2.2 Changing places - 2.2.2.1 Relationships and connections (external forces): Medellin (government policies)

Question 1

What happened in Medellin’s Comuna 13 in the 1980s, during the height of the Escobar regime?

Answer 1

Comuna 13 was the most popular route through the Andes Mountains to the coast for arms, drugs and contraband transit in and out of the city.

Question 2

What were the consequences of many people leaving the city for the hills during the 1980s?

Answer 2

The fleeing of people led to overpopulation and unsustainable growth which led to a large gap in the provision of basic municipal services such as electricity, water, sewage, police and transportation. This meant that there was a low quality of life for the residents of Comuna 13.

Question 3

What happened in the early 2000s?

Answer 3

Mayor Sergio Fajardo began to take steps to reform Comuna 13. This involved the building of a new school, public green spaces, and connecting the neighbourhoods to the city by escalators and stairs.

Question 4

What happened to to Comuna 13 as a result of the steps taken under Mayor Fajardo?

Answer 4

The area has since seen increased employment and improved community life.

Question 5

How has Santo Domingo (one of Colombia’s most notorious slums) changed?

Answer 5

It has become safer.

Question 6

Medellin was dubbed the world’s most dangerous city. How is it described now?

Answer 6

Medellin has become accessible and safe.

Question 7

What is Medellin’s revival an example of?

Answer 7

It is a story of radical experiments in urban planning and participatory forms of governance.

Question 8

What did Pablo Escobar launch in 1982?

Answer 8

Escobar launched his ‘Medellin without slums’ programme - a politically motivated but nonetheless heartfelt campaign to rid the city of its slums and provide a ‘life of noble dignity’ for the urban poor, who, in Escobar’s words, had been living in an ‘inferno of garbage’.

Question 9

What did Escobar give the city’s communas?

Answer 9

A political voice and a vehicle through which to demand change.

Question 10

How many people were murdered annually in Medellin from 1990 to 1993?

Answer 10

6000

Question 11

What was Medellin once referred to as?

Answer 11

The ‘most dangerous city on earth’

Question 12

What was a regular occurrence in Medellin?

Answer 12

Drive-by shootings

Question 13

What did the majority of children witness growing up?

Answer 13

Homicides taking place in their homes

Question 14

What happened in Medellin in 1991?

Answer 14

The population felt the situation could not get any worse and that something had to be done

Question 15

What did Colombia’s new constitution of 1992 give Medellin?

Answer 15

Greater independence to local governments to elect their own leaders offering more control over urban development to local people with local knowledge and expertise

Question 16

How did the United Nations help Medellin?

Answer 16

By dismantling and demobilising guerrilla paramilitary groups

Question 17

How did the city’s planners begin the project of Medellin’s revival?

Answer 17

By addressing its endemic violence and inequity through the design of public spaces, transit infrastructure and urban interventions into the slums

Question 18

What did the enormity and complexity of the challenge demand?

Answer 18

Something unique

Question 19

How were the planners in Medellin influenced?

Answer 19

By European regeneration models, notably in Barcelona

Question 20

What became constitutional law in Colombia in 1998?

Answer 20

Every municipality had to develop a masterplan.

Question 21

What are the projects in Medellin viewed as being?

Answer 21

‘chains of interventions that stitched the city together’

Question 22

What was the major achievement of the architect (Echeverri) behind the projects in Medellin?

Answer 22

Striking a balance between the embedded and the iconic - integrating spaces, places and systems into the social fabric of the city on the one hand, while also creating buildings of international quality which would be photographed again and again

Question 23

What has increased in Medellin as a result of the projects?

Answer 23

Tourism (aids the economy)

Question 24

What was the relative stability in Medellin from 2003 and 2009 caused by?

Answer 24

An accord between the city’s two independent leaders, Fajardo and drug lord Don Berna - both of whom commanded peace and calm from different sides of Medellin’s divide

Question 25

What did Fajardo instigate when establishing the EDU?

Answer 25

Bureaucratic independence

Question 26

Why is the EDU an example to other cities?

Answer 26

It shows the importance of independent design bureaus working alongside local authorities

Question 27

How did the city transform itself?

Answer 27

‘by allowing the people to stitch it back together themselves’

Question 28

Why is the approach used in Medellin so significant?

Answer 28

It succeeded in crossing boundaries where political policy, social strategy, policing and corruption had previously failed