What could better represent my hybridism than a Pan-Latin American conference on urban development, complete with exhibitions so encompassing, they allowed me to gape at the innovation of where I stay while representing the talent of where I was born? Speaking whatever language, no matter how conveniently similar, I felt "Sin problemas"/"Sem problemas" for life!
Medellín is the number one site in Latin America right now to study socially sensitive urban development. I could not have picked, by half accident, a better place to broaden my understanding of this fascinating field. I first sparked interest in environmentally sound and socially uplifting urban development in college while completing my science requirement, Global Ecology and Environmental Issues. That class turned me onto a few of the case studies of achievement in Latin American urban planning. For example, in Colombia, we have Bogotá's Transmilienio subway-bus system (of which, I will add, a copycat version is now in place in Cali, too); in Southern Brazil, Curitiba's strategically positioned but integrated green spaces combat heat islands and transit-directing city zoning allows people to enjoy life in a downtown freer of pollution. But more than either of these, in the sense of expanding public works and social facilities, the capital of Antioquia is prospering. It's hard to tour the City of Eternal Spring and avoid seeing enormous holes in the ground, as well as massive signs advertising new government buildings, public parks, metro connections, libraries, free cultural events, either in progress or to be launched soon. In what has until now lamentably been Colombia's most polluted city, as we move into 2011 the Metroplús massive bus-subway system promises to provide new access to the main Metro lines for 277,000 paisas; in concert with the planting of 5,400 new trees along the main lines, this project should reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 30,000 tons per year. In at least 12 other significant locations across the city, construction of new public parks, public libraries, gathering spaces, and water filtration or delivery systems are under way or planned. Medellín's El Colombiano newspaper reported some three weeks ago that as a response to legendary traffic in El Centro, there is some talk of widening Avenida Las Palmas, one of downtown's major north-south thoroughfares, while also invigorating new efforts to transition the many homeless that have traditionally resided along its sidewalks. Walking through Medellín's neighborhoods, the excitement of investment, the ambition for aesthetic change, and the hunger for ergonomic structural functionality are palpable. But in my two and a half months here, nowhere has this yet been more evident than at last week's Bienal Iberoamericana, or Biennial Iberoamerican Conference, a several day exhibition of the most innovative architectural designs and modern urban planning stretching from Spain down through the expanse of the entire Western Hemisphere. What a show!
Touring the conference rooms full of images, literature, and seminars, and bumping into architecture and urban design students visiting from cities as far and wide as Quibdó and Bogotá at the Bienal was educational and inspiring. Digging through information panels and public works exhibits throughout the showcase confirmed for me that Medellín is in the midst of something special. When it comes to executing smart urban development, I can see at very least two crucial components: the infrastructural and the social. I am happy to say that Medellín, in many ways, is sensibly learning how to coordinate both. I am pumped beyond belief, feeling I am on the edge of my seat riding on a train of social change. When considering urban development and crime-fighting public policy, Medellín is to Latin American cities what Pitzer is to liberal arts colleges: a trendsetting place, always striving to be at the cutting edge, where the status quo is never good enough and the pace of improvement is lightning, almost hard to track. For one, as far as wiping out crime goes, Medellín can serve as a useful role model to other cities struggling with security issues--those in the north of Mexico, Caracas, San Salvador, and the giant urban centers of Southeast Brazil, Rio and São Paulo, in particular. Speaking about the need for this spread of ideas with my cultural workshop students, I have grown to become a passionate advocate for Medellín's export of its urban planning policies.
Aside from the Bienal, as a result of recently making a contact within the Organization of American States (OAS), my side research project in Colombian Urban Development and Rural-to-Urban migration is getting right off the ground in style. Christopher Hale, Coordinator of the OAS' regional office in Medellín (whom I first met delivering a talk at UPB about his agency's mutli-pronged efforts to clean up crime in Medellín's poorest comunas) has been very generous in volunteering his time and expertise. Chris has recommended a great book to me that will form the underpinning of all my research in the area. Medellín: transformación de una ciudad, or "Medellín, Transformation of a City," is a comprehensive study taking place from 2008 through 2011 that outlines the place's history of urban violence and distress, and later, rebirth, which has now distinguished the city as a relative Latin American success story. The work and its website, "Laboratorio Medellín" (Medellín Laboratory), have arisen through the joint efforts of the Medellín Mayoralty, the Inter-American Development Bank, and contributing scholars from the United States, Colombia, and elsewhere. The book, available only in Spanish and downloadable as a PDF, can be found by clicking "Book" button at the top of the English version of the site, http://www.laboratoriomedellin.com/home/. Though I am just through the first few of the book's 218 pages, I am already reserving it as my Bible for the remainder of the semester. What is most exciting of all? That if I play my cards right and read up as I should, there is a reasonable chance that Chris will introduce me to the Academic Director of the book, the Dutch urban development expert Gerard Martin, former Director of Georgetown's Center for Latin American Studies' Colombia Program, during his next visit to Medellín! Some of Professor Martin's shining words on the topic of Colombia's rise can be found in this short but important article: http://explore.georgetown.edu/news/?ID=29014. The opportunity to interview Professor Martin for my project would basically make every sacrifice I ever commit to during my year in Colombia worthwhile. Knock on wood and fingers crossed!
So far, through conversation with Chris and through cracking into the Laboratorio Medellín report, I have learned a couple of details that illustrate the degree of progress the city has seen in the last 15 years. One is that the last major bombing attack on downtown, which killed 23 and injured dozens more, happened as recently as 1995. Since the Fernando Botero bird statue in the Center's Parque San Antonio, used as a platform for that bomb, was destroyed and replaced, Medellín began to settle down. That trend of course only followed the 1993 incident in which Pablo Escobar, Antioquia native and perhaps the world's richest and most notorious criminal, was killed with a fatal shot to the ear while evading police, jumping across roofs in the residential neighborhood of Medellín in which he had been hiding. As Escobar's cronies slowly dispersed over the course of the '90s, so too did the bombings, and now a paisa's major practical concern when trotting through downtown is pickpocketing. Next, it has come to my attention that though Medellín's homicide rate was above 200 per 100,000 residents around 1.5 decades ago, among if not the highest in the world, today it has dropped closer to 50/100,000. Currently, the majority of this affliction is concentrated in about five neighborhoods: Comuna 13 (the northwest section containing San Javier, the worst trouble area right now), 1, 6, 3, and Castilla. Now, this rate is still nothing to brag about by global standards. (For comparison, the homicide rate in favela-and-drug-violence-plagued Brazil is about 26/100,000; in waveringly war-ridden Israel, 2; and in the US' all-too-fabled "Bodymore, Muderland," 11, for the most recent year in which statistics are easily found, 2008.) But as the Western Hemisphere is concerned, I am still purely convinced that the intentional homicide rate in Colombia, overall, is more favorable (lower) than at least those in El Salvador, Honduras, Jamaica, Guatemala, Venezuela, and Trinidad & Tobago. For a controversial debate starter on the issue, see this article summarizing statements by Colombia's Minister of Defense, Gabriel Silva, early this year: http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/7808-murder-rate-in-medellin-and-cali-lowest-in-30-years-minister.html.
But I digress, again. The point is I am happy at another moment of transition: my supplementary Fulbright research is under way. I am in the midst of another brain massage. In honor of the Bienal, Chris Hale, Gerard Martin, "Laboratorio Medellín," and all of my terrific new channels through which to understand my new city's urban renaissance, I will close by quoting two of Colombia's more well-respected while still contentious political leaders:
"Desde una historia de dolor y desbarajustes, con las cicatrices de la muerte marcadas en su territorio, la ciudad tomó un camino de recomposición que hoy la dignifica frente a su propia historia, frente al país y frente al mundo."
"From a history of pain and messes, with the scars of death imprinted on its territory, the City [of Medellín] has taken up a path of recomposition that today dignifies it before its own history, before the country, and before the world."
-Alonso Salazar Jaramillo, Alcalde/Mayor of Medellín (2008)
"La ciudad de Medellín representa la determinación de un país que quiere salir adelante y que ha recuperado la esperanza. Martirizada en décadas anteriores por un negro pasaje de terrorismo, hoy vive un pleno proceso de progreso y desarrollo y quiere convertirse en la ciudad más segura del continente."
"The City of Medellín represents the determination of a country that wants to move forward and that has recovered hope. Martyrized in previous decades by a black passage of terrorism, today it lives a full process of progress and development, and wants to become the most secure city on the continent."
-Former President Álvaro Úribe
As I headed to the convention center for the Bienal, I had to stop and soak in some killer history-evoking sculptures at the Government of Antioquia's reception plaza, the Alpujarra Administrative Center.
Checking into Medellín's Plaza Mayor for the 2010 Bienal Iberoamericana de Arquitectura y Urbanismo, an event attracting architects and urban development planners from across Colombia and the Americas. Notice: in light of the city's recent buzz and gloss, the Mayoralty really had to go to the length of naming the park a PALACE of expositions, huh?
Signs declaring works of the Instituto para el Desarrollo de Antioquia (IDEA), or the Institute for the Development of Antioquia, emboss construction projects throughout the city.
Designs, designs, designs galore!
Entering one of the Expo showrooms. Just have to love the signage hyping up this event!
The walls inside one of the Plaza's conference halls were hung with award-winning architectural designs from across the Americas. This photo is of a new cutting edge structure in São Paulo. YES!
A blueprint for Nuevo Occidente, a new development in Medellín's northwestern hills. The housing units there will be reserved for the city's swelling number of residents officially designated by the government as "Low-Income," that is, occupying strata 1 through 3.
During the Bienal, the publicly held Urban Development Firm of Medellín (EDU) was taking advantage of a media-circus-worthy chance to promote its plethora of new construction projects.
EDU's major slogan, "Unstoppable Medellín" is just so strong and catchy. This is social urbanism. This is Political Economy at work, my friends. I can't get enough of this!
These logos reading "Medellín: Work with Love," straight from the Mayoralty, are splattered across government promotion banners across the City of Eternal Spring.
The Orquideorama, an all wooden, geometrically twisting shelter, forms a concert hall and public event gathering space within Medellín's Botanical Garden. This masterpiece is really a work to behold, something that urban planners across Colombia can smile about...
Downtown Medellín's slightly epic, slightly ugly, and indisputably dangerous after hours Parque de las Luces, or Park of Lights... A shrine of urban development's success, or just a fracaso, or failure?
The public library, research, and exhibition center of Empresas Públicas de Medellín (EPM), the largest public utility firm in the department of Antioquia and one of Colombia's largest publicly held companies... This place will certainly be worth a look as my research ensues...
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