Informality + Interventions in Medellín, Colombia | research
Autumn 2022, Graduate School
Professor Magda Hogness
Abstract
As informality grows across the world, Medellín, Colombia, is often praised for the successes of integrating its informal settlements into its formal core. The spatial divide throughout its metropolitan area continues to be undeniable, but the city has made great strides to advocate for the marginalized people seeking refuge from rural violence. Infrastructural upgrades, primarily in through increased mobility through transportation has significantly improved living conditions and integrated the informal settlements to the core of the city. However, projects that have approached informality through a paternalistic approach have arguably displaced the displaced. As the global population increases, and more people migrate into urban areas, urban policy will dictate whether the tensions between the formal and the informal will rise. This paper will examine the origins and characteristics of informal settlements in Medellín and analyze the successes and failures of government policies addressing the inequalities in informal settlements of the city.
Introduction – to Global Informality
We’re currently experiencing a massive shift in the way people use cities. As humankind increases in number, the rate of city dwellers increases as well. Currently, more than 55% of the world’s population lives in urban areas, and experts predict that those numbers will grow to 80% by 2050 (UN-HABITAT, 2020). It’s no surprise to most city dwellers that the existing infrastructure hasn’t been designed to holistically embrace the apparent growth. Developing countries in particular are struggling to supply their residents with land, public services, housing, and urban infrastructure. In turn, the unconventional method of creating cities has emerged: the production of large informal settlements.
Across the globe, informality is forcing its way into the formal sector. The tension between the formal and the informal presses the question of how urban design should begin to address serious issues of inequality and neglect, while also acknowledging the successes of dense housing via methods of self-administration apparent throughout informal communities. Medellín, Colombia is a city that has experienced extreme growth but has managed to innovate new ideas and develop ways to integrate the disconnected informal sector with the rest of the city. This paper will examine the origins and characteristics of the informal settlements in Medellín and analyze the successful and unsuccessful examples of public policies implemented by the government to address the inequalities in the informal sector.
Section II – Marginality in the City and the Stigmatization of Informality
Like most cities across the world experiencing high levels of urbanization, Medellín’s infrastructure lacked the necessary means to support the demand for housing. Informality was born from the necessities of rural migrants and naturally began to appear in the most inaccessible outskirts of the city: the steep slopes of the hillsides bordering the valley of Medellín. The land was often illegally subdivided by those seeking a new home and developed as self-administered and self-constructed housing. Many of the areas lack basic services such as water, electricity, waste lines, and access to transportation (PRIMED, 1996). It is important to note that these settlements were not spontaneous in nature. The informality that has spread across the city was born from crisis but evolved from the deliberate collective planning and action from a resource-deprived community to create the mixed-use informal settlements we now see today (Kellett and Napier 1995). However, the overarching neglect towards the city’s most vulnerable population created an urban divide that was socially, economically, and geographically segregated and inequitable. Informal settlements are almost always stigmatized within the formal sector. This was no different in Medellín. Unlike communities affected by natural disasters who are typically seen as victims, people affected by the civil conflict violence in Colombia were not seen as victims but rather blamed for their inadequacies to conform to the formal sector. As the civil conflict in Colombia became worse, drug cartels and extremist groups manifested themselves in the informal neighborhoods which demonstrated the deep crisis and exclusion that the informal communities faced. It became clear that if the formal sector continued to disregard the integration of the informal communities, they would become more excluded, precarious, and affect the city’s unity and trust.
Section IV – Intervention of the Informal
The goal for the public administrations, academics, and non-governmental organizations was clear from early on. The informal comunas which existed on the steep slopes and inaccessible outskirts of the city must be integrated and connected back to the formal sector to provide a sense of belonging to the city (Arbaux, Hermelin, Restrepo, and Giraldo, 2012). This was a difficult task to approach, as the informal sector originated from the absence of conventional planning methods in its formative years. Many of the characteristics that were deemed problematic, like dense housing and deteriorating infrastructural conditions needed to be integrated as part of the solution rather than a demolished problem. Medellín’s successes in embracing informality originate from the approach of recognizing the importance of the informal settlements and what they provided to its citizens. By acknowledging the positive attributes of the informal communities (such as density and mixed-use), the practice of improving existing infrastructure and intervening with public services becomes valid. This is the critical first step to the many successes of Medellín’s story- as it relieves the pressure of acquiring new land, and constructing new housing (Davis, 2006). Several programs began to emerge to address the issues of Medellín’s divided city. First, the Program for the Integral Improvement of Subnormal Neighborhoods (PRIMED) emerged in 1993. It was part of a larger program aimed to address the issues of violence, governability, and social decomposition in low-income neighborhoods. It was created by the Colombian National Government and the Medellín local government in partnership with the United Nations and the German National Government. Their goal was to provide neighborhood improvements via methods of community participation, basic infrastructural improvements, housing improvements, and the allocation of public resources and formal land tenure. Unable to maintain funding, the program terminated after 7 years. Achieving much less than what they had hoped, PRIMED’s real success lies in the ability to lay down a new basis for tackling marginality in design. Rather than following historical concepts of slum clearance and isolated paternalistic interventions, PRIMED highlighted the value of improving the quality of life of informal communities through investing in upgrading community infrastructure based on citizen participation and land tenure. Although they somewhat failed in their ventures, they planted the seed for future programs’ eventual success (Betancur, 2007). In 2004, after being elected as the new mayor of Medellín, Sergio Fajardo implemented a public policy to develop social urbanism throughout the city by realizing a new program called the Integral Urban Projects (PUI) (Restrepo and Orsini, 2015). The program was nicknamed “Medellín the most educated,” and aimed at improving cultural, educational, and infrastructural elements throughout Medellín’s comunas. Trained as an architect, his holistic vision for uniting the marginalized communities of the city sparked international interest. Investing in the previously neglected informal communities, Fajardo built library-parks, primary schools, public gardens, and funded street art (Restrepo and Orsini, 2015). His most notable achievements include the expansion and integration of the informal neighborhoods with the greater Medellín public transportation system. With the help of community leaders within the informal neighborhoods, Fajardo was able to successfully build three main transportation methods which significantly unified the city: the metro-train, the metro-cable, and the escalators.
Section VI – Case Study B: The Metro-Cable
The Metro-Cable is arguably Fajardo’s most notable and internationally recognized contribution to the unity and successes of integration within the city of Medellín. The metro-cable is a set of elevated cable cars that run above 11 marginalized neighborhoods, connecting a total of 170,000 residents to the main metro-train line (Galvin and Maassen, 2019). The steep terrain of the informal communities had negative implications for those with mobility issues, and the metro-cable helped address these major problems. At its heart, this project truly expresses that everybody should have equal access to the city and fights exclusion without offering mastery over the informal communities. The impact that the metro-cable line had on the city was massive. Commutes that once took 2.5 hours, now only took 7 minutes. Businesses began to appear around the new metro stations, increasing job opportunities and reducing violence. Many indicated that the quality of life for the informal communities significantly improved because of the newly formalized access to education, open space, and social infrastructure (Galvin and Maassen, 2019). The aerial transportation system surpassed all expectations and became a poetic addition to the city. Urban life slowed down in the cable-cars and allowed citizens moments of contemplation with a detached view of their city. (“The Northeastern Urban Integration Project in Medellín, Colombia” 2013). The successful level of advocacy in design embodies the power of integrating urban solutions with the voices of the community.
Section VIII – Transformation, Change, and Media Interpretation
Medellín has been internationally recognized for its vast transformation over the last 30 years. The narrative of the informal settlements throughout the media has completely flipped. From glorying the drug conflict causing internal resentment of informal neighborhoods in the 1980s, it has transformed into newspaper articles expressing a miracle city transformation with trendy photo ops. This, of course, has its own social and political implications: the neighborhoods that formerly provoked fear within the formal sector of the city are now viewed as tourist attractions, erasing and further marginalizing the continued struggles of the comunas’ residents. Internationally recognized artists, such as Maluma and J Balvin, both raised in upper-middle-class households in Medellín, have incorrectly labeled themselves as belonging to the informal neighborhoods of Medellín, taking advantage of the emblematic nature these neighborhoods have acquired for their own image. Media coverage of these communities can certainly be a good thing. They can shed light on the struggles of its people and demonstrate the urgency for improving living conditions. However, these artists’ music videos only show a biased view of the neighborhoods, ignoring the perilous conditions that continue to exist, and that continue to affect the day-to-day lives of the informal communities of Medellín.
Section X – Conclusion Looking Forward and Future Challenges
The future of informal settlements in Medellín– and globally– is unclear. As cities increase in size, we’ll see an increase in displaced people looking for refuge in cities, while also simultaneously seeing growth throughout the formal sector. As cities like Medellín grow, the question lies whether the displaced communities will be forcibly displaced again. Maria Yepes, a spokeswoman for the cultural center of development of Moravia expresses “when the people began living in this area, the government did nothing to provide opportunities for the people to stay. Because the idea was for the people not to stay here, for them to go.” (Janetsky, 2020). Although great efforts have been made with careful consideration of where responsible intervention ends and paternalistic approaches to urban solutions begin, the challenges are only rising. With increased economic interest in the outskirts of the city, there may be a moment in which the formal sector decides to redevelop the Medellin hillsides with the best view of the city. Transportation alone cannot fix the systematic issues that the comunas face in terms of inequality and access to basic services; so how does public policy begin to protect the most vulnerable in a world where marginalized people often don’t have a voice. The future of cities across the world will all face this same urban problem. It is likely that cities across the world will all face similar issues to the ones Medellin has begun to confront; how they will handle these issues is to be determined.
Section I – The Origins of Medellín’s Displaced
1 in 3 people live in informal communities along the hillsides in Medellín (Echeverri, 2018). The problem of inequality and neglect runs deep and echoes the issues of poverty that exist in many other cities across the globe. Downtown Medellín sits in the lowest part of a large valley located around the Andes Mountains. Like most urban areas across the world, the city of Medellín has experienced unprecedented growth throughout the last 50 years partly due to the displacement of small communities because of the ongoing civil conflict. Within just the last 50 years, the greater metropolitan area of Medellín grew from 350,000 inhabitants to 3 million (Echeverri, 2018). The massive growth can be traced back to two main issues. The paramilitary violence caused by the civil conflict in Colombia has displaced many of its rural residents, forcing them out of their small villages and into urban areas to seek refuge (Colombia Journal, 2002). The rise of industrialization has also played a small role in the migratory narrative, promising better living conditions in the city for many rural Colombians. The boom of inhabitants created an increased demand for housing, and like many other cities, this demand was never met (Botero, 1996).
Section III – The Global Media and the Invisible People
As the neglect of the informal settlements (colloquially called comunas) continued, the media coverage of the violence caused by the civil conflict made the image of the comunas to the global formal sector worse. Newspaper articles spread across the world titled Colombia the Most Dangerous City, Welcome to Medellín the coke capital of the world (Time, 1988) and Record Murder Wave Overwhelms Medellín (The Washington Post, 1991). Not only did the media coverage of the violence glorify the devastating cartel problem that Colombia was facing, but it also inadvertently suppressed the experiences of the internally displaced rural migrants who had tried to find refuge in the informal neighborhoods of Medellín. Gaining further distance and disconnection from the formal sector, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) termed this phenomenon of displacement “Colombia’s Invisible Crisis” (Højen, 2015). Internally, it was clear that intervention must be made to begin to listen and respond to the needs of the displaced population which stood severely disconnected from the city.
Section V – Case Study A: The Metro-Train
The Medellín metro-train is the source of much pride for Colombians. Crossing much of the valley of the formal sector from North to South, the metro was the first and remains the only metro train in Colombia. It first opened in 1995, but with the implementation of Fajardo’s Integral Urban Projects (PUI) program, the city was able to extend the reach of the train adding an additional Line A and several stations which connected previously detached Southern communities to the city. For communities which had previously been forgotten, they now had quick access to downtown and the formal sector which provided increased access to employment opportunities in addition to an overall sense of belonging and pride. The metro train was immensely celebrated across the country, but criticism arose calling the celebration “a fetishization by the formal sector on one urban achievement” (Hart, 2021) The metro train lacked the ability to connect the steep slopes that housed many of the informal communities because of its physical limitations to reach tough terrain.
Section VII – Case Study C: The Escalators
Below the metro-cable, Fajardo’s Integral Urban Projects plan implemented a total of 6 giant escalators that help integrate mobility infrastructure within the informal communities. The escalators were designed by architect Carlos Escobar and were built in one of the most impoverished neighborhoods, Comuna 13. The system of escalators incorporates public squares, balconies, and offers visual connections to improve the safety in the neighborhood (Gilbert, 2013). Not only do the informal communities benefit from transportation infrastructure that improves mobility, but added transportation also indicates a sense of ownership. It emphasizes community-building and articulates the value the city places on the informal communities through investment.
Section IX – Case Study D: Moravia Slum Clearance
In addition to the transportation improvements to the informal sector, Fajardo’s Integral Urban Projects program also aimed at restoring existing housing. Although there were some successful efforts in improving housing structures through adding services such as water and electricity, the major project within this category was the Moravia slum clearance project. The area of Moravia became an illegal garbage dumping ground in the 1960s for the formal sector of Medellín. This became one of Medellín’s earliest informal settlements, as rural migrants fleeing violence entered the city, and found that they could build their homes with the discarded garbage of the formal sector (Janetsky, 2020). Moravia became a neighborhood that housed more than 15,000 people who earned a living recycling. In 2004, Fajardo assigned Moravia as a public disaster and began the process for slum clearance. The city evicted the people of Moravia to construct large gardens, cultural and community centers. Although the project provided many social services for people who once lived in the demolished neighborhood of Moravia, the project ultimately ended up displacing the displaced. Although the city claims that the project was developed “in consultation with residents” (Betancur, 2007), and included “home relocation” (Betancur, 2007), other sources say that the people of the neighborhood clashed with the city’s government and were forcibly removed (Janetsky, 2020). Unfortunately, the city appears to have long-term plans to continue the demolition of other informal neighborhoods that are deemed unfit by the eyes of the formal city (Janetsky, 2020).
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11 Informal Settlements and Government
Intervention in Medellín, Colombia
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