipal planners. In numerous

occasions, I saw planners introducing their presentations with this image. With it,

planners seemed to believe that they were providing compelling evidence that the city

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(and themselves) were advancing in the right direction. Besides confirming the power of

the charismatic leader, this figure provides a simple and yet powerful message of

undeniable logic, which Fajardo explained in the following words:

What we have done is identify the key principles and problems that we want to

solve. Basically, it’s a way of looking at politics and the public sector as a

mathematician, because the principles are equivalent to axioms, what are the

problems that we want to solve? First, the profound social inequalities that we

have as a society and in our territories; second, the violence; and third, corruption

and the culture of illegality. And we had perfectly clear what our contributions

were going to be. (Fajardo, pers. comm., 06/06/12)

The redefinition of policy towards marginalized areas was justified through a

technical diagnosis that incorporated Sen’s (1999) capabilities approach. The

construction of indicators, policy activities, and program evaluation methods were

technically supported by tools such as the Human Development Index (HDI) and the

Survey of Quality of Life (SQL), which were spatialized through GIS color-coded maps.

In particular, the map in figure 5.3 became ubiquitous in planners’ presentations, and

during public meetings, it was the evidentiary material for planners and policy makers to

justify social urbanism’s public works projects and social investments.

Not surprisingly, based on 2004 estimations the lower HDI rates coincided with

the zones of chronic violence, impacting seven comunas, and approximately 20 percent

of the city’s territory (2,000 hectares) in need of urgent state action:

According to the diagnosis, these [areas of the city] require special attention

because of the presence of dramatic socioeconomic conditions, exposure to social

exclusion and spatial segregation, and its predisposition to the occurrence of

crime and violence. These issues add up to other problematic characteristics

associated with its peripheral location in the city, resulting from the expansion of

land invasions, with gaps in the provision of facilities and public spaces, and

vulnerability to risk factors due to natural phenomena. (Puerta, 2011, p. 71)

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Figure 5.3

Medellín’s Human Development Index by Comuna

Source: Alcaldía de Medellín (2007)

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Informal areas, which in the mental cartographies of the public had been

previously considered “outside” of the formal boundaries of the city, or as “residual”

urban areas, now came to the forefront and gained visibility. In the process of redefining

planning interventions for self-help neighbourhoods, technical planning tools such as

surveys, maps, data analysis, and consultations with residents and leaders were

implemented. For the first time, recent settlements “made the cut” into the planning

department’s official map—which is not a trivial achievement—and some of the

complexities of the everyday life in the comunas came to the surface.

The arrival of the state to Medellín's marginalized areas is inscribed in the vision

for the municipal development plan “Medellín, a commitment for all citizens (2004-

2007)”; and, subsequently, “Medellín: solidary and competitive (2008-2011).” Both

plans identified the city’s violence and inequality as embedded in the social dynamics of

the city and closely connected to what they describe as “state’s abandonment and

disinvestment” in marginalized comunas. The plan identifies the following socio-spatial

issues:

The lack of [state] attention to the northern area of the city, which caused the

deterioration of the quality of life of its inhabitants; (…)

The supremacy of private transport over the public, and the inefficient use of

mass transit”; (…)

The squatting on and deterioration of public space as a result of

privatization and lack of control;

The lack of quality of educational infrastructure for the poor;

The destruction of the environment as a result of unplanned development of

the city and its productive systems (…). (Alcaldía de Medellín, 2004, p. 97-

98)

Zoraida Gaviria, former director of the Municipal Planning Department (1998-

2000) and an outsider to the social urbanism reform, points out that with the Fajardo

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administration “a new mentality” came along:

Urban issues were never considered before as impinging upon the quality of life of

the people, the idea that cities can be built to promote conviviality, or that cities

can be built to encourage polarization and conflict. There was never either the

intention or the resources allocated by a politician for a project to integrate the city;

for urban interventions with equity. Fajardo brought and popularized that idea.

(pers. comm., 06/03/12)

As such, there was a rupture with local governments’ former definition of the

urban as a “problem-solving space” (Ong 2011). While previously, urban policy

discourses were more clearly aligned with competitive city rhetoric (i.e. Mayor Luis

Perez, 2001-2003), the problematics of government identified by the Fajardo/Salazar era

are shaped by accounts of socio-spatial inclusion and claims for citizens’ rights and

social justice. In the political discourse, as the quote below illustrates, the rights of the

urban poor and their spatialized practices are brought together:

In Medellín, from our perspective and in a simplified way, we face two major

problems that are intimately connected. First, we live in a society with deep social

inequalities that bring along a great social debt accumulated. (…). Our education

system, which for years served as far as a factor of social integration, became a

factor of division and discrimination. (…). On the other hand, a look at the

outskirts of the city shows starkly the difficulties of thousands of families, most

arriving to the city in search of a future they could not find in their hometowns,

many displaced by violence, without physical baggage, without educational

competencies, those who cling to our mountains with the illusion that there lies the

possibility of a better life: they are there and are citizens of Medellín, with all their

rights and responsibilities. (Fajardo 2008, p. 9-10 [emphasis by author])

Thus, Fajardo’s and Salazar’s political discourse turned socio-spatial inequality

into an emerging field of government intervention. Urban policy-making was also built

by a strong connection between social policy and urban planning. The identified needs

for infrastructure, environmental planning and neighbourhood improvements were linked

to programs to enhance educational competences and job prospects. By proposing a new

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policy of socio-spatial redistribution, Fajardo’s discourse started to articulate a new

vision of the city based on targeted geographic interventions.

5.6 Conclusions

The conditions that characterized the shift from civic to political activism unfold

in the backdrop of four decisive factors in the sphere of urban politics: first, the

association of previously unstructured networks of activists and organizations into one

political movement with a common agenda; second, the experience of Bogotá, third, the

appearance of charismatic leadership; and fourth, the formation of class coalitions. Such

factors resulted in the election of two reformist mayors, Sergio Fajardo (2004-2007) and

Alonso Salazar (2008-2011). Urban politics delineated the space of possibility for such

mobilization. Policy implementation was characterized by charismatic leadership, “good

governance” practices, political coalitions, and the transfer of technical capabilities from

society (by NGO actors, the private sector, and academics) to the local state.

I have argued that an effective demand for urban policy innovation, and the

accumulated experiences of actors who participated in the urban experimentation and

deliberation that took place in the 1990s, connected networks of activists across society

and state, through a powerful charismatic mayor, to create a new set of urban

governmental technologies, including new definitions of the problems of the city. Based

on this new knowledge, and a new conceptualization of the city’s problems, they

imposed a logic of social urbanism as an overarching theme orienting policies, plans, and

programs devised to transform the built environment. The Fajardo-Salazar era was able

to implement urban reform by imposing a new scheme of governance characterized by

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synergistic relations among a “constellation of actors.” Through these relationships, the

new actors in power increased their connectivity to a mobilized civil society, while being

able to retain their autonomy and trust, and this “embedding” into the social relations

Evans (1997; 2002) improved the effectiveness of the state.

An important implication of this process for polarized cities with acute social

class conflicts, such as Medellín, is that redistributive urban reform will be accepted by

the local elites if the mayor is able to convey trust by demonstrating managerial skill.

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Chapter Six

Planning through Exceptions:

The Logics of the Integrated Development Projects

Mayor Fajardo gave us a challenge: he was very clear that he wanted to see an

“integrated intervention” for the hillsides, but the big question for us was: How to

do it? Following his words, we knew that we were meant to deliver an integrated

urban plan, but at the time, there was not even a basic methodology on Google.

We had to start almost from scratch. We defined the basics by working with a

core team of eight people: how to operate the social, technical, administrative,

and legal aspects. We looked into what had been previously done in the city, but

we also evaluated national and international experiences. (César Hernandez,

former Technical Coordinator for the Integrated Urban Projects, pers. comm.

24/09/2011)

In 2004, spatial planning tools became key to the promise of reducing the urban

divide through “integrated interventions” including infrastructure, participation, and

service provision. The new entrepreneurial character of the local state led mayors

Fajardo and Salazar to restructure Medellín’s Urban Development Corporation (Empresa

de Desarrollo Urbano or EDU) in order to delegate functions concerning the

implementation of social urbanism projects. Before this restructuring took place, the

EDU’s role was almost marginal to the city’s planning system. Founded in 1994, the

EDU had since operated just a few public space redevelopments. As a semi-autonomous

(commercial and industrial) public corporation, nonetheless, the EDU was perceived as a

flexible alternative to the local state: its legal character, at the limits of the public and

private sectors, provided “space for manoeuvre” in dealing with cumbersome

bureaucratic procedures, such as staff contracts and procurement. Furthermore, it was

deemed suitable to activate horizontal governance networks, both through direct

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participatory involvement with local residents, and via partnerships with civic, private,

and NGO actors.

The reorganization of planning powers that took place through the EDU and that

are embodied in PUIs are embedded in the logics of international trends of horizontal

state restructuring by which local governments seek fast-action responses to perceived

crises. As Jones and Ward (2002) observe in the context of the UK, constant attempts to

reformulate urban policy involve on-going administrative reorganizations. In Colombia,

where urban crises abound and mayors cannot be re-elected, local governments are

additionally pressured to execute their agendas and build a political legacy in a fast-

paced environment. In turn, mayors are increasingly judged by the public for their

administrative skills and not just their ability to govern. As Dávila (2009, p. 41) notes in

reference to the Colombian case “we increasingly witness the emergence of the ‘mayor

as CEO’ phenomenon, where mayors are supposed to embody not only political qualities

but also impeccable managerial credentials.” An implication of these ongoing

reorganizations of the state is a desire for flexibilization of norms and the search for

special rules for fast implementation.

Within these logics, the EDU became a prime institutional actor: it gained powers

to plan, bargain lands, consult, harmonize, coordinate actions with other state agencies,

network, and execute a large portion of the municipal budget. Under EDU’s leadership,

the proposed urban operations took the form of a large-scale Urban Development Project

(UDP), locally dubbed the Integrated Urban Project (Proyecto Urbano Integral, or PUI).

UDPs are physical planning operations bounded to a targeted territory with the

objective of changing the scope of urban development and the land-use orientation. The

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value that UDP tools add to a particular urban policy is that they render ideal conditions

for a rapid implementation phase (Block et al., 2012). As planning instruments, UDPs

create what I call “fields of exception”: territories where planning action is targeted,

where planners and policymakers have flexibility to apply statutory norms selectively,

and where strategic value is maximized.

There is copious research examining UDPs in instances where the goal is to

transform spaces to accommodate new ways of consumption, including waterfronts,

sports venues, business districts, mixed-income developments, or flagship international

mega-events. Less is known, however, about how UDPs can function as planning

instruments to redress what Harvey (2008 [1973]) and Soja (2010) identify as “socio-

spatial injustices”: the disadvantages produced by unequal access to locational resources,

mobility, and public services that shape urban form.

PUIs offer a remarkable opportunity to interrogate the strengths and limitations of

UDPs for mediating a state-led program grounded on claims for socio-spatial

redistribution and planning democratization. Although commonly used to trigger market-

driven socio-spatial changes, Medellín’s policy makers and planners claim that PUIs

allowed them to redirect social investments towards precarious peripheral

neighbourhoods in a way that in Medellín would otherwise be unfeasible or illegal.

Given the city’s existent normative framework and the intricate topography where most

of the urban poor live, planning regulations would typically prohibit any kind of service

provision. Therefore, UDPs grant planners the flexibility to find contextual solutions for

many of the problems related to self-help urbanization. Nonetheless, PUIs also face

many limitations. In what follows, I first describe the characteristics of UDPs and trace

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the precedents of Medellín’s UDPs. The second section explains the context of Medellín,

and the rationale for implementing PUIs to reduce the urban divide. This leads into a

detailed account of PUI components and their implementation process, followed by an

examination of their current benefits and limitations. In the last section I conclude that,

despite the merits of Medellín’s PUI approach, the city still needs to revise the role of its

planning system in order to promote sustainable and equitable urban development.

6.1 What are Urban Development Projects?

UDPs are broadly defined in the literature as physical development operations

bounded to a targeted territory with the objective of triggering new urban processes. The

added-value of using UDP tools for a particular urban policy is that, because operators

are usually granted exceptionality measures from statutory norms and procedures, UDPs

render ideal conditions for a straightforward implementation phase. As concluded in a

comparative study of UDPs in Belgium: “An appropriate concentration and coupling of

strategies, actions and budgets can indeed provide for a more efficient and more effective

management policy” (Block et al., 2012, p. 993). UDPs have thus become ubiquitous as

a tool for urban policy implementation (Monclús, 2002). Since its emphasis is on

effectiveness, this development instrument is aligned with contemporary neoliberal

notions of planning as a field that is concerned with growth and the functionality and

efficiency of the city over other rationalities.

In both the Global North and South, the overall trend is for the public sector to

grant legal and bureaucratic exceptionality to private actors through UDPs, either directly

or through public-private partnerships, but a UDP can also be led, financed, and operated

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by the public sector with the goal of encouraging future private investments

(Swyngedouw et al., 2002; Burgess & Carmona, 2005). As such, UDPs are also seen as a

tangible product of the shift from government to governance, as planning decision-

making usually claims to involve a diverse public. In fact, advocates consider strategic

planning tools as a means to improve governance mechanisms and fulfil “the promise of

a democratic process” (Steinberg, 2005, p. 70). This public can comprise private

stakeholders, networks, and coalitions (Block et. al., 2012).

6.1.1 From Barcelona to Medellín: UDP travels and cultural translations

Medellín’s PUI is an adaptation from Barcelona's regeneration model. In the

1980s and 1990s, Barcelona developed a UDP approach that can be characterized by

civic engagement and iconic public spaces, also called “quality spaces”. During the

1990s, the “Barcelona Model” circulated widely around the world (Gonzáles, 2011). The

policy transfer from Barcelona to Medellín took place through the specialization of

architects and planners pursuing graduate degrees in Cataluña (senior planner, pers.

comm., 03/13/2010) and also through professional exchange programs and growing

intercity collaborations involving architects and academics between the two cities (policy

actor, pers. comm., 20/11/2010). These relationships resulted in joint ventures such as

the “Barcelona-Medellín Lecture Series”, sponsored by the Catalan Kreanta Foundation

and Eafit, a private university in Medellín. While European and North American cities

have paid more attention to the managerial aspects and involvement of private actors in

the model, in Latin America, the Barcelona Model was diffused somewhat differently, as

a best practice in urban democratization and strategic planning (Gonzáles, 2011).

Although the Barcelona Model has been widely replicated around the world, it

has not gone without criticism. Detractors of the model, like Delgado (2007), point to the

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mismatch between, on the one hand, a “dreamed” city-image that projects a cohesive

cultural identity and, on the other hand, the realities of deindustrialization and the

displacement of the working classes from central locations via gentrification. In

Medellín, however, the Barcelona Model was reified by planners interviewed for this

research as a revitalization process driven by urban democratization (policy actor, pers.

comm., 20/11/2010). The local innovation of Medellín’s planners has been to tweak and

transpose some of the components of the Barcelona Model to Medellín’s low-income

peripheral neighbourhoods. In this move, the local precedents with Zone Planning,

PRIMED, NVC, and the political goals of redistribution and participation contributed to

an overarching policy framework of social urbanism. Despite UDPs’ controversial

origins, and the intricacies of the disparate processes of translation and cultural

appropriation that are characteristic of policy mobilities (Healey, 2010; McCann &

Ward, 2011), Medellín’s planners adopted UDPs as a suitable tool to promote socio-

spatial justice and counter the effects of uneven development in the city.

6.1.2 Integrating Social Policy and Physical Planning

Medellín UDPs embodied the integration among the different social, economic

and territorial policy components, for instance, connecting mobility infrastructure to

schooling, to micro-credit banks, to housing improvements, to neighbourhood amenities,

to health, and the like. These functions were fully coordinated by EDU through weekly

inter-institutional meetings.

Alejandro Echeverri, former chief executive of the EDU, notes that planners

initially envisaged social urbanism as a series of “lever projects” through which “those

people who are excluded, both mentally and physically, could gain a sense of inclusion”

(pers. comm., 03/12/10). Echeverri's account highlights other key factors in this venture:

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first, “accountable participation” and a clear communication with the community, and

second, Barcelona’s quality of the public works: “building with quality generates a sense

of inclusion and self-esteem that effectively transcends the more material aspects” (pers.

comm., 03/12/10). As Carlos H. Rodriguez, the director of the planning department

during Salazar’s government (2008-2011), sums it up: “Overall, the hope was that PUIs

would provide the basic conditions for rebuilding citizenship but within the timelines and

benefits of the urban project” (pers. comm., 02/12/11). Following these considerations,

social urbanism as an urban strategy supports broader social policy goals where the city

previously lacked the basic necessary conditions for implementation, while evoking

rationalities of “optimization” (Rose, 1999). Crucially, the UDP approach serves to

expedite the promised delivery of social services and infrastructure under Medellín’s

redistributive agenda, revealing what Ferguson (2010) calls the polyvalent nature of

entrepreneurial mechanisms of government.

6.1.3 The Logics of the Integrated Urban Projects

PUIs are institutionally defined by EDU as: “an urban planning tool

encompassing physical, social and institutional dimensions with the goal of addressing

specific problems within a defined territory, by utilizing simultaneously all the

development tools available to the state in the intervention area” (EDU, 2013).

Figure 6.1 illustrates the different dimensions and components of PUIs: first,

physical upgrading; second, social interventions; and third, institutional coordination.

The physical dimension refers to all aspects of the public works projects. These include

new public buildings (such as schools, libraries, day-care centres); improvement of run-

down facilities; landscape and urban design; generation of new public spaces such as

playgrounds, soccer fields and parks; environmental recovery actions; and safety and

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conviviality. Figure 6.2 displays the typical projects included in PUI interventions and

their strategic lines of action.

Figure 6.1

PUI’s Actors and Components

Source: Author’s elaboration.

City Council Mayor

Urban Development Corporation (EDU)

Integrated Urban Project (PUI) Management

Physical

upgrading Social Intervention Inter-institutional coordination

Municipal

Secretariats

City Planning

Department

Decentralized

state agencies Private sector

partners NGOs

PUI Targeted Area

Community

participation

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Figure 6.2

Summary of PUI Initiatives

Source: Author’s elaboration.

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The second component is social intervention, which is concerned with

community participation. Participation ranges “from identifying problems and

opportunities through field trips, to the formulation and approval of projects, to the use

of participatory design practices such as workshops of imaginaries” (EDU, 2013).

Accordingly, each PUI forges a different identity and place-making practice, which

supports the diversity at each site. As John Maya, previous Chief Executive of EDU,

recalls about this process:

We designed a distinctive PUI for each area with specific ideas from each

community. So not all PUI areas have the same amenities, some have more day-

care centres, a music house, or a particular type of recreation venue; others have a

different stock depending on the implicit vocation of each community (pers.

comm., 30/08/12).

The third component, institutional coordination, is organized in four stages that

follow the logics of any UDP intervention: First comes a planning stage, which defines

the geographic boundaries. At this point, a Master Plan for the selected area is

formulated with inter-institutional coordination among the different municipal agencies

and secretariats. Key actors involved in defining the “catchment area” include the

Municipal Planning Department, the Private Secretary of the Mayor's Office, the

Departments of Treasury and Public Works, and EDU's executives (policymaker, pers.

comm. 24/09/11). The second stage involves the diagnosis and formulation of required

actions. A gamut of programs, partnerships, projects and strategies are decided upon

under thematic commissions in collaboration with community actors. After these

initiatives are analysed for financial viability, they are locally discussed through a three-

month process of community consultation (Puerta, 2011). The outcome is a detailed plan

that establishes the actions, responsibilities, timelines, budgets and parameters for the

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operations. The third stage is the development process, which translates the plan into

urban designs and architectural prototypes that are retrofitted into the PUI Master Plan.

Some of the projects involve partnerships with private and non-profit service providers

such as Comfama and Comfenalco; and with decentralized state-owned entities such as

EPM, Medellín’s Metro Company, Medellín’s Network of Libraries, or INDER (Institute

for Sports and Recreation) (see Table 6.1).

Figure 6.3

Map of Integrated Projects

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Table 6.1

Selected Institutions and Partners Involved in Social Urbanism Initiatives

Institution Role / level of government

Municipality of Medellín Local government

Urban Development Corporation, EDU Municipal decentralized agency – urban

development projects

Social Institute of Housing and Habitat of

Medellín, ISVIMED

Municipal decentralized institute – housing policy

and planning

Medellín Utility Company, EPM Municipal decentralized agency- utilities

Institute for Sports and Recreation of Medellín,

INDER

Municipal decentralized agency – sports and

recreation

Medellín Metro Company Multi-level autonomous board – Metro

Metropolitan Area of the Aburrá Valley, AMVA Inter-municipal cooperation authority

Agency for Cooperation and Investment, ACI Municipal decentralized agency

Metroplús Decentralized agency, light rapid transit

Medellín’s Network of Public Libraries Municipal decentralized agency

Pilot Public Library Municipal decentralized agency

Network of Music Schools of Medellín Municipal government

Museum of Antioquia Departmental public institution with municipal

representation

Explora Park Decentralized municipal agency (science and tech.)

Botanical Gardens Public-private board with municipal representation

Ruta N Decentralized municipal agency

Comfama Family compensation fund (private social security)

Comfenalco Family compensation fund (private social security)

National University of Colombia, Medellín

Campus

National autonomous higher education institution

University of Antioquia Departmental autonomous higher ed. institution

EAFIT University Private institution

Pontificia Bolivariana University Private institution

Medellín Como Vamos? Private/civil society partnership –government

accountability

Medellín’s Chamber of Commerce Umbrella association

ProAntioquia Private foundation – umbrella of large businesses in

Antioquia

Fundación Conconcreto Private charitable foundation

Fundación Fraternidad Private charitable foundation

Fundación Mi Sangre Private charitable foundation

Fundación EPM Charitable foundation with municipal representation

Antioquia’s Federation of NGOs NGO – Umbrella organization

Veeduria Ciudadana (Citizen Watchdog) Participatory board – Civil society initiative for

public accountability

Corporación Región NGO

Instituto Popular de Capacitacion IPC NGO

National Guild School NGO

House of Strategies (Casa de las Estrategias) NGO

Nuestra Gente Grass-roots organization

Hip-Hop Network Elite (Red de Hip-Hop la Élite) Grass-roots organization

SonBatá – Afro Colombian Cultural Association Grass-roots organization

Source: Author.

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At this point, public works are executed along with strategies for the local

appropriation of the projects. Appropriation strategies typically involve cultural

statements, including murals or graffiti art painted by local youth or events such as

concerts or street festivals (social coordinator at EDU, pers. comm., 13/03/11). During

the final stage, PUI's data are transferred to community organizations, municipal

agencies or private partners. While officers remain “in the field” to conduct follow-up

activities to the different aspects of the intervention, PUI offices close as the operations

are deemed complete (Project manager at the EDU, pers. comm., 27/09/11). Figure 6.3

illustrates the areas of the Medellín where PUIs have been implemented.

6.2 PUI at North-Eastern Area

In 2004, a pilot PUI was adopted for the North-Eastern area (Comunas 1 and 2),

covering 158 hectares and targeting 170,000 residents (see Figure 6.4). Three facts were

considered when selecting this site: first, that this was the area of the city with the lowest

Quality of Life and Human Development Indexes; second, that it had presented one of

the highest homicide rates between 1999 and 2006 (202.5 per 100,000 inhabitants)

(Puerta, 2011); and third, that the previous municipal administration had already started

the implementation of a Metrocable in the zone. The Metrocable is the first application in

the world of an aerial cable-car technology for transit purposes (see Figures 6.5 and 6.6).

As a policy, it was devised as a relatively low-cost and green technology option suitable

to reach areas of scarce road infrastructure and difficult topographic access, such as

Comunas 1 and 2 (Brand & Dávila, 2011). Within the logics of the PUI, the

complementarity between this new mobility technology and the newly proposed public

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works projects was expected to increase PUIs’ strategic leverage (planner, pers. comm.,

27/09/11) (see Figure 6.7). The PUI at North-Eastern Area had a total investment of

$300 million USD (without the Metrocable) and encompassed 290 programs in total. Its

flagship project was the Santo Domingo Library Park. At a cost of $8 million USD, and

commission it under a public contest to Colombian architect Giancarlo Mazzanti, this

library park has become the icon of the city’s transformation (Figure 6.5).

Figure 6.4

PUI at North Eastern Area (Comunas 1 and 2) Public Works Projects

Source: Adapted from EDU.

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Figure 6.5

Santo Domingo Library Park and Metrocables


Figure 6.6

Santo Domingo Stop, Metrocable Station Line K


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Figure 6.7

Metrocable Station and Pedestrian Improvements


6.3 PUI Comuna 13

In 2006, a new PUI was established in Comuna 13 with a budget of $155 million

USD, covering 700 hectares and targeting 140,000 residents. The complex topography of

this comuna made it historically prone to squatting and self-help construction but also

appealing to violent actors. Until 2002, large areas of Comuna 13 were off-limits to the

police. In that year, mayor Luis Pérez (2001-03) and the national government under

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Álvaro Uribe Vélez (2002-10) implemented a policy of forceful pacification. Armed

forces conducted several military operations with the objective of retaking control of the

area. Operation Orion (October, 2002) was by far the most intense, displacing residents

and generating victims of state violence (Sánchez et al., 2011). With this precedent, the

PUI in Comuna 13 became characterised by attempts of pacification and compensation

where difficult state-society relations have rendered PUI operations more fragmented.

Figure 6.8

Library Park San Javier, Presbítero Jose Luis Arroyave, Comuna 13

Photo by EDU.

From 2008 to 2011, three additional PUIs were established: PUI Centre-Eastern

area (Comunas 8 and 9), PUI North-Western (Comunas 5 and 6), and PUI Iguaná

(Comuna 7). These PUIs maintain the same lines of intervention with smaller budgets,

while a higher emphasis is placed on the recovery and conservation of water sources and

strategic ecosystems. While the PUIs in the North-Eastern area and Comuna 13 were

LA TRANSFORMACIÓN DE MEDELLÍN, UNA ACCIÓN SOCIAL

PARQUE BIBLIOTECA: PRESBITERO JÓSE LUIS ARROYAVE – SECTOR: SAN JAVIEREquipamientos Públicos para dignificar los barrios

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completed in 2011, the ascension of a new municipal administration for the period of

2012-2015, with new priorities and political compromises, means that, as of today, many

of the public works projects in the Centre-Eastern, North-Western and Iguaná remain

unfinished.

6.4 PUIs as Legal Exceptions

PUIs were introduced through political means as strategic projects in Fajardo's

and Salazar's respective programs of government, constituting structuring plans of the

highest hierarchical order. Although all municipal plans must be harmonized with the

city's Territorial Ordering Plan, which is revised every twelve years, PUIs are situated at

the limits of the Territorial Ordering Plan’s general guidelines: lead planners can

negotiate, freeze, or bypass statutory norms and procedures in PUI territories. Once the

mayor's programme of government is approved by City Council and budgets are

assigned, PUIs are protected from any political debate and the details of implementation

become the mayor's responsibility. Due to its quasi-public nature, it is not in the EDU's

mandate to be accountable or accessible to citizens, unless the executives decide to do so.

Crucially, as a commercial and industrial state company, the EDU is subject to

the provisions of commercial law and counts on a high degree of flexibility. The EDU

can act as planner, manager, contractor, and/or operator. EDU’s functions stretch from

land acquisitions to the creation of planning guidelines, programming, or partnerships.

EDU can easily expand and shrink, hire qualified staff for short-term project work, or

contract out. This flexible capacity is favourable for project-based works (Carlos Mario

Rodriguez, 05/12/2011). Consequently, once the PUIs’ catchment areas have been

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delimited, EDU's planners and architects have a considerable amount of power and

control over the process of transforming the built environment.

6.4.1 Justifying Exceptions: Socio-Spatial Justice, Experimentation and

Liveability

Former and current EDU practitioners explained why counting on flexibility and

a high degree of autonomy to experiment were important to the success of social

urbanism, citing several reasons. First, they considered existing planning regulations as

inequitable, narrow and not responsive to the characteristics of informal territories and

the dynamics of self-help urbanization. A lead planner at EDU (pers. comm., 27/09/11)

stressed that:

When one designs projects in these communities, in these territories, the by-laws

don't apply. You realize that the by-laws were made for a different city, for a new

city, or for a city that's flat.

The Territorial Ordering Plan provides specific by-laws and guidelines, from the

heights and ranges allowed for sidewalks and street curbs to tree planting criteria,

construction materials, accesses to dwellings, distances from streams and water sources,

among others. Many of these standards are not achievable in low-income settlements,

considering the intricate topography and the de-facto morphology. For example, an

architect working at EDU (pers. comm., 20/09/11) told me that in the North-Eastern area,

where the slope varies from sixteen to twenty per cent, it is impossible to meet the

Territorial Ordering Plan's sidewalk guidelines, which mandate less than a five per cent

slope. Most of the city's informal dwellings cling to unstable topographies that have been

classified as high-risk due to the geological instability of the soil. Other settlements have

been built right next to streams. Consolidated settlements in these circumstances face the

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risks of flooding or landslides, and yet, according to the norm, the municipality is

supposed to relocate and not to intervene in areas of illegal construction, unless it meets

the required construction standards.

A policymaker noted that the risk is often mitigated, and unpopular relocations

are avoidable, but breaking the “planning conundrum” is only possible by transgressing

the norms “in all respects.” Referring to the housing upgrading programme of the Juan

Bobo Ravine, which was part of the PUI in the North-Eastern area, this policymaker

illustrated his point by stating,

The norm says that constructions need to keep at least twenty meters away from

the ravine to reduce the risk of flooding; instead we respected ten. If we had

asked for a permit, of course we'd be rejected, but we were already reducing the

risk for a population living on precarious elevated shacks (pers. comm.,

05/12/11).

Local experts agreed that the “city of the norm” was more effective at

restraining the urban poor and secluding affluent classes than at connecting and

integrating the city. The same building standards that regulate private developers have to

be met by self-help housing builders who cannot realistically conform to these rules.

Research participants argued that titling claims for dwellings, which originated in

“pirate” developments or land invasions, could be more easily regularized if

differentiated norms were to exist for barrios populares. Likewise, one interviewee

perceived that planning rules were formulated “as if the city were new” (planner, pers.

comm., 06/03/12), but afforded little opportunity for transforming the city incrementally

or for dwellings to transform into other uses. In sum, master planning, by-laws, and

guidelines are seen as mediating an unequal relationship between, on the one hand, a

formal city that is able to meet the rules and therefore can maximize the development

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uses and profits from the land-markets, and on the other hand, incremental self-help

housing in low-income neighbourhoods, which barely captures shelter benefits.

A case that exemplifies the unequal production of space at the opposite end of the

socio-economic spectrum is El Poblado, the city's middle-upper income district in the

southern hillsides of the valley. Under similarly unstable geological conditions as the

North-Eastern area, this district is fully covered by mid-rise development. El Poblado

was a rural area, becoming a zone of urban expansion in the 1980s. It is emblematic of a

norm that is technically rigid but liberal in the private capture of surplus value. From the

enactment of the city's modernist Pilot Plan in the 1950s, until today, private developers

have been allowed to achieve high densities and development uses with very few charges

imposed (Piedrahita and Gonzáles, 2010). Since the 1980s, subsequent Municipal

Agreements (MAs) (No. 38 of 1980, No. 62 of 1999, and No. 23 of 2000) ratified these

benefits, which politicians justified by arguing that the construction sector would keep

the economy afloat. In 2005, a tax was introduced to slow down development, and in

2006 (MA No. 46), new density caps were set according to the structural capacity of

each comuna. However, “developers know how to get away with it” (planner, pers.

comm., 06/03/12). As a result, current densities are higher than they should be and are

overwhelming the structural capacity of the hills, resulting in landslides.

6.4.2 The Tragedy of Space

On October 12th of 2013, the collapse of a recently built 22 storey condominium

with 50 residential flats made the headlines across the country, as eleven people lost their

lives while trying to evacuate. Tower 6 of Space, a residential gated compound in a

luxury zone of El Poblado, became exemplary of developments that have been legally

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built but that are technically unfit for high-density construction. Located in an area of the

city that according to the Territorial Ordering Plan is “at-risk,” Space was designed by

one of Medellín’s renowned architects and a construction company owned by Álvaro

Villegas, a former president of the Colombian Society of Engineers and Architects.

While initial explanations by the developer suggested a specific flaw in a concrete

column, the project manager, the structural engineer, and the official in charge of

granting construction permits have been charged with criminal negligence. The

prosecutor has actually unveiled a common practice in the city, by which private

developers use a series of shortcuts to access construction licenses without undergoing a

full review of their building plans (Gualdrón, El Tiempo, 12 May 2014).

The tragedy of Space is thus a metaphor of the unequal production of urban space

in Medellín, where for decades, residents of the low-income hillsides were denied

municipal services or alternative housing options because they were occupying terrains

at risk. And yet developers have been legally allowed to build high-density buildings in

at-risk areas of El Poblado without equal consideration of hazards. Thus, notions of risk

have been locally distorted and conflated with self-help housing and their users, while

powerful developers have almost free reign in equally risky circumstances. It is the

tragedy of the “differentiated citizenship” (Holston, 2007) that exists in Medellín, as

there are different rights for different social groupings. In the end, however, the risk is

real for both informal and formal builders.

The historical conditions that shape the inequitable construction of urban space in

Medellín gives PUI planning proponents yet another justification for planning through

territories of exception, as some of the city’s statutory planning codes are deemed

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inadequate to achieve urban liveability goals:

The city of the by-law is the one that created El Poblado, which has no sidewalks,

where people are not encouraged to use transit, which is full of gated

communities and private security abounds, and where the preferred public space

is the mall (planner at EDU, pers. comm., 05/12/11)

Despite the high density in El Poblado, residents’ lifestyles and the planning

predispositions that support them allow the upper classes to live in fortified enclaves

where they can insulate themselves from contact with other social classes. These salient

patterns of segregation evoke Caldeira’s (2000) notion of “city of walls” and have

contributed to this day to the acute socio-spatial polarization that characterizes Medellín.

6.4.3 Social Urbanism or Emergency Urbanism? Exceptionality, PUIs and

Political Gains

The need for exceptionality is not only based on equity, technical, and liveability

objectives, but also in political terms, as mayors aspire to inaugurate strategic projects

within a restricted four-year tenure. As PUIs are part of a political platform, there is

uncertainty regarding completion and sustainability beyond expected timelines. The need

for an agency, such as EDU, in charge of centralizing and coordinating all of the

necessary actions, from planning and land acquisition to project completion, is justified

based on the optimization required to build political capital. Because mayors cannot be

immediately re-elected, they seek to maximize political gain during their restricted tenure

by accelerating project implementation. “Express policymaking” is based on discourses

of crisis through and can be attributed to a fast-paced environment that is characteristic

of one-term only municipal administrations. An expert explained how:

All of this transformation that seems so wonderful is actually quite rushed

because projects have to be delivered when it's the mayor's time to go. Therefore

they have to cut corners and there's little thinking on how to produce a higher

impact beyond what the architecture itself can produce. (pers. comm., 06/03/12)

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One of the shortcuts taken involved a particularly contentious issue: land

acquisition. Under different circumstances, land bargaining would typically be a lengthy

process including several rounds of negotiations with homeowners until a fair

compensation is established and a deal is reached. To expedite the process, nonetheless,

the EDU was given authority to negotiate directly with homeowners, who typically

opposed the PUI, but were pushed to decide quickly. Families affected were given two

options: cash compensation at cadastral values, or relocation to a mid-rise social housing

units in Ciudadela Nuevo Occidente. Located in the peri-urban interphase between

Comuna 13 and the township of San Cristobal, Nuevo Occidente is a massive social

housing complex, still lacking amenities and connection to the city. Those who accepted

relocation had to adapt to living in mid-rise development, dealing new neighbours,

longer commutes to downtown, and sometimes, finding new ways to get by. Relocation

conflicted with the goals of social urbanism, and other options were explored but

dismissed:

What I had hoped for was for the municipality to buy pockets of land in the

surroundings of the new projects where we could relocate the families in their own

surroundings. That idea was not implemented for several reasons, but the main one,

was that it would have been very costly and would involve project delays. (John

Maya, pers. comm., 08/08/2012)

Policymakers, nevertheless, see the project approach as a way of establishing a

new social contract, under which trust and a new type of state-society relationship

depends on the efficiency of the operation. A PUI planner equated success with meeting

the locally acquired compromises:

(...) Initially, most residents feel sceptical, one notices resistance (…) and they

think we're going to steal the money, (...) and it's a long process of gaining

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mutual trust between the residents and us, that’s why meeting deadlines and

honouring commitments is fundamental. (...) The PUI model gives us control of

the process. Through the normal channels, a transformation like this would be

impossible given the detailed coordination it requires. (pers. comm., 27/09/11)

An Exception that Proves the Rule?

While exceptionality and the application of a project approach are clearly

justified based on historical power dynamics in the city, political gains, and the needs of

the proposed urban transformation, outsiders to the projects contest the idea that change

should be achieved through territories of exception. While PUIs convey a strong sense of

transformation, it is important to evaluate them beyond their high-visibility as problem-

solving strategies. Despite a genuine political commitment to equitable development,

Medellín’s citywide planning system continues to operate in small territories and through

exclusionary codes and practices.

A resident of Comuna 1 sarcastically explained:

It's like when instead of cleaning your whole house you organize just the living

room. Perhaps, it is okay for the guests, but the inside remains completely messed

up. So here in Comuna 1 it happens the same thing: it is very well “organized” in

the surroundings of the Metro Cable, but deep into the neighbourhoods we’re

screwed: no social investment, no infrastructure, no nothing. (pers. comm.,

15/09/2011)

PUIs generate “the illusion” that they have solved existent socio-spatial

injustices. They make marginalized territories accessible for visitors who can now use

the Metrocable, walk around the stations, and access the library and other new public

spaces. In doing so, these spaces are also wrongfully exoticized, turning poverty into

entertainment as they have created opportunities for “slum tourism”.

This urban development model has many limitations. An urban practitioner in the

private sector, brings a word of caution: “as long as [PUIs] keep capturing the attention,

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the other areas of the city will continue to be urbanized ‘business as usual’” (pers.

comm., 07/03/11). The UN-Habitat (2009, p. 38) Report on Human Settlements raises a

similar concern: “the challenges for urban planning in addressing inequality are

particularly difficult, as urban planning alone cannot counter market forces.” A

substantive urban transformation would require, therefore, not only strategic

interventions, but also changes in regulatory frameworks and land markets.

Zoraida Gaviria, a former director of the planning department (pers. comm.,

06/03/12), points out that planning regulations have a strategic value that needs to be

recovered, and that in parallel to PUI projects, these regulations need to be rethought

from an equity, economic and sustainability perspective. If planning norms are left as

they are, the inequality will continue to grow because neither the excessive gains accrued

by developers, the environmental externalities, nor the reproduction of exclusionary

urban patterns will be challenged in the long run.

Planning Dilemmas, Opportunity Costs and Local Controversies

While acknowledging municipal efforts to improve the quality of life in areas

where the state have had historically a weak role in development, local actors expressed

many concerns about the administrations’ targeted areas and policy choices. For

instance, local actors perceived that PUIs have limited social and poverty-reduction

impacts beyond the spatial boundaries where the intervention takes place. Community

perceptions were expressed during focus groups about seemingly “unnecessary projects”

or public works not considered a priority. For instance, residents in Comuna 13

welcomed the interventions and were positive about the changing looks of the area, but

disagreed with the concentration of such large investments. In particular, the mobility

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and neighbourhood-upgrading plan were contentious.

Figure 6.9

Outdoors Escalators in El Salado, Comuna 13

Photo by Esteban Agudelo.

Claiming to be the first of its kind in South America, the municipality installed a

set of six outdoor electric escalators, giving access to a densely populated neighbourhood

in one of the poorest and more violent areas in the city (see figure 6.9). The hopes were

to increase mobility for a secluded population by the means of a flagship and inventive

intervention. Residents of Comuna 13 who participated in a focus group, recognized

municipal efforts towards improvement, however, they expressed concern over the

escalators (04/03/12):

Participant No. 1: The change we've seen in the last few years is obvious with

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all the enhancements we're getting. I think the children are thrilled with the

water-screen, we see a very positive progress in this area and in the community in

general.29

Participant No. 3: I think we have many challenges and needs; there are also

other priorities. How much were the escalators? I think they were unnecessary

considering that hunger pervades in the comuna.

Participant No. 4: There are many changes, considering what I had to endure as

a child, we lacked many things around here, but here’s the problem: the water-

screen and the escalators are very useful, but only to the people in the vicinity

who can use them and entertain themselves, but for us who live in other areas

there's nothing happening over there. Housing is a big issue for us, I say this

because my house has come down twice, we live on a swamp, it's humid and

cold, it's not healthy for the kids. Housing is the big priority here.

At a cost of six million USD, equity claims in the community were raised about

the social impact of this investment vis-à-vis urgent local needs. As other UDPs, PUIs

are built on the differentiated administration of places, privileging certain small

territories with targeted investments, but leaving low-income residents of non-PUI areas

underserviced. In another focus group taking place in Antonio Nariño, a neighbourhood

nearby, residents expressed similar views about the escalators, a water-screen recently

inaugurated, and other neighbourhood improvements (focus group, 04/04/2012):

Participant No. 4: I still think that the image here changed a lot, and despite the

poverty and all the problems, it's generating new expectations (…).

Participant No. 6: Everything looks very nice, and they can wrap the

neighbourhood in gold, but as long as there is so much violence, hunger, and

poverty in the comuna, all of that will be out of tune and extravagant.

Participant No. 3: Yeah, we got ourselves fancy living at the tip of the machete!

Indeed, policymakers agree that some of the flagship interventions are at odds

with the poverty and violence that surrounds them. “It poses a real ethical dilemma,”

says Andrés Jimenez (pers. comm., 21/09/11), the manager for PUI Comuna 13, who

29 The water-screen project in Comuna 13 is an open outdoors venue where images and videos can be

displayed with high-resolution standards. It is also aimed to work as a meeting place in the community.

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was in charge of overseeing the project of the outdoor escalators. Planners at the EDU

recognize that the flashy features of some projects, and the large budgets attached, have

attracted much criticism. In particular, the tension between aesthetic concerns and the

grandeur of public works on the one hand, and claims by residents who cannot meet their

basic needs, on the other. Although three out of every four dollars spent via PUIs have

been allocated to improve social services provision, residents consider that there is a high

opportunity cost attached to PUI projects. Indeed, the PUI rationale of generating human

development by targeting places, and not people, is highly contentions. A senior urban

designer at EDU (pers. comm., 27/09/11), recognizes this predicament:

Architects are often stubborn and obsessive about following the PUI

methodology, which is that projects need to be structured in a consistent, strict,

and even systematic way, otherwise the PUI won't work. That is the idea that our

management tries to sell. But we constantly run into trouble. In a recent

community forum we had to confront one of these permanent criticisms: Why are

you doing such a big library over there, and why so many sidewalks and parks

when just outside the PUI area we have no sewerage? There are many needs in

these communities and meeting them is very important, but if we wait for all the

needs to be addressed quite possibly we'll never get to detonate a transformation.

The PUI brings attention to these areas, it makes these communities and their

needs more visible, and the idea is that it will bring along new investments and

improvements.

In the North-Eastern PUI, where Metrocable users can see the humble dwellings

from the air, support from international NGOs and government subsidies have been

given to residents for small upgrades and renovations. Likewise, new businesses

emerging along the main avenue and in the new centralities promise to bring economic

vitality to the area. This type of progress is more uncertain in Comuna 13, where

criminal groups control and prevent the emergence of new entrepreneurial activities, and

relationships between the police and residents are uneasy.

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6.4.2 PUIs and the “Postcard Effect”

Despite these controversies, Medellín's redevelopments through PUIs are already

playing out in the international and economic arenas. The city’s distinctive quality of

place and its narratives of urban transformation are now being actively publicized, and

the role of PUIs has been central in recasting a new image for the city: one of a socially

inclusive and economically competitive metropolis. Indeed, alongside the city’s laudable

vision for equitable development, it has also followed an internationalization agenda to

publicize its “renaissance.” This agenda first emerged during the participatory spaces of

the Strategic Plan of 1997. In the plan, two important goals were established: to become

“an international example of a metropolis that overcomes its difficulties through dialogue

and cooperation” (quoted in Bravo and Echeverría, 2009, p.58), and as the core of

Antioquia’s economy, to align itself with Antioquia’s regional vision to become “the best

corner of America” for foreign investment. PUIs convey these contradictory message

very well through the production of a hybrid landscape, on which both contemporary

design and informal architecture blend to seemingly reconcile the divisions between the

formal and the informal city. Symbolically, PUIs amplify the local effects of renewal,

creating a “postcard” effect. As images of social urbanism travel globally, new

perceptions of the city are produced around the world. In that way, the symbolic capacity

of architecture and of “the project” itself are very powerful, as Swyngedow rightly

observes, “The Project captures a segment of the city and turns it into the symbol of the

new restructured/revitalized metropolis cast with a powerful image of innovation,

creativity, and success” (, et. al., 2002, p. 562).

Although it is undeniable that social urbanism and PUIs are strongly rooted in

concerns for socio-spatial justice, inclusion, and democratization, it is also important to

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note that any exercise in reimagining the urban–however tacitly—involves an

aspirational and a speculative attempt at “reworlding” the city (Ong, 2011, p. 12). For

this reason, experimentation and flagship interventions are characteristic of periods of

structural transition, during which cities, pressured by the local elites, desperately look

for ways of resurgence in response to urban crises (Swyngedow et al., 2002). In resorting

to urban experiments, there is always an expectation of receiving international attention,

and a hope that such recognition will help the city advance among the rankings of inter-

city competitions (Ong, 2011).

6.5 Conclusions

Within the landscape of contemporary urban policies, PUIs represent an unusual

case of urban experimentation and inter-institutional coordination to improve the quality

of life of the urban poor. Against many other international examples of UDPs, PUIs are

actually devised to fulfil redistributive goals against the historical injustices created by

the exclusionary production of urban space. In that sense, Medellín’s social urbanism

agenda depicts a remarkable commitment by mayors Fajardo and Salazar, and by a group

of progressive planners and policymakers, to redress the complexities of mounting

marginality in Medellín’s marginalized comunas. While providing new services and

infrastructure, PUIs’ strategic features have the capacity to respond to this political need,

adapt to the morphology of self-help areas, navigate the complex bureaucratic and

institutional barriers, and locally convey a sense of social inclusion and transformation.

Because in Colombia mayors cannot re-elect themselves, PUIs helps to expedite

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implementation process for mayors willing to build a legacy and execute their agendas in

a restricted four-year term.

PUIs, nonetheless, are also enmeshed in contradictions. As other cases of UDPs,

PUIs prioritize logics of efficiency and functionality that are characteristic of

entrepreneurial urbanism. At the local level, PUIs aim to advance urban upgrading

operations to reduce the urban divide. In the national and international arenas, however,

PUIs are projected as city-branding and market-enhancing mechanisms, preparing local

territories as new sites of consumption under globalization dynamics. These

contradictory aims can potentially truncate locally defined understandings of welfare and

social development. Moreover, the rapid and intense transformation of the built

environment that occurs through UDPs stir local controversies and bring up questions

about the democratic transformation of urban space through these means.

Another important implication of the case studied concerns the unlimited power

to change urban space conferred to special purpose bodies, such as EDU. While making

social urbanism efficacious, these planning actors can also undermine the potential of

more comprehensive practices of planning that could be implemented at a city-wide

level, with a longer term scope by a municipal planning authority. As a quick response to

urban crisis, Medellín’s PUIs are creating landscapes of “emergency urbanism,” which

future sustainability depends on the political system and is thus hard to guarantee.

As suggested by Healey (1997), a broader understanding of planning should

encompass a consideration for the interplay of social, economic, political and

environmental dynamics as these shape collective activities and their spatial

requirements. While social urbanism does propose an integrated view, its applicability

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today is restricted to a project-based format, implemented by a special purpose body

such as EDU, and in a geographically small area.

This limitation unveils the inefficacy of the actual planning norms, bureaucracy

and procedures in solving the critical problems of urban development. It also shows the

impact of restricted four-year mayoral terms, which normalizes fast-policy approaches,

and encourages the production of “emergency urbanisms.” Strategies to alleviate

poverty, violence, and inequality inevitably require a deep reorganization of the relations

of power in the city, and more equitable planning frameworks where diverse needs and

interests are represented.

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Chapter Seven

As Good as it Gets?

Social Urbanism at the Neighbourhood Scale

This chapter presents local perceptions of change in the PUI areas examined: the

Northeastern area and Comuna 13. It seeks to establish the extent to which PUI

interventions are recognized to have altered the quality of life of residents, and the scope

of their participation in re-shaping the built environment through the opportunities of

redevelopment. It also discusses whether residents perceive social urbanism has helped

transformed stigmas. Overall, do sites of PUI areas feel a higher sense of inclusion in

their city? What are current challenges and limitations?

Although the main emphasis is on residents’ perceptions, I also rely on other

types of information to characterize new trends and other neighbourhood impacts. The

reason for a focus on perceptions is given by the methodological and contextual

difficulties to assess formal outcomes. For example, security and incomes are largely

dependent on the unpredictable dynamics of the violent conflict and the fluctuations of

the economy at the local and national levels. Therefore, establishing direct links between

renewal and quality of life, violence reduction, or social and economic trends, might not

accurately depict the limitations of municipal interventions. As such, neighbourhood

change can be best understood through residents’ own understandings and reflections of

how the program has impacted their everyday lives and prospects.

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In order to approximate a picture of social change in the PUI areas studied,

however, I complement focus group and interview data with municipal evaluations and

other types of information. In this chapter, I first review the formal evaluations provided

by the Municipal Administrative Planning Department, which are based on outputs and

in measurements taken from an annual Quality of Life Survey. Second, I use secondary

data from sources such as the program Medellín Como Vamos? (Medellín, How are we

Doing?). This is a civil society-private sector initiative that provides independent

appraisals of quality of life in the city. It is considered an autonomous accountability

instance. Finally, I present some focus group and interview data, gathered during

fieldwork between August of 2011 and September of 2012 to compare the experiences of

the PUI Comuna 13 and the PUI North Eastern Area (Comunas 1 and 2).

7.1 The Quality of Life and the Human Development Indexes

In the period 2004-11, Mayors Fajardo’s and Salazar’s municipal development

plans were formally evaluated in relation to two main tools: first, the Quality of Life

Index (QLI), and second, the Human Development Index (HDI). The QLI evaluates

access to basic goods and services that are available to the population. This index has

five dimensions: 1) housing and environment; 2) public services and sanitation; 3)

education; 4) demography; and 5) social security (Encuesta de Calidad de Vida or ECV,

2011). The HDI in turn, is a “people-centred” composite tool developed by the United

Nations Development Program (UNDP) that evaluates potential human development

according to three dimensions:

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1) Life expectancy, 2) education and human capital, and 3) income per capita. Data for

both indexes is gathered through the Quality of Life Survey (QLS), which samples

27,000 households. Income for the HDI is calculated based on self-reported personal

expenses and an estimation of the gross domestic product (ECV, 2012).

The precedents of these indexes are interesting on their own, as Medellín is the

only city in Colombia that uses them to evaluate progress at the municipal level. In

Colombia, the National Administrative Department of Statistics (Departamento Nacional

de Estadísticas or DANE) is the entity in charge of providing census data to

municipalities. However, it is only implemented once a decade. In 1997, Medellín

implemented for the first time a pilot QLS sampling in only the urban districts, and in

2001, it was implemented with both urban and rural baselines. Starting in 2004, however,

the Mayor decided to use the survey to inform and evaluate his development plan, and

since then, the survey is conducted annually by the city. Likewise, in 2004 the Municipal

Planning Department worked with the National University and the University of

Antioquia to develop the HDI and the QLI. In 2010, UN Habitat awarded Medellín a

special recognition for the strengths of its evaluation system, which has been praised as

an effective tool to orient poverty reduction strategies (Alexandra Peláez, Sub-Director

of MetroInformación, pers. comm. 7/12/2011). In 2011, the HDI was discontinued and

the municipality adopted a new index that combines both approaches30.

30As a municipal planner told me, the reasons for combining both indexes are both methodological and

political. The methodological reason is the difficulty in calculating income, since people are wary of

revealing it. The political reason is that once the whole city is brought to a certain level of service

provision, it is very hard to achieve additional gains and show improvements through the index. Thus,

while Fajardo was able to demonstrate an impressive improvement in the lowest-income areas of the city,

for the following mayors the index has been less helpful.

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PUIs are evaluated according to their outputs; in other words, according to the

square meters of public space and public buildings built; the number of children enrolled

in the new schools; number of micro-credits loans allocated and business training

workshops held; number of books rented; number of trees planted, and so on.

7.2. PUI Northeastern Area (Comunas 1 and 2)

Figure 7.1

PUI Northeastern Area Comunas 1 and 2

In terms of jobs created in the PUI Northeastern Area, which covers Comunas 1

and 2 (an investment of $300 million USD), 2, 400 businesses emerged along the

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Avenue projects and 3,439 new jobs were created during construction (reportedly, 92

percent of non-skilled labour was hired locally by the Urban Development Corporation

EDU). Regarding community participation in the Northeastern zone, a total of 113

organizations participated, while 116 neighours’ committee meetings and 39 community

events were held (Puerta, 2011). Two hundred and ninety new social services have been

delivered in education, healthcare, social welfare, recreation and sports. Notably,

universal coverage of healthcare services was reached for 150,000 people, and a 90

percent coverage was achieved for elementary and high school children. All of these

investments, and the jobs created in the zone many through local hirings for construction

in public works positively impacted the local economy and the quality of life. These

relations are manifested in both the Quality of Life Index and the Human Development

Indexes.

Figure 7.2

Quality of Life Index (percentages) Comunas 1 and 2 (2004-2010)

Source: Author’s own elaboration with data from Quality of Life Survey

(Medellín, 2011).

Comuna 1 Comuna 2 Avg. Urban Area

2004 73.5 75.9 82.7

2006 76.2 77.9 83.8

2008 75.4 77.2 83.3

2010 76.3 77.7 83.8

68.0

70.0

72.0

74.0

76.0

78.0

80.0

82.0

84.0

86.0

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Figure 7.3

Human Development Index (Percentages) Comunas 1 and 2 (2004-2010)

Source: Author’s own elaboration with data from Quality of Life Survey

(Medellín, 2011)

Comunas 1 and 2 gained improved access to services as per the increase in the

Quality of Life index. The most important change took place between 2004 and 2006,

the years when most of the public works were constructed. During these years, the index

moved up 2.7 and 2.0 points for Comuna 1 and Comuna 2 respectively. The dimensions

that contributed the most to such increases were housing –a direct outcome of housing

upgrading and land titling–; and social security –also a direct outcome, formal

employment in construction activities for unskilled workers provided to access social

security benefits. Between 2006 and 2008, PUI’s public works were completed, and the

percentage decreased, which can be explained by the loss of temporary jobs created by

PUI. In 2010, the index moved up again in response to job creation mimicking the city’s

trend (Medellín, 2007).

Comuna 1 Comuna 2 Avg. Urban Area

2004 73.42 74.23 81.05

2006 77.54 77.31 84.12

2008 78.44 79.24 85.22

2010 78.17 78.57 85.66

66

68

70

72

74

76

78

80

82

84

86

88

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In terms of the HDI, the index shows remarkable achievements for Comuna 1 and

Comuna 2 between 2004 and 2010, 4.75 and 4.34 units. The most significant impact was

in the “life expectancy” dimension of the index, as violence rates diminished

dramatically in both Comunas, reaching a historical low in the city of 28 for 2007 (see

figure 7.3). Similarly, vaccination campaigns and health programs for mothers and

infants contributed to reduce infant mortality.

Figure 7.4

Homicide rate per 100,000 Inhabitants Medellín (1991-2012)

Source: Author’s own elaboration, with data from Alcaldía de Medellín, 2012.

381

352

311

266

224

203

163 154167 160

174184

98

5735

31.5 2845.6

94.4

86.369.6

52.3

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

450

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Figure 7.5

Real Estate Transactions – Residential Comunas 1 and 2 (2000-2007)

Source: Author’s own elaboration, with data from Registro de Instrumentos

Publicos, Alcaldía de Medellín, Secretaria de Hacienda, subsecretaria de Catastro.

MetroInformacion, 2010.

Figure 7.6

Average Cadastral Property Values USD Comunas 1 and 2 (2000-2007)

Source: Registro de Instrumentos Publicos, Alcaldía de Medellín, Secretaria de

Hacienda, subsecretaria de Catastro. MetroInformacion, 2010.

35

7

35

6

10

58

55

167

2

58

4

16

92

89

8

Co muna 1 Co muna 2

2000 2002 2004 2007

26

00

33

26

18

72

28

47

25

38

28

61

54

49

40

14

Co muna 1 Co muna 22000 2002 2004 2007

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An important impact on the local economy that can be attributed to the

combination of Metrocables and PUIs has been on local land markets, particularly in

Comuna 1, where the Spain Library Park is located. For the period 2000-2007 the

number of transactions grew 4.7 times, but between 2004 and 2007 real estate

transactions for residential properties increased from 672 in 2004 to 1692 in 2007. In

Comuna 2, the number of transactions grew, although less spectacularly, from 584 in

2004 to 898 in 2007. Similarly, between 2004 and 2007, average cadastral property

values more than doubled in Comuna 1, while also showing an important increase in

Comuna 2. This data reflects intense changes in the social composition of these

neighbourhoods and how the community has benefited from the value of urban

development. However, many of the transactions also reflect land acquisition by the

municipality to build the projects.

7.2.1 Residents’ perceptions of change at PUI North-Eastern Area

As residents told me, the experience of the first PUI, at North-Eastern Area,

started with a great deal of local conflict, and required intense bargaining between

residents and the municipality. Once constructed, however, the public works themselves

were received with great expectations, particularly the arrival of the Metrocable (Line

K). As Alvaro Villegas, a journalist at a community radio station in Granizal, Comuna 1

recalls:

You know that when something is new, it creates impact. Especially when you

see a project like the Metrocable. It hits twice because on the one hand, there was

no mass transit here, and on the other, people saw it as a leisure ride, as tourism.

In those early months, it was impossible to ride the Metrocable. There were

endless line-ups. (...) People started to feel a change, because new programs and

buildings appeared quite quickly one after the next, and there was no time to

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assimilate to the pace. In a matter of seven or eight years, people saw the

transformation that started with the Metrocables, then the Spain Library, the

Granizal sports complex, and so on. People would say, well, this neighbourhood

is going up! (, pers. comm., 22/09/2011).

Figure 7.7

Avenue Improvement Project, PUI North Eastern Area


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Figure 7.8

Spain Library Park Public Spaces and Pedestrian Paths

Figure 7.9

Turf Field at Granizal

Photos by Luisa Sotomayor.

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Other benefits described by residents of the in PUI North Eastern Area included:

significant savings in commuting time and cost by the implementation of the Metrocable;

accessibility and quality of the services provided by the Library Park and to a lesser

extent the CEDEZO program; high level of engagement with new soccer fields and

recreational venues; improved perceptions of safety and higher trust in state institutions;

higher capacity to retain good teachers in the local schools; increased community pride

and self-esteem associated to living and seeing new visitors/tourists to the

neighbourhood; and feeling more optimistic towards the future (focus groups.,

02/10/2011; 04/03/2012; 05/03/2012; 07/03/2012; 08/03/2012; &13/03/2012).

Along with the positive expectations for neighbourhood change, perceptions

about quality of life seem favourable. Residents report that both the intensity and

frequency of violent events have decreased. In residents’ views, gangs were either

displaced to other areas or have remained dormant (focus group, 13/03/12). Moreover,

residents feel proud of the Library Park, the sports fields, and other neighbourhood

improvements. Similarly, at least in the areas of influence of the Metrocable, small

businesses are creating dynamism. While unemployment is still high, and income levels

in the North Eastern area remain dramatically low, residents interviewed at the time of

fieldwork generally looked into the bright side of the equation.

The perception of tangible benefits per specific programs (the library, the Zonal

Business Development Centre or CEDEZO, Metrocable, the sports fields, and so on) or

the proximity to an avenue improvement project, varied according to individual

circumstances. In contrast, intangible and collective benefits, such as higher sense of

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inclusion, neighbourhood pride, and self-esteem, were expressed by a large majority of

residents and local leaders interviewed.

Figure 7.10

Zonal Business Development Centre CEDEZO in Santo Domingo


Similarly to Granizal, the new services and public works in Santo Domingo Savio

created a great deal of optimism, the Metrocable and the Library Park being the

programs of highest impact:

Participant 1: Changes in Santo Domingo emerged with the Metrocable, before

the Cable we were an ordinary neighborhood, or forgotten because the truth is

that we had been forgotten. When they started the Metrocable, they posed their

eyes on us and realized the need for jobs, so the CEDEZO was created. After

that, the construction of the Spain Library Park began and this was a major

change for us because if we talk about the internet, people who are rich have it,

but here in the neighbourhood only very few. We had a very small library but

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nothing of the magnitude of what we have now. So change came with the

Metrocable and the Library.

Participant 2: The library has been very important because it offers many

amenities including adult classes, they have programs for children, youths and

adults. Our old library had only two computers for the whole neighbourhood and

we had to take turns, students had to take turns to do their homework, basically

almost no one here had access to it. So the benefits that the library has brought

are really too many.

That same sense of enthusiasm was shared by teachers at La Candelaria High

School, which is located across the street from the Santo Domingo Metro Cable station.

Some of the teachers’ choice to work at the school was influenced by the convenience of

the Metrocable and the improvements in the area, a grade seven teacher explains during a

focus group:

…that was the main reason why I decided to come to La Candelaria to work, for

the convenience of transit. A few years ago, when I was in university I did a

placement here and I liked the school but coming up here was horrible because

first you had to go downtown and take another bus, and from there, it was an

hour and a half or so, and you paid the additional bus fare. With the cable, the

route is short, 15 minutes or so [from the metro station] and it’s safer too.

(28/03/12)

Last year, a male teacher decided to move to the Santo Domingo Savio where the

school is located because he can “walk to work, rent is cheap, and there’s good access to

transit”. Other teachers at La Candelaria who participated in the focus group

conversation felt very content with the neighbourhood improvements and to teach in an

environment that is “safer,” “more accessible” and “less stressful”.

The benefit of urban renewal with an integrated component is that it goes along

other reforms, particularly in education. For 2004-2011, roughly 40 percent of the city’s

investment budget was allocated towards improving the coverage and quality of

schooling. The educational reform improved teachers’ salaries and working conditions,

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and implemented a new meritocratic system for teachers’ hiring. Other programs were

geared towards professional development and student engagement to deter early school

leavers. In a separate interview, Jorge Muriel, principal at La Candelaria remarked about

the changes that the school community has gone through:

When I came here 13 years ago we didn’t really have the necessary infrastructure

to teach the students… we didn’t have permanent teachers… we lived in constant

anxiety and fear because the gangs were fighting for control over this area... I

turn back a few years, when teachers were provisional and every day there was a

flow of teachers who came and went but who were not prepared, they didn’t like

the place because it seemed so far away. Many teachers felt punished when they

came to this area… We now are looking at the changes that are taking place from

a social, cognitive, emotional, behavioral perspective and also in interpersonal

relations, we see a transformation in the institution and the community, and that

motivates us to work as a team and keep improving. (Jorge Muriel, pers. comm.,

28/03/12)

One of the main challenges that teachers at La Candelaria struggle with every

year is to be able to retain the student body, as many students are early leavers, lack basic

conditions to participate in school (for example, having to work to support the

household) or move continuously. Although it is a large school with 2,080 students

(divided in morning and afternoon shifts) the school struggles with transiency.

Paradoxically, while violence reduction and the PUI were expected to bring more

stability, as fewer families are displaced by the gangs, the public works themselves have

produced a great deal of displacement. While some families were relocated within the

neighbourhood, many had to move out, and were excluded from the benefits of renewal.

EDU: Urban “Displacement” Corporation?

Those who sold their homes to EDU were given two seemingly reasonable

alternatives as a means of compensation. The choices included a condominium unit

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(according to family size and need) in Ciudadela Nuevo Occidente, an area of the city

known as Pajarito. Although linked to the Metro through the Metrocable, Line J, average

transit travel times between Santo Domingo and Pajarito are no shorter than an hour. As

a new development, Pajarito still lacks basic community amenities and shops.

Alternatively, homeowners were also offered the monetary value of their home. A flaw

in the PUI program is that EDU conducted property valuations based on cadastral values

and not according to market prices. Because property values increased so quickly

following PUI completion, those who took the monetary compensation were

paradoxically unable to afford a new home in the same area. Many of these households

decided to squat on at-risk terrains close to their old homes to preserve the social ties or

to put the compensation to other use.

Almost all of the residents who participated in interviews and focus groups

identified this form of displacement as the most salient downside of the PUI model.

Planners at EDU agreed that, although they followed the legal procedures for land

acquisitions, bargaining had been flawed and the re-housing options available were not

well articulated with the “social justice” framework that social urbanism was meant to

accomplish. John Maya, former Chief Executive Officer of EDU, offered a “self-critical”

reflection (Perez, 2011) on this issue, when he told me:

PUIs created a great deal of local conflict because those who lost their homes to

the projects were as well the ones deprived of its benefits. That’s not fair. Yes,

homeowners were compensated, and many other residents who were offered a

deal benefited and took it happily because their houses were in severe disrepair or

lacked legal titling. (…) But there were also heartbreaking situations to the point

that you have to get involved because they touch you at the personal level.

Situations that you don’t agree with and are so complex. (John Maya, pers.

comm. 08/08/2012)

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In 2010, in my first visit to Santo Domingo, a graffiti in one of the

neighbourhood walls expressed local frustrations with rehousing and relocation

alternatives. It said: “EDU: Urban Displacement Corporation”.

Youth, women and children in local economic development

Young people are perhaps the most enthusiastic about neighbourhood change and

the group that feels more positive about the future. In three separate focus groups, two

with senior high school students in Santo Doming Savio and one with music students in

Granizal, they reported frequent visits to the library, particularly to access internet, to

watch movies, and to meet with friends. The Granizal sports complex is also very

popular and became a new meeting point. Youth often stress the growing presence of

tourists and outsiders as a positive gain for the neighbourhood, as a source of pride, and a

sign they are overcoming Santo Domingo’s old stigmas.

Indeed, urban renewal has brought new visitors and transformed Santo Domingo

into a space of tourism and consumption. This new dimension of the neighbourhood is

generating some economic development alternatives. New opportunities for small (see

figure 7.10) and larger businesses (figure 7.11) are emerging. Figure 7.11 shows the

façade of a local restaurant that caters to tourists and employees of the Library Park.

With a micro-credit from the Banco de las Oportunidades, support from CEDEZO, and

technical assistance at no-cost from a restaurant chain, a group of women from Santo

Domingo saw an interesting business opportunity. The restaurant La Mesa de mi Barrio

opened in December of 2011 to the public with the goal to serve tourists, bureaucrats,

and other visitors “who want to have a proper lunch” (Maria Eugenia Muñoz, restaurant

administrator, 22/09/2011). The business employs six full-time women and participates

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in a youth employment program called Youth with a Future. The group of women

involved describe themselves as leaders and entrepreneurs. They also participate in a

committee for local economic development and are involved in promoting the

Participatory Budgeting Program in Comuna 1. The downside of tourism is that locals

are excluded from certain spaces, such as La Mesa de mi Barrio, that now cater to

outsiders and are unaffordable for most residents, delineating new micro-geographies of

exclusion and a potential sign of future gentrification.

Figure 7.11

Small Business in the Surroundings of Spain Library Park


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Figure 7.12

Restaurant La Mesa de mi Barrio in Santo Domingo


The growing flow of visitors has profited street vendors and small businesses that

now rely on a larger pool of costumers. There are also new informal services emerging;

some of which may not be desirable from a community development perspective.

Indeed, underneath urban renewal, the logics of informality expose the structural

complexities that prevail despite the benign intentions of social urbanism. The

emergence of the child “tour guide” exemplifies this tension. Right outside Santo

Domingo’s Metrocable station, young tour guides wait attentively for costumers. In

exchange of pocket money, tour guides, as young as six year olds, offer visitors a

scripted history of the neighbourhood where the tourist learns about the accolades of

drug dealers, the gang wars that followed, and how the neighbourhood was “redeemed”.

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Underpinning this picturesque new addition to Santo Domingo’s tourism experience lie

the ongoing vulnerabilities of families trying to cope with poverty on a daily basis.

Poignantly, the emergence of child tour guides also reveal how neighbourhood change

might as well expose children to economic exploitation and other potential dangers that

have come along the experience of revitalization.

Figure 7.13

Children Tour-guides in Santo Domingo*


*With my daughter Sara in blue.

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7.3 PUI Comuna 13

Figure 7.14

PUI Comuna 13

The PUI Comuna 13 was introduced in 2006, second to the PUI at North-Eastern

Area, where the construction of public works projects had already started in 2004. The

total investment was of $155 million USD, almost half to the North Eastern Area ($300

million USD). PUI Comuna 13 involves the San Javier Library-Park –which

construction started earlier in 2005, Line J of the Metrocable and a mobility system by

escalators, two new schools, El Socorro sports field, three new daycare centres, a new

Health Centre in Independencias, the 99 Avenue rehabilitation project, pocket parks, a

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water-screen plaza, playgrounds, pedestrian improvements and neighbourhood

improvements connecting to the Ciudadela Nuevo Occidente, which was already

underway prior to 2004. Neighbourhood 20 de Julio has been at the core of urban

upgrading, with new sidewalks, contention walls, road pavement.

Figure 7.15

The 99 Avenue Rehabilitation Project


In the case of Comuna 13, there are important improvements in the QLI and the

HDI between 2004 and 2006, which were years of strong decrease in the violence rates.

As figure 7.8 illustrates, however, the QLI indexes fluctuate mimicking the city’s

violence rates. For the period of 2004-2010, total gains in the QLI are 1.8 points, and a

stronger case for the HDI, which is 4.89.

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Figure 7.16

Quality of Life and Human Development Indexes for Comuna 13, 2004-2010

Source: Author’s own elaboration with data from Quality of Life Survey (Medellín,

2011)

7.3.1 Residents Perceptions of Change at PUI Comuna 13

The outcomes of PUI Comuna 13, nonetheless, have been more nuanced. Right

from the start, generating enthusiasm for urban renewal proved a more difficult task.

When the PUI for Comuna 13 was proposed, residents were distrustful of the

administration, as Adela Maria Ortega, a local cultural leader, points out:

To the neighbourhoods in the top of the hill, the issue of Orion was very difficult.

[…]It's the before and after, because Orion even determined the territorial

organization here […]. When the PUI comes, those people who resided in the

conflict area, those people who were there, and were beaten and wounded, were

overly scared. So they [the municipal planners] were looking to repair… How

does one repair the psychological damage done to a person when it is so difficult

to break away with so many tragic events? When you live afraid? And along

comes the PUI. (pers. comm., 17/11/2011)

Comuna 13Avg. Urban

Area

2004 78.7 82.7

2006 81.2 83.8

2008 80.2 83.3

2010 80.5 83.8

76777879808182838485

QLI% Comuna 13 (2004-2010)

Comuna 13Avg. Urban

Area

2004 76.99 81.05

2006 80.03 84.12

2008 82.14 85.22

2010 81.88 85.66

727476788082848688

HDI% Comuna 13 (2004-2010)

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With Operación Orión as a precedent, nonetheless, the PUI in Comuna 13

unfolded in an environment of pacification and attempts for compensation.

Unsurprisingly then, the PUI does not instil in residents of Comuna 13 the same amount

of expectation that it produced at the North Eastern Area. Relationships between

residents and authorities are uneasy, and the model developed at the North Eastern Area

hardly replicates itself in Comuna 13.

From a planning perspective, a comparison between the PUI in the North Eastern

Area, deemed an arguably successful experience, and the PUI in Comuna 13, puts

Comuna 13 at a disadvantage. While interventions in the North Eastern Area are

complementary of each other and create continuity through corridors, in Comuna 13 the

new public works are scattered and fragmented across the territory. For example,

emblematic programs, such as the Line J of the Metro Cable, and the Avenue 99 Project

(figure 7.13) are disconnected. At the North Eastern Area the Spain Library Park is

located in one of the poorest and highest hills and is accessible by the last stop of the

Metrocable Line K. In contrast, the San Javier Library Park in Comuna 13 is located

closer to the lower areas of the comuna, where the better-off residents reside. Moreover,

the San Javier library is accessible through a surveilled pedestrian bridge attached to the

San Javier Metro Station, which means that visitors to the library do not need to walk

into the lower-income neighbourhoods (see figure 7.15). Similarly, in order to link the

new social housing developments in Ciudadela Nuevo Occidente to transit infrastructure,

the Metrocable Line J serves future areas of urban expansion but not Comuna 13’s most

populous neighbourhoods, rendering the current demand for the Metrocable Line J lower

than capacity. The urban node delineated by the PUI transverses along the 99 Avenue, an

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area that was already consolidated as a commercial node before the arrival of the PUI.

The uneven topography of Comuna 13 poses challenges as well, and the PUI fails to

create the sense of a cohesive urban project.

Figure 7.17

Pedestrian Bridge Connecting San Javier Library Park to the San Javier Metro

Station


As a result, residents’ perceptions of neighbourhood improvement were largely

uneven: Those who live in areas adjacent to each of the public works projects generally

reported benefiting from new public spaces and services. Some were particularly

enthusiastic about the avenue project, the availability of new public spaces, and the

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attention that recent municipal administrations are conceding to the needs of the comuna.

A local visual artist provided the following observations about PUI public works:

The projects are the best thing that could have happened to the neighbourhood.

You can just walk up and down the neighbourhood and enjoy yourself. You don’t

have to go downtown anymore because now the city’s nicest places are right

here... So you feel alright, you’re inhabiting the neighbourhood. It still is Comuna

13, with the violence, the stigma and all that, but you can feel new vibes

emerging, you can feel the change. To deny that the wind is currently blowing in

our favour would be to ignore our history. (pers. comm., 09/18/2011)

Other residents expressed less inclined to use the new public spaces, particularly

if it required walking across neighbourhoods. For example, one undergraduate student

who lives in the upper hills of the comuna told me that whenever he needs library

services, it implies almost the same level of effort to just walk to the metro (which is

adjacent to the library) and go to either the university library or the Piloto Library, the

largest in the city.

Another criticism for the PUI Comuna 13 was the emphasis on public spaces –

versus their housing needs– and the flashy character of infrastructure. Residents pointed

to the need for basic rights, such as food security, to be prioritized by the local

government. In talking about the electric escalators, a youth leader (pers. comm.,

09/18/2011) from Comuna 13 told me: “The escalators are nice, bacano, I wish we had

one for each neighbourhood. But there are other things too. ... Here there’s no higher or

technical education (…)”. Community actors perceive, therefore, that although the

projects benefit them, there are more pressing unsolved needs, in particular, access to

land and housing. While some of PUI projects coincided with grassroots development

plans and were built on substantive participation, other projects have stirred

controversies based on their inherent limitations and their opportunity costs. While still

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demanding sewerage, sanitation, and food security supports from the municipality, the

opportunity costs that a project like the electric escalators create are high indeed.

7.3.2 Invisible frontiers and other challenges ahead in Comuna 13

Beyond the technical limitations and local disagreements, security remains the

most crucial barrier to the intended transformations that the PUI at Comuna 13 aims to

accomplish. Following Operation Orión in 2002, criminal gangs with paramilitary

background have kept an active presence in the area, one reason why residents cannot

move freely as they would wish to enjoy the new public spaces available. This also

explains why local economic development gains, and opportunities for rental housing

have been rather limited when they otherwise would have been potentially triggered by

the PUI. Despite growing commerce around the 99 Avenue project, as of August of 2012

residents and shop owners interviewed in San Javier, Las Independencias, and 20 de

Julio reported being victims of extortions and vacunas, a monthly or weekly “security

tax” currently levied by local criminal actors.

Despite planners’ efforts to promote neighbourhood permeability, walkability,

and free circulation throughout Comuna 13, these goals continue to be truncated by

“invisible frontiers.” Invisible frontiers denote territorial jurisdictions with concealed

borders, which are imposed by the ruling gangs of the moment to reassert territorial

dominance vis-à-vis their competitors. As such, borders are in constant reconfiguration,

prompting residents to be wary and restrict their daily routes and activities accordingly.

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7.4 PPPs (Public-Paramilitary Partnerships): Governance in the Post-Orión

Era

Figure 7.18

“Bienvenidos:” Army’s Checkpoint in Comuna 13’s Area of Expansion


Paradoxically, Comuna 13 is the district with the highest concentration of public

forces in Colombia (see figure 7.9). According to a report from the Ombudsman’s Office

(Defensoría, 2013), there are seven police stations, three Police Centres of Immediate

Attention (CAI), and twelve military bases in this comuna. This conglomeration equates

to almost 800 permanent troopers deployed to patrol 23 neighbourhoods within a seven

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square kilometer radius. Local residents resent that, over a decade after Orión, nightly

curfews are still imposed on them. For example, bars and nightclubs are required to close

earlier in Comuna 13 than their counterparts in other areas of the city. Furthermore,

young males report being victims of police profiling and criminalization: “you have to

see what happens when a group like us, or any local youth, really, hang out with friends

in the surroundings [of the new public spaces]. Immediately, the tombos [police] show

up to screen us… so we prefer to meet here in the ACJ [Asociacion Cristiana Juvenil or

YMCA]” (focus group, 21/09/2011).

An additional intimidation factor for young males in Comuna 13’s is the risk of

forceful recruitment. While criminal actors, starting at an early age, harass boys to join

the gangs, the Colombian Armed Forces also instill a fear of forceful recruitment through

what the youth call batidas (focus groups, 08/03/2012; 04/03/2012). Batidas are raids or

checkpoints by which youngsters are required to provide proof of good standing with the

Colombian military service or face immediate detention. In 2011, the Colombian

Constitutional Court declared batidas illegal acts of arbitrary arrest (C-879/11), which

violate a detainee’s due process and right to free movement. Medellín’s Fourth Brigade

has openly challenged the Court’s sentence, recruiting approximately 600 youths every

year through batidas (Civico, 2014). As I observed in Medellín, batidas are frequently

carried out in crowded public spaces such as subway station entrances. Journalists like

Ortiz (2013) note that batidas happen almost exclusively in low-income areas such as

Comuna 13.

And yet, despite excessive screening, patrolling, and detention, the police face

difficulties enforcing the rule of law (focus groups, 04/03/2012; 24/09/2011). With

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FARC and ELN gone, and a subsequent demobilization in 2003 and 2005 of 20,000

AUC ex-combatants, these violent organizations have been replaced by confederated

youth-gangs working as paramilitary franchises for the Envigado Office. In the post-

Orión social order, public forces coexist with these violent groups, and their

policing/surveillance practices are not perceived by the community as antagonistic. As a

schoolteacher told me, “some gangs and the police are seldom rivals. They usually don’t

mess with each other” (pers. comm. 13/03/2011). This pervasive complementarity of

policing between drug-fuelled paramilitary actors and state violent forces is exemplary of

the paramilitary phenomenon in the country. As Civico (2012, p.89) rightly puts, “the

paramilitaries in Colombia have been at the same time against the state and within the

state; both a parallel system and a strategic ally; and a vital part of the intreccio to

reterritorialize [intertwine to re-territorialize], which is the ultimate goal of policing.”

Most surprising is the versatility with which paramilitary actors have

acclimatized themselves to the expansion of participatory governance in Medellín: first,

by creating their own NGOs, which allows them to gain contracts with the state and

legalize their social and political influence (López, 2010); and second, by penetrating

participatory budgeting and other civic forums with the goal of “more effectively

delivering resources to their constituency” (Arias, 2010, p. 243). Having adapted to the

city’s new progressive governance arrangements, criminal actors have retained their grip

in illegal and legal fields, either supplanting, rivalling, or collaborating with the state, or

even aligning themselves with participatory governance and developmental objectives in

order to increase their local influence. Indeed, Medellín’s praised innovative

policymaking has to be understood in relation to how local criminal actors have found

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developmental policies advantageous to the sustainability of their own social, political,

and territorial control.

7.5 Conclusion

In the two cases studied, there is evidence that the quality of life has certainly

improved and that there are new prospects for human development. Better access to jobs

and educational opportunities are more readily available, while expanded neighbourhood

connectivity and transit options reduce barriers and community seclusion. The creation

of public spaces is also important to residents and improves neighbourhood livability.

Along the physical improvements, the integrated nature of the PUI has implied gains in

the quality of schooling, and access to social services that are vital for neighbourhoods’

social sustainability. In addition, the public works projects implemented have had

impacts in the local sense of pride and self-esteem, and have given visibility to

communities historically stigmatized by violence.

As the comparison between the two cases demonstrates, however, these types of

interventions cannot be accounted for “fixing” underlying societal contradictions nor the

legacies of uneasy state-society relations and state violence in marginalized

communities. The emergence of children tour guides in Santo Domingo evinces the need

to improve family incomes in these communities along with the upgrades in services and

infrastructure.

While in the Northeastern Area violent actors were displaced by the public works

and the increased presence of police, in Comuna 13 urban renewal has unfolded among

prevailing violent disputes and legal/extra-legal alliances over territorial control. The

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outcomes of PUIs, therefore, are highly dependent on the local context where they are

implemented, and on how these interventions are able to reconfigure difficult

relationships between society and state; and the negotiations between legal and illegal

violent force.

`

Chapter Eight

Medellín’s Progressive Planning and the Gray Zones of Urban

Innovation

Medellín is a socio-spatially divided city. Like in many other cities in the global

South, the upper-income classes have historically looked for ways to disconnect or guard

themselves from the “disorder” associated to the dynamics of rapid informal

urbanization, and more recently, from areas of the city carrying territorial stigmas. The

city’s topography accentuates these divides, as uneven altitude ranges in the Aburra

Valley act as natural barriers. These barriers also delineate geographies of environmental

risk and discontinuity. Moreover, in the twentieth century, the management and

disposition of urban space by planning authorities, politicians, modernist plans,

developers, and real estate speculators, created, enacted and naturalized an exclusionary

socio-spatial regime legitimized by institutions. Altogether, planning and urban

development contributed to disengage the urban poor from the spaces, routes, services

and opportunities available in the city of asphalt, contributing to a peripheralization of

the urban poor.

Nonetheless, the informal city has grown with great vitality, to the point that

today, barrios populares in these comunas shelter more citizens than those in the

neighbourhoods that were more formally built. Because of their physical location in the

high slopes of the valley, these low-income barrios are conspicuous. From any point in

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the city, one just has to raise the sight to see them. And yet, like many low-income

neighbourhoods in other Latin American cities, they appear as a messy agglomeration of

small fragmented units. The paradox is that, although urban poverty is highly

concentrated and visible, it was rendered almost invisible to local and national

governments until the rise of drug-related violence in the 1980s and 1990s, and the city’s

urban crisis became unbearable.

Violence has been at the same time a cause and a consequence of the urban

divide – an issue Medellin shares with various other Latin American cities. As the case

of Medellín illustrates, in the absence of a state that has been weak at best and oppressive

at worst, vigilante bands, urban militia, and/or youth gangs emerge in marginalized

neighbourhoods to exert territorial control (Koonings & Kruijt, 2007). In many instances,

these violent groups have imposed a social order, acting as substitutes for the state’s

judiciary and performing police functions (Denyer-Willis, 2009). In turn, violent policing

practices have historically forged tense relationships between ordinary people and

authorities, undermining the state’s legitimacy (Costa, 2011; Tierney, 2012).

Conventional “firm hand” policy responses contribute to the escalation of violence and

deepen stigmatization based on place of residence, class, race, and age group. As the case

of Comuna 13 illustrates, the “ideal” of citizens acting within the rule of law, with

substantive rights, responsibilities, and political voice is negligible in these precarious

urban enclaves. It is in this intricate scenario where I have examined the precedents,

opportunities, and limitations of social urbanism as an innovative planning response to

the challenges of a violent and highly unequal socio-spatial regime.

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Local governments face their own constraints to influence changes. In the context

of consolidated decentralized governments, mayors are now responsible for a variety of

services and agencies, but have scarce resources and short-term mandates to implement

their own political agendas (Dávila, 2009). Crucial factors impacting the abilities of local

governments to attempt required reforms include: national level economic and security

policies, the impacts of globalization, the international dynamics of organized crime, and

the international policies of drug enforcement. A good example of this point is the

violence reduction trend that took place in the mid-2000s. While Medellín’s officials

claimed that increased security was the result of multi-level policy involving violence

prevention, crime enforcement and PUIs strategic investments, there are also shadier

reasons for “peace” that cannot be ignored. These involve truces imposed by organized

criminal structures, the monopolization of crime under one powerful illegal structure,

and the violent retake in 2002 of territorial control in Comuna 13 by the public forces as

commanded by former president Alvaro Uribe (2002-2010).

Beyond these governance challenges, I have argued that Medellín’s recent history

is characterized by progressive local governments anchored on a thick layer of

community based activism, civic society organizations, and social movements. We could

say that, starting in 2004 a “synergistic relationship” à la Evans (1996) between society

and the local state was forged. With the adoption of social urbanism, planners mobilized

the state by taking higher risks, by using their social networks to outreach to local

communities, and by institutionalizing democratic innovations emerging from civic

society in the 1990s. Ideas advocated by planners during previous policy rounds, such as

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PRIMED and Zone Planning, evolved during this period of innovation and NGOization

of the local government.

Civic participation is presumably scarce in places where fear dominates the

public sphere. Indeed, over the last thirty years, too many NGO actors and community

leaders were threatened or killed in Medellín. During fieldwork, I found that against a

great deal of adversity, however, neighbourhood-based groups, social movements,

academics, and NGO actors, among others, have struggled to exercise and reclaim their

citizenship, whether in invited (more formal), or in invented (more spontaneously and

contested) spaces of participation (Miraftab, 2009).

I echo Ferguson’s (2010) argument that the politics of urban policymaking to

reduce poverty in the Global South need to be judged in its own right: for what it

essentially aims to accomplish and how it functions. Undeniably, within the landscape of

contemporary “competitive” city policy, Medellín’s adoption of social urbanism

represents an unusual case of urban experimentation and inter-institutional coordination

to improve the quality of life of the urban poor. Against many other international

examples, social urbanism has been actually devised to fulfil redistributive goals against

the historical injustices created by the exclusionary production of urban space, even if by

applying controversial technologies of government. As this research demonstrates,

planning tools, such as large-scale Urban Development Projects (UDPs), which in other

contexts are deployed for corporate planning and market-related needs (UN-Habitat,

2009, p. 60-62), in Medellín are strategically repurposed to deliver services and

infrastructure for low-income neighbourhoods. Similarly, while funding for public

libraries in the global North is increasingly threatened by neoliberal cutbacks, in

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Medellín, an impressive network of Library Parks is envisioned as a flagship policy to

fuel social development. Furthermore, while the “creative cities” and the “creative class”

(Florida, 2002) rhetoric has shifted many urban agendas in a direction to normalize

socio-spatial inequality (Novy & Colomb, 2013; Fainstein, 2005; Peck, 2005), in

Medellín, the creative and symbolic capacity of urban design has been used in the

precarious peripheries with the hopes of altering socio-spatial hierarchies.

8.1 From Medellín to North America’s declining cities? Social urbanism’s

future travels

In a recent book about declining cities in the United States–such as Detroit,

Buffalo, Philadelphia or St. Louis–Brent Ryan (2012) questions why these cities have

shrunk and what policy approaches were pursued in the last decades that contributed to,

or at least failed to put a halt on, population and business losses when confronted with

industrial decline. Ryan regrets the abandonment of federal policies of urban renewal in

1973, under Nixon’s presidency. These federal initiatives had the commendable goal of

reducing mounting socio-spatial injustices caused by economic crisis. They were,

however, grounded on high-modernist canons and strongly repudiated by critics in both

the Left and Right; on the one hand, for failing to incorporate the voices of marginalized

groups and adopting a top-down, undemocratic approach; on the other hand, for

diverting taxpayers’ money from federal coffers into local projects. Federal urban policy

was then replaced by decentralized grants that, in Ryan’s view, went to dull housing

projects lacking transformative prospects. In the long run, these programs were unable to

help retaining jobs and families, and naturalized market-driven housing logics. In the

final chapter of the book, Ryan (2012) advocates for emulating Medellín’s social

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urbanism as a policy approach that could help U.S. shrinking cities to reduce the urban

divide and potentially stop further population loss. This suggestion, which reverses the

typical North-to-South flow of urban policy ideas and best practices, shows the

positioning of social urbanism as a “worlding” (Ong, 2011) urban policy paradigm and

its growing relevance for urban practitioners and academics that increasingly identify

social urbanism as a distinctive model of socially progressive form of state intervention

through planning.

Indeed, Medellín’s social urbanism is unique, firstly, because the key actor in

development is the local state. Second, it constitutes a rare example of how

decentralization policies can succeed transforming local politics through leadership and

improving local governing capacities to make the state more responsive to the local need;

and third, because, despite the dismissal of planning as a politically compromised field,

which is often considered disdainful of social justice goals (Yiftachel, 1998; Roy, 2006),

Medellín’s planners and policymakers have set an example of policy experimentation

and pushed an urban agenda aimed to reduce socio-spatial injustices. In contrast to high-

modernism, social urbanism requires participatory governance and gives visibility to

locally driven development processes.

8.2 Promoting “redistribution, recognition and encounter”

Social urbanism has been instrumental in the generation of civic spaces, whose

availability according to Daniere and Douglas (2008), supports democratic and engaged

urban communities. Undeniably, Medellín's new public spaces are reclaimed by diverse

local groups in both spontaneous and in organized ways. The most successful example of

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civic engagement is perhaps the Program of Library Parks. Besides providing typical

media resources and cultural services, the new libraries are appropriated by diverse

crowds, from toddlers and their parents, to hip-hop and break-dancers (see figure 8.1)

and hip- hoppers. Structured social groups, such as book clubs, environmental

committees, and women's and seniors' only organizations, also gather regularly in these

venues.

Figure 8.1

Youth Dancing at the Entrance Hall of San Javier Library Park


Controversy exists, however, among residents, particularly youth, over the

excessive formality imposed by the library staff in neighbourhoods where informal rules

dominate relationships and transactions. Users resent the mandatory use of an online

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system for booking a room, or the staff monitoring of “proper” behaviour. Besides these

and other limitations, both old and new community networks are emerging. The qualities

and the variety of functions provided by these spaces evoke Fincher's and Iveson's

(2008) analysis of a library as a space of redistribution, recognition and encounter: First,

they provide locational redistribution as these libraries are located in points where there

is little social infrastructure. Second, these libraries are resourced to meet the curiosity of

particular identities, but also, they supply opportunities for encounter among diverse

individuals sharing similar interests. Being accessible to the rest of the city through

public transit enhances their characteristics as places for encounter.

These advances are hopeful and should be welcome as innovative planning

strategies that engage with the complexities of informality. But these new tools also pose

new dilemmas for planners. For instance, the case of PUIs offers a remarkable

opportunity to interrogate the strengths and limitations of strategic planning tools for

mediating a state-led program concerned with redistribution and planning

democratization. They also raise questions similar to those posed by Ferguson (2010)

Robinson (2011) and Parnell and Robinson (2012) regarding the “uses” of neoliberalism.

Can neoliberal “arts of government” be subverted for redistributive purposes? Crucially,

the adoption of PUIs has allowed Medellín’s policy makers and planners to redirect

infrastructure investments towards precarious peripheral neighbourhoods in a way that

would otherwise be unfeasible or illegal. Given the city’s existent normative framework

and the intricate topography where most of the urban poor live, planning regulations

would typically prohibit any kind of service provision. Therefore, PUIs grant planners

with the flexibility to find contextual solutions for many of the problems related to self-

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help urbanization, but are also enmeshed in contradictions.

8.3 The Postcard Effect: Internationalizing Medellín via Social Urbanism

Amidst the good intentions, advances and setbacks, the biggest impact of

Medellín's experience of resurgence is playing out in the international and economic

arenas. The city’s distinctive quality of place and its narratives of urban transformation

are now being actively publicised, and the role of social urbanism and UDPs has been

central in recasting a new image for the city: one of a socially inclusive and

economically competitive metropolis. I offer the concept of the “postcard effect” to

illustrate how urban revitalization produces an image of a physically reduced territory,

which by travelling internationally via media reports, international consultants, and the

promotion of tourism, amplifies the message of urban transformation.

Indeed, the laudable goals of social urbanism have been accompanied by a

project of internationalisation of the city that is proving quite successful: between 2008

and 2011, 46 new foreign businesses transferred their operations to Medellín with a total

initial investment of $600 million USD. Large multinationals, like Hewlett Packard, are

partnering in RutaN, a new economic innovation hub. In addition, Medellín is now the

venue of world-class events, ranging from being the only Colombian city included in

Madonna’s MDNA 2012 and Beyonce’s 2013 tours, to hosting the 2008 meeting of the

Organization of American States (OAS), the 50th Assembly of the Inter-American

Development Bank (IDB), and most notably, the 2014 World Urban Forum (ACI, 2013).

In view of the city's aspiring economic transition into an emerging service

economy, it is clear that Medellín's model of urban restructuring conveys the city's

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ambivalent aspirations of becoming, on the one hand, more democratic, equitable and

inclusive through redistributional infrastructure and anti-poverty programs, and on the

other hand, a better fit for attracting foreign capital investment through the

internationalisation of an emblematic experience of resurgence.

8.4 The Gray Zones of Urban Innovation

I stress that social urbanism embodies urban reform efforts with the objective of

delivering better services, fostering participation, and connecting marginalized

communities to the urban fabric. In this framing of the positive role of the local state,

however, two salient tensions remain concealed: first, deep-seated inequality and

stigmatization resulting from decades of normalized socio-economic exclusion; and

second, (para)militarization.

Although grounded in claims to social justice, democracy, and human security,

the dynamics of securitization, have prevailed at the expense of social urbanism’s alleged

goals. Against Medellín’s recent international praise for “innovative” and “successful”

urban policymaking, it is important to question why “benevolent” governance and spatial

reconfigurations are reinforced through policing tactics and intimidation in Comuna 13.

Despite intense securitization, criminal actors with paramilitary backgrounds continue to

intimidate and victimize local communities.

To explain the polyvalence of contemporary violence in the region, Arias and

Goldstein (2010) argue that in Latin America’s neoliberal democracies, violence and

democratic institutions coexist under perverse logics, where the functioning of the first

depends on the dysfunctional characteristics of the second, and vice versa, so that:

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Violence emerges as much more than a social aberration: violence is a

mechanism for keeping in place the very institutions and policies that neoliberal

democracies have fashioned over the past several decades, as well as an

instrument for coping with the myriad of problems that neoliberal democracies

have generated (Arias and Goldstein, 2010, p. 5).

This understanding of violence and its relation to democratic policies in

neoliberal climates explains why seemingly “progressive” attempts at urban reform, as

much as urban policy choices aimed at eradicating disorder by force, are limited when it

comes to building meaningful democratic spheres. While Medellín’s social urbanism

implies unprecedented and commendable targeted investments in underserved areas, the

conditions of possibility for reform were set by violent retakes, and in the case of

Comuna 13, the maintenance of Orion’s hyper-securitization regime.

Furthermore, as the work of Garay et al. (2009) suggests, criminal actors in

Colombia (and increasingly in Mexico) have mutated into networks that are not only

concerned with the business side of violent economies, but that are increasingly

concerned with building their legitimacy as social and political actors. In particular,

paramilitary groups with a drug-dealing background have found a way to infiltrate the

democratic configurations of the state and to appropriate “developmental” and civil

society discourses to gain or sustain local legitimacy (López, 2010; Ballvé, 2012).

It is against this pervasive (para)policing backdrop that attempts at urban reform

are tried, take hold, and invite transferability, in the absence of substantive justice and

democracy. This is why well-meaning urban policy regimes - or the lack thereof - are

inexorably at odds with the entrenched exclusion-violence nexus in these marginalized

enclaves.

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The policy implications that stem from the analysis presented here need to

consider at least three questions: first, how to change the way by which illegal and extra-

legal powers are exercised in the city; second, how to improve incomes, access to well-

paid jobs, and how to reshuffle the different forms by which socio-economic privileges

are constructed in local society; and third, how to devolve greater autonomy, socio-

cultural recognition, opportunities for social mobility, and effective agency to citizens in

Comuna 13, particularly among youth.

Reducing inequality and violence will be hard to achieve. Medellín continues to

be one of the most unequal cities in the world. Such inequality is not unique, but a

characteristic of the Colombian context. As Perlman (2006) notes based on longitudinal

research across four generations in Rio de Janeiro, “no amount of housing or

infrastructure upgrading and no amount of ‘integrated community development’ or

‘partnership strategic planning’ can substitute for the ability to earn one’s living to

honest labor” (Perlman, 2006, p. 176). Reducing inequality in Medellín would involve

reversing two decades of national neoliberal agendas and precarious labour policy, which

in the current political and hegemonic scenario seems highly improbable.

The issues of security in Medellín are also closely related to the violence inherent

in the national political conflict, national security policy, and the globalized dynamics of

the drug-dealing business. Hence, sub-national governments are limited in these fronts.

What should be stressed here then, is that comprehensive planning policies, such as

social urbanism, can hardly encourage broader social transformations without an

effective rule of law based on a full observation for human rights.

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Beyond issues of justice and security, three additional critical challenges will

determine the sustainability of current efforts at reform in the long run: first, to close the

wide gap for affordable housing; second, to create local economies able to compete and

win over criminal enterprises; and third, to improve governance coordination with

neighbouring municipalities. In turn, these challenges will only be addressed as long as

both, municipal authorities can “keep the impulse” and maintain a commitment to socio-

spatial justice.

The current mayor Aníbal Gaviria (2012-2015) has portrayed himself as a

continuation of previous administrations. However, his profile is quite different from

those of his predecessors. Gaviria is a professional politician. He ran for office

representing the Liberal party. As such, it is comprehensible that he would expect a high

political return from his time in office. In Colombia mayors cannot be re-elected

immediately following their term in office. Therefore, during his tenure, Gaviria will

need to build a reputation that would allow him to jump to new or higher posts in future

electoral contests. Presumably for this reason, the Gaviria administration has

characterized itself as changing the agenda proposed during the campaign.

The differences between Gaviria’s and the Fajardo-Salazar’s administrations

stand out in budget allocations. For instance, financing for social urbanism projects is

now quite reduced from previous years, and the equity criteria used in the previous

administrations to allocate resources is no longer used. In fact, social urbanism has been

replaced by a new policy termed “civic pedagogical urbanism”. Instead of investing in

urban projects and social infrastructure, the new policy promotes conviviality and civic

values in public spaces. Critics argue that the ‘civic pedagogical urbanism’ is just a

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rhetorical tool to justify disinvestment in projects that voters associate to the Fajardo-

Salazar era. But there are also other complaints and disappointments. Although civic

participation was one of Gaviria’s political banners at the beginning of his term, and

there were various fora for invited participation, social leaders and residents object that

very little of the input offered by local communities has been taken into consideration.

Gaviria’s urban agenda has focused on a greenbelt. While the city desperately needs

effective tools to discourage further urbanization of areas prone to landslides and other

risks, the currently proposal for an asphalt greenbelt conflicts with de-facto urbanization

in the hillsides of the valley. The municipality estimates that with the construction of a

peripheral avenue, and what locals sarcastically call the “gray-belt,” 14.715 households

will have to be relocated (Personería, 2013). As such, residents fear that they will soon

be homeless or displaced. As public works for the ring have started, residents fear of a

grim future where they could lose access to their livelihoods and social networks.

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Appendix A

Methods and Research Design

This research employed a qualitative, grounded theory (GT) approach. The

particularity of this method is that instead of testing or verifying a hypothesis, findings

are built upon fieldwork experiences and reflexivity, and theoretical contributions

emerge through systematic coding and analysis of data (Charmaz, 2006). GT’s rationale

is that as research evolves, key themes transpire into categories, concepts, and theoretical

contributions.

My research design had two purposes: first, to understand the context and

construction of social urbanism as a policy (its precedents, rationale, tools, agents, and

institutions); and second, to examine its implementation through two mini-case studies.

For the mini-case studies, I contrasted two separate Integrated Urban Projects, a tool

considered emblematic of social urbanism. I selected the Northeastern PUI and PUI

Comuna 13 because, although both zones of the city share conditions of marginality and

violence, governance challenges and policy responses by local and national authorities

have been distinct. While the Northeastern area is the poorest in the city and has an

important presence of non-state violent actors, Comuna 13, has less poverty but has been

without a doubt the most criminalized by public forces. Following militarization in 2002,

Comuna 13 has been the district with the highest concentration of military bases and

public forces in the country.

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My findings draw heavily from comparison among the mini-case studies, and I

argue that the different nature of state-society (dis)encounters at each of these comunas is

an important explanatory factor of the different outcomes achieved at each of the

selected areas.

Fieldwork and data collection

I combined qualitative sources of data, including document analysis, semi-

structured interviews, focus groups, cognitive mapping, and observation. Research

activities took place between August of 2011 and August of 2012. A previous scoping

visit to the city in December of 2010 informed my research proposal, and allowed me to

establish valuable contacts in local universities. Formal fieldwork activities took place in

five separate rounds: the first four were typically four to five weeks long. The last visit

was longer, and took place over the summer of 2012.

Document analysis

According to Wharton (2006), the examination of significant documents produced

across a wide range of social practices help the researcher understand the historical

circumstances of production, as well as the social functions, interpretations, effects and

uses that may be associated with them. Identifying important documents in the early

stages of this research helped me to get immersed in the context and tune-up my

questions during interviews. I started the process of document analysis by looking at

Medellín’s Development Plans ‘Medellín, a Commitment for All Citizens’ (2004-2007),

‘Medellín, A Solidary and Competitive City (2008-2011)’, the City’s Master Plan (Plan

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de Ordenamiento Territorial or POT), among others. I also used the respective

management, investment, and evaluation reports for both mayoral terms, and reports on

the monitoring of the action plans; Local Development Plans (Planes de Desarrollo

Local, or LDPs) which are participatory secondary plans available for each comuna and

developed by the communities themselves with municipal budget and technical support

from the municipality. Other important documents included the “Strategic Plan for

Medellín and the Metropolitan Area (1995)”, and the “Seminars Alternatives for a

Future” (Seminarios Alternativas de Futuro 1993, 1994, 1995, 1997), which are

proceedings from key discussions taking place throughout the 1990s between social

organizations and the State to revision the city. I consulted reports by civic society, non-

partisan organizations such as “Medellín: Como Vamos” and the “Veeduría Municipal

de Medellín,” which are civic society watchdog organizations that regularly issue

detailed reports.

As fieldwork unfolded I also collected issue-specific documents from research

participants. Planners and policy makers from several government agencies helped me to

identify key resources. These agencies included MetroInformación (the department that

manages the Quality of Life Survey and other important data at the municipal level); the

Ombudsman’s office; the Urban Development Corporation EDU; the administrative

municipal planning department; the civic participation office; and minutes from City

Council debates (available from the website), among others. Additional documents were

collected from politicians, NGOs, neighbourhood associations, academics and

community organizations.

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Interviews, focus groups and cognitive mapping

The most substantial data gathering tools were used open-ended semi-structured

interviews and focus groups. The reason for including both interviews and focus groups

in my research design was that each of these tools was expected to make participation

more suitable for one or the other type of research participant. They were each also

pertinent to address specific aspects of my research questions. On the one hand, there

were “key informants” with professional, technical or political expertise who were

highly articulate and were able to provide me with technical or analytical information,

and reflections on their personal experience. Interviews were about one hour long,

although some interviews lasted between two and four hours. In turn, focus groups were

convenient for engaging local residents into a conversation as participants built on each

other’s ideas, generate new ones, differed or argued. Focus groups lasted approximately

two hours and took place in community spaces adjacent to PUI interventions, such as the

library-parks, schools, community organizations or NGOs. All interviews and focus

groups were conducted and fully transcribed in Spanish.

During the final minutes of the focus groups, I administrated cognitive mapping

(CM) exercises. CM is a method usually employed to understand “(…) an individual’s

cognitive representation of the environment (Kitchin & Blade, 2002, p.2)”. In urban

planning and development research such representations provide valuable knowledge

because they depict personal and environmental relations in a given territory (Fenster,

2009) As such, cognitive maps are useful to help explaining values, behaviours or beliefs

attached to such representations (Kitchin & Blade, 2002). I used CM tool to understand

how participants made sense of their immediate built environment, and how they

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understood the relationships between their neighbourhood, the comuna, and the city. I

was also interested in learning whether or not the newly developed spaces and public

work projects had become new symbols or reference points to them in the community.

CM exercises were expected to help me understand whether residents of long abandoned

neighbourhoods perceived a higher sense of inclusion in relation to the formal dynamics

of the city after social urbanism interventions had taken place.

To create cognitive maps, each of the focus group participants was invited to take a

colour markers and a white sheet of paper. They were asked to think about the paper as

the city. Within it, they had to map their comuna, their neighbourhood, and their house.

They were also invited to indicate the main spatial points of reference in their

surroundings, their everyday routes, the places they usually visit, and the key things that

connect their community to the rest of the city. On the backside of the paper, with the

support of the research assistants when necessary, they wrote their first name and some

basic socio-demographic information, such as age, neighbourhood, and gender. As

participants finished drawing, I would ask them to explain to me what they drew. For a

diversity of personal reasons, not all focus group participants could stay, particularly

since it required them to commit some extra-time after the focus group. A few decided

not to participate in the CM exercises. However, a total of 55 CM exercises were

gathered through this technique, which is a sufficient number for qualitative analysis.

Research participants, sampling and recruitment

Most “key informants” were recruited through cold calling and emailing. Often,

the first contact was followed by a written invitation sent electronically. In the

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neighbourhoods, I gained access to participants by approaching local organizations, such

as the Women’s Association of Las Independencias in Comuna 13, or Con-Vivamos

(Let’s live together) in the Northeastern area. These organizations helped me identify and

build relationships with insiders and informants. I also built relationships with cultural

organizations, with leaders, with young artists, and other gatekeepers. As fieldwork

activities advanced, I complemented this strategy with a snowball sampling technique.

This method “identifies cases of interest from people who know other people with

relevant cases” (Bradshaw and Stratford 2005, p. 72). On many occasions, participants

themselves talked to their contacts, and assisted me following up with their suggested

new participants.

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Table A.1

Summary of Research Participants in Interviews and Focus Groups

Key

informants

Local actors

North-eastern

PUI

Local actors

PUI Comuna 13

INTERVIEWS

Architect 3

Business owner 1 1

Community leader 12 9

EDU professional 3 2 2

Informal vendor 1

Municipal employee (library park,

other)

3 3

NGO (director or professional) 14

Ombudsman / staff 3

Planner 10

Policymaker 11

Politician 6

Real Estate Board 1

School Principal/teacher 5 3

Resident - other 3 3

Academic 9

Total participants: 132 61 26 21

FOCUS GROUPS

Women-led organization 1 (5)

Youth-led groups (arts,

environmental)

1(5) 1(7)

High-school students 1(4) 1(5)

Parents – elementary students 1(6)

Teachers - elementary 1(5)

Seniors 1(12) 1(8)

Environmental groups 1(16)

Community leaders 1(8) & 1 (4) 1(4)

Cultural clubs 1(12) 1(8) & 1(5)

Business owners 1(5)

Other – residents 1(5)

Total focus groups = 18 8 10

Total participants in fg = 124 66 58

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Table A.1 summarizes the types of participants who were involved in this research.

61 interviews were carried out with policymakers, including politicians and experts; 26

interviews were conducted with various local stakeholders for the North-western PUI;

and 24 local stakeholders were interviewed in Comuna 13. Eighteen focus groups, each

with a varying group-size between 4 and 16 participants. Out of these, eight took place in

the North-western PUI, and ten were carried out in Comuna 13.

Focus group participants were residents, males and females over the age of sixteen,

who had lived in one of the selected neighbourhoods at least since 2003 when PUI

projects started. The objective was to select participants that could reflect on the ‘before’,

‘in-between’ and ‘after’ social urbanism from diverse positions, therefore providing

experiential and analytical data. Focus group participants were invited to participate

through various local organizations.

Observation was also an important aspect of fieldwork and an everyday practice.

I attended many community meetings, forums, local events, and spent time walking and

talking informally to residents and youths that I met through my contacts, particularly in

Comuna 13. I also volunteered to work with University of Antioquia gathering basic

census data for a new settlement of approximately 400 newcomer families, which sits at

the limits of the Northeastern area and Bello, the neighbouring municipality.

Recording, transcribing, translating and coding

All interviews, except for two, were fully transcribed and digitally recorded.

Likewise, all focus groups, except for one, were digitally recorded. In the case of the

exceptions, I decided not to record on ethical grounds. I assessed that the information

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provided could compromise the safety of the participants, particularly when they named

victims or victimizers.

Lopez et al. (2008) point out the many challenges of conducting ‘cross-cultural’

research, including losses of meaning in the process of translation. To minimize the risks

of losing the richness of the data or altering the original meaning due to inadequate

translation, the following steps were followed: First, all interview and focus group data

was collected, recorded and transcribed in Spanish, the primary language of the

participants and the researcher. Second, analogies, slang, or terms unknown to me were

checked upon with the participant or with the research assistants –who are locals– if such

verification was not possible. Third, master files containing transcriptions of original

data were kept in Spanish as originally gathered. This allowed me to go back to the

original data when in doubt, and revise the whole context of the conversation. Fourth,

during the analysis, only the most relevant pieces of information were translated into

English. Quotes were directly translated by the researcher to be inserted into the text.

Qualitative data was coded for in order to organize it and prepare it for analysis.

Coding was done using the Text Analysis Markup Sytem (TAMS Analyzer) for

Macintosh OS X. This is an open source software that assists the researcher in

organizing, analysing, extracting and saving coded information. In order to “open-up”

and interrogate the data once it was already coded for, I used “situational maps”, as

recommended by Clarke (2003) to carry out grounded theory analysis. Through them, I

mapped several codes pertaining to a theme or particular situation under consideration.

Then I posed a list of questions, some informed by relevant literature or by my own

understanding of the subject, in an attempt intended to problematize the data. The next

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step was to create relationships and memos based on the evidence. Such interrogations

provoked new insights, and prompted new memoing exercises. From such memos, I was

able to draw observations and conclusions.

Safety and positionality

During fieldwork, I was able to experience the fractures of Medellín’s urban

environment quite extensively. Interviews with policy experts usually took place in local

universities, coffee shops in El Poblado, or government offices in La Alpujarra. In these

spaces, the presence of researchers is common. Interviews and focus groups in PUI areas,

however, demanded some safety strategies.

Undeniably, conducting fieldwork in Medellín’s Northeastern area and Comuna 13

was sometimes dangerous. At the time of my visits, the city had just ended a period of

pax romana locally dubbed the “donbernabilidad,” a game of words that replaces

“governa” for “DonBerna” in governability. This alludes to the fact that following

Orión, Don Berna, a drug dealer with paramilitary background, had unified the youth-

gangs across the city under his command. Such unification is said to be one of the main

causes in the drop in homicides in the early 2000s (Hylton, 2007). And yet, between

2009 and 2012 violence was again on the rise. During 2011 and 2012, two combos or

gangs were disputing control over Independencias and El Salado (Comuna 13).

Residents told me they were victims of extortion, and were prevented from moving

freely as combos imposed ransoms, taxes, and “invisible frontiers” not to be crossed. At

the north-eastern area, while there was relative calm in neighoburhoods such as Santo

Domingo, Granizal and the immediacies of the PUI, combos controlled elsewhere and I

237

had to be cautious. Although the everyday life in these neighbourhoods elapses with

certain normalcy, sudden confrontations among gangs –even in plain daylight– are also

normal events. Adjusting to this unpredictability was an important part of fieldwork,

particularly in Comuna 13. I often had to reschedule, wait for research participants to be

able to leave their homes when “the heat was on” in their block, and so on. Personally, I

never experienced a situation where I felt that my personal safety was compromised

because I learned how to identify the “red flags” and always trusted my instincts when

venturing into an unfamiliar environment.

Being Colombian helped me keeping a low profile; nonetheless, it was all too

evident that I was an outsider to these communities. Unintentionally, I often drew the

attention of residents who at the time had just started to see some strangers (and

sometimes foreigners) and were curious about my identity and the purpose of my visits.

Although it was hard to dissimulate my capital city accent, I did my best to adopt the

local slangs and be somewhat inconspicuous when circulating around open spaces.

Working with local organizations, with gatekeepers, and with a research assistant

from the areas, helped me gaining awareness of safety considerations. Learning the

context was fundamental in order to calculate where and when it was okay for me to

walk around. Moreover, in my walks, I was usually accompanied by a gatekeeper or by

community leaders (who the combos recognized) who could guarantee my safety. Except

for a few tour-interviews with local leaders, most conversations were usually indoors,

either in the libraries, or at the community organizations main offices. Local leaders

would typically request that I came to meet them in their own spaces, and I always

agreed to that, but if this was in a remote area, I would typically planned my arrival and

238

departures by arranging a taxi pick up. At other times, interviewees offered to escort me

and helped me finding transportation.

Caveats

Given the unpredictability of violence and my own safety concerns, I was not able

to make the two mini-case studies as commensurable in terms of participants as I had

initially planned. I reached out to participants through the social infrastructure that was

available at both places, and had to rely on participants’ willingness to contribute to my

study. For example, while most of the people invited did participate, I was not able to

interview the principal and teachers at one of the school where I wanted to hear about

change perceptions. The community infrastructure available at each of the mini-case

study areas is also different from the other. In the North-eastern are, there is strong

leadership, and sophisticated community-based organizations. Grass-roots NGOs such as

Convivamos or Nuestra Gente have an impact on the whole comuna, and are well known

throughout the city. In contrast, in Comuna 13’s social leadership is more fragmented.

Notwithstanding this, there are small but active grass-roots groups and NGOs. Women

organizations such as Association of Women from Independencias (Associación de

Mujeres de las Independencias, or AMI), the Association of Christian Youth, a

subsidiary of the WMCA international (Asociación the Jóvenes Cristianos or ACJ) and

youth-led arts groups such as Group Élite Hip-Hop are the most salient organizations

that I collaborated with.

Conclusion

The research problem studied was worth of a highly contextual examination with

locally adequate and culturally relevant categories. Therefore, findings are based on key

239

themes and ideas emerging from the data itself and my own analysis. These were tied up

to theory and literature as the analytical process evolved. While generalizability could be

perceived as a limitation of this study because the findings refer to the particularities of

Medellín, the strength of grounded theory is that, through the analytical process, codes

and categories gain generalizability through a bottom-up, deductive approach. Without

assuming that the findings from this study can be extended or generalized to other

contexts, they can certainly illuminate the study of similar urban policy initiatives now

popular in Latin America and beyond.

240

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