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Medellín is the second economic centre of Col ombia. The capi-tal of the Antioquia province is situated at 1.538 meters, amidsthigh hills. In 1980, the Metropolitan Region Medellín a nd AburráValley was constituted, it integrates ten municipalities together with Medellín, and today has a population of about 3.4 millions.The urban region has an extension of 1157 km2 and a popula-tion density of 2877 inhabitants/km2.

Medellín once enjoyed the reputation of being one of Latin America’s most progressive industrial centres with a long tradi-tion of civic minded public service and urban planning. Medel-

half of the 20th century were not initiated by external investors,but by local capital and local elites, unlike other Latin Americanindustrial regions. Textile industry was the engine of economicgrowth. The historical particularity of Medellín’s economic his-tory contradicted current Third-World-development theories.Medellín’s elite promoted the image of a city where high ratesof capitalist productivity were possible thanks to the elite’s so-cial responsibility. In the mid-1970s, Medellín was still Colom-

World-wide deindustrialisation, however, sharpened the contra-

dictions of the local economic model which entered in a deepcrisis. The crisis was confronted by the concentration of region-al capital and the constitution of an economic group, GrupoEmpresarial Antioqueño, in 1979. The group headed the met-ropolitan region’s economic restructuring; today it is Colombia’s

-turing, growing informality (50.2% of all urban jobs in 1984, and55.7% in 2000), as well as the expansion of the global drug

of the world. The expansion of the drug economy opened neweconomic perspectives in Medellín. During the late 1990s, in

and shopping-centre culture spread across the city, the hous-ing market was booming: luxurious apartment towers, fencedin and tightly monitored by private security forces, appearedeverywhere in Medellín. At the same time, a wave of extremeviolence eroded Medellín’s social fabric.

From 1989 to 1993, the year when the icon of the global nar-cotics trade, the Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, was killedin Medellín, 28.700 people were assassinated in the city. Mostwere young men between fourteen and twenty-six years old of the urban ‘underclass’. Between 1994 and 2004, other 34.600

people were killed; only after 2004 this numbers diminished.The more the urban crisis increased the more the city’s in-

the 1990s, public debates at Round Tables and Open Forumsbetween grassroots organizations, local NGOs, trade unions,universities, the municipality and the city’s business sector, aswell as strategic planning, aimed at managing the urban crisis,and at developing a postindustrial model of a City of the Future.The debates pushed Medellín’s transition from an industrial toa service metropole.

The background of Medellín’s makeover and its recent boomis paradoxical: on the one hand, the debates, and on the other hand, the formation of paramilitary-led corporate mercenaries

María Soledad Betancur, Angela Stienen, Omar Urán

MEDELLÍN’S BOOM: PARADOXIES OF THENEW METROPOLITAN MAINSTREAM

* Inhabitants 3’400’000Region 1’157Km2

* Inhabitants 41’966’004bia 1’137’748Km2

Medellín, Colombia

Social Housing

New Financial Headquarter 

Metro - Estacion San Antonio

Urban Mass Transport System

Pajarito - Ciudadela Nuevo Oriente

Metro Cable - AerialPassenger Tramway

Metro Cable - AerialPassenger Tramway

Inner City Decline

La Alpujarra

Stadium

Parque Berrio

Bello

Metro

Metro

New Urban Centre

Itagüí

Envigado

Ls Estrella

Sabaneta

new CBD

Social Housing

scale 1:25.000

Strategic Urban Infrastructure Projects

Flagship Projects

Failed and Grounded (large) Projects

Spaces and Places of Resistance / Alternatives

Urban Expansion

Subcentres

Areas of State-Led Reinvestment / Areas of Urban Regeneration

Central areas

Trendy Neighbourhoods

Areas of disinvestment

Areas of Private Reinvestment / Areas of Intense Neighbourhood Upgrading

Areas of Privatization

Very High Income Area

Gated Communities / Exclusionary Zones

Informal Settlements

Legend

Urban Region

Events

*

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nthesis over all four projects and outlook

ellín is one of Latin Americas booming cities. The city’seover during the last six years is breathtaking. In the0s, the city was the capital of the global narcotics tradethe most dangerous city of the world. The public debates

ng the 1990s are the beginning of Medellín’s discursivematerial re-signi¿cation and reconstruction. They aimedacifying the city and at making it rise like a phoenix aturn of the century. The public slogan of the municipality

ng the 1990s read: “Tomorrow we will live in the city thatall dream of today”. Some consider Medellín “the capitalaction in Latin America” and see its boom as result of theation of paramilitary-led corporate mercenaries after theal of Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe Vélez, in 2002.4 projects, however, represent the paradoxes of Medellín’sm: on the one hand, the boom is the triumph of capital andaction; but on the other hand, it is also the triumph of 

al resistance to pro¿t oriented urban reconstruction, by thesition of basic civic rights.

Urban expansion in Medellín has been limited due togeological risks. Housing shortage is severe, specially,for low income sectors. Strategic planning de¿ned twostrategic zones of urban expansion in the South and Westof the metropolitan region. In the South (municipality of Sabaneta), private investors realised two huge projectsof high income housing: the Gated Communities AvesMaria (constructed area 99.000 m2) and Suramerica. Theinvestor of the ¿rst project is the economic group Monarcawhich represents the region’s Emergent Capital (narco

dollars). The investors of the second project are economicgroups of the region’s traditional elite. The projects standfor competing interests between traditional and emergentcapital factions in the urban region. They became moreobvious after the reinsertion of the paramilitary forces andthe legalisation of narco capital. Both projects representa trend in urban development: High income sectors moveto gated communities in green areas at the city’s edge.The projects put in danger important natural reservesof the metropolitan region, and were built against theresistance of conservation movements.

Below: High Income Housing Aves Maria and Suramerica

In the Western zone of urban expansion, the municipalitytogether with private social compensation funds, andfunds of the national government realised a huge socialhousing project Pajarito/Ciudadela Nuevo Occidente. Theproject is the result of participatory planning in the contextof Medellín’s 1999 Plan de Ordenamiento Territorial-POT.The project was designed to relocate families from thecity’s geological “high risk zones”. It was articulated to thenew mass transport system, Metro Cable, which connectsit to the centre of the city. During the South AmericanChampionship in Medellín, in March 2010, some of thebuildings had hosted international sport delegations. Thesocial housing project has approx. 40.000 residents. Theimpact of the project is ambivalent: Housing conditionsimproved considerably, while underemployment couldonly partially be faced by the construction of a market.Relocated residents lost direct access to their former informal working place downtown.Below: Social Housing PajaritoMedellin

Urban expansion of high income housing andsocial housing. The latter aims at confrontingthe city’s housing shortage and at relocatingpeople from the city’s geological “high riskzones”.

Purpose

Urban Expansion:Housing

Purpose

Dimensions

pose

Infrastructure:Metro de Medellin

Colombian State, Department of Antioquia,Municipality of Medellín.

U$ 2.174 millions, U$ 1.009 millionscorresponds to the real cost of the project, therest of U$ 1165 millions corresponds to theovercost due to corruption

Investors

Projets costs

Dimensions system length 32 km, part of the system is a 15meter high concrete viaduct, 25 stations and 6Metrocable stations, 500.000 users

Transform the urban transport system andrender urban transport more ef¿cient

Purpose

The mega-project Metro de Medellin was the impetus of Medellín’s urban renewal and restructuring. The Metrostarted operation in 1995. It crosses the city on a ¿fteenmeter high concrete viaduct from North to South (line

 A) and from downtown to the West (line B). The Metroradically transformed the city’s transport system. Themetro operation company (Empresa de Transporte Masivodel Valle de Aburrá) was created in 1979 in associationwith the municipality of Medellín and the provincialgovernment. In 1982 the metro project was approved

by the national government, and in 1984 the companycontracted a German-Spanish consortium to realise theconstruction works. The works were executed duringthe city’s deepest economic crisis. They were stopped,between 1989 and 1992, due to corruption, and ¿nishedin 1995. The Metro Style (Estética Metro) today is a kindof brand of the city’s upgraded and renewed public space.In 2004 and 2007, Metro Cable, two aerial passenger tramways have connected part of the lowest incomedistricts on Medellín’s hillsides to the Metro system.

 Aerial passenger tramways are not often used as masstransportation system. The project had been brought to thecity’s publ ic Round Tables in 1996. At that time, however, itwas planned as a tourist attraction that linked together thecity’s panoramic sites. The project raised a heated publicdebate. The public debate may have pushed Medellín’s¿rst independent mayor, Sergio Fajardo, to transform atourist project into a project for mass transportation.

The realisation of the Metro project has been stronglycriticised by the left because of its high cost, demolitionsand resettlements, heavy architecture, surveillanceand repression in the Metrospace. Low income groups,however, are much more in favour of the metro. Manyconsider that the metro improved their life conditions:The metro’s price scheme is relatively balanced, and thetransport system is very ef¿cient: It takes more than 2hours to cross the city by bus from North to South, whilethe Metro covers the same distance in 37 minutes. Fromdowntown to the city’s West it takes 9 minutes by metroand 1 hour by bus.

 Above: Metro Station Football stadium

Projets costs

Investors Munic ipal it y o f Medel lí n

 Approx. U$ 78 millions

Neighbourhood with an area of 451.810 m2and with 34.000 residents when the upgradingproject started in 2004.

Neighbourhood upgrading and conÀictmanagement.

 Alternative:Participate Upgrading

The city’s ¿rst participative upgrading program wasimplemented in Moravia, a neighbourhood close to thecity’s historical centre. The neighbourhood was partof Medellín’s former dump. Between 1977 and 1983around 15’000 people settled on the dump, which was30 meter high and had an area of 76.000 m2. In 1983,the municipality closed the dump. Residents resisted torelocation and started negotiating participative upgradingwith the municipality: decontamination, legalization of land tenure, public services, improvement of housing

and public space. In 1990, the municipality declaredMoravia a special area of urban upgrading. During the1990s, Moravia turned into a dynamic centre of informaleconomy: Recuperar, a cooperative specialized inwaste management emerged in the neighbourhood andexpanded to more than 1000 workers. 70% of the wastegathered by the cooperative is recovered by its associatesthrough the Source Separation Programme which servesindustries, businesses and public and private institutions.But at that time, Moravia also turned into an epicentre of Medellín’s urban conÀict. The neighbourhood became alaboratory of conÀict management when the municipalitystarted negotiations with the armed gangs. In 2004 themunicipality declared Moravias participatory upgradinga strategic urban project. Today, Moravia is localizedclose to strategic infrastructures: the city’s new centralbus station, universities, hospitals, new leisure parks; itsground rent potential is high and inhabitants constantlyfeel the pressure of being relocated. The residents’organization, mobilization and combativeness provoked awave of solidarity in the city which forced the municipalityto declare Moravia “a zone of re-development whereresidents must be protected from being expelled by future

mega-projects”. During participative planning in Medellín(POT), Moravias’s residents negotiated the ¿gure of “residents’ protection” with the municipality. This ¿guremeans that upgrading projects in the city must conservethe existing social tissue and economic networks. Thenegotiations’ outcome was Moravia’s Global UpgradingPlan. This plan is an exemplar result of successful socialresistance to pro¿t oriented urban regeneration.

Below: Moravia Neighbourhood Centre

new headquarter of BANCOLOMBIA was inaugurated009. It is the strongest symbol of Medellín’s transition

a declining industrial region to an emerging ¿nancialre. The building was constructed in the city’s mostortant former industrial area, near the historic centre.regeneration of the city’s declined industrial areas i s

key strategic goal of Medellín’s strategic plan Medellín5. It aims at re-establishing Medellín’s image as aming metropole in Latin America. BANCOLOMBIAolombia’s ¿rst bank, it belongs to the country’s ¿rst

nomic group Grupo Empresarial Antioqueño, whichoted in Medellín. Bancolombia’s headquarter is theest building a bank ever built in Latin America. Theding has direct access to Medellín’s metro systemto the city’s main express highways. It is the Àagship

ect of a number of important regeneration projectssed in the same area during the last 5 years. Thepture of superman posing like Rodin’s “Thinker” int of the building reinforces the building’s symbolicning.

The sculpture of superman

itects

stors

ets costs

ensions

Interior Architects (USA), Consorcio Convel- AIA.

Bancolombia

approx. U$ 190 millions

constructed area: 125.000 sqm, employees:6.000, security cameras: 1200

Regeneration of former industrial areas,transition from an industrial to a ¿nancial centrein Latin America

Flagship Project:Headquarter Bancolombia

1972Edi¿cio Coltejer, headquarter of the city’s leading textile company, symbolof the industrial boom

1997Edi¿cio Inteligente, headquarter of the city’s ef¿cient public utility company,symbol of the technological transition

2009COLOMBIA: headquarter of Colombia’s leading bank, symbol of thetransition to a ¿nancial centre.

 Authors: Soledad Betancur, Instituto Popular de Capacitacion-IPC, Medellin, Angela Stienen, Pedagogical University, Berne, associate Instituto Popular de Capacitacion-IPC,Omar Uran, Universidad de Antioquia, Medellin, associate Instituto Popular de Capacitacion-IPC