As a former resident of Medellin and witness to the continuing social problems that plague many neighbourhoods and with the announce- ment this week that a successful peace process will necessitate the demobilisation and reintegration of 300,000 military troops and 25,000 guerrilla troops, (EFE 2013) in this essay I wish to investigate the resilience of Medellin in coping with such stresses. First I will examine what resilience means through analysing disasters in general and what resilience to these disasters means in an urban context. Resilience is an extremely complex characteristic that involves the interconnection of many aspects of urban planning and governance and this essay does not allow for such in-depth analysis. I have chosen to focus on two aspects that are apt in analysing Medellin’s vulnerability, poverty and informal settlement. I then go on to review the history of settlement in Medellin as I feel there are some important historical precedents for what is happening today. I will then analyse the ‘social urbanism’ that is claimed to have improved Medellin so much, taking the area of Popular as a case study before moving on to assess the impacts that this ‘movement’ has had on the city and if it has built resilience, posing some potential shortcomings.
Vulnerability, Resilience and Sustainability
Disasters
Medellin has been named in the Rockerfeller Foundation’s list of 33 of the world’s most resilient cities in 2013. (Foundation 2013). Having read the criteria used to judge resilience in urban settings, used by the foundation I found them to be simplified and related almost specifically to post-natural disaster reconstruction and seems related very much to North American cities and in particular, New York. In the developing world there are many more potential stresses and strains that a city can experience that may cause failure. For this reason I will look at what pertains to a resilient city in the developing world.
Pelling (Pelling 2003) describes vulnerability as “exposure to risk and an inability to avoid or absorb potential harm” and outlines social, phys- ical and human vulnerability. He defines resilience and “the capacity to adjust to threats and mitigate or avoid harm. Resilience can be found in hazard-resistant buildings or adaptive social systems”. A hazard, he says, is “the potential to harm individuals or human systems” and disaster the coinciding of both vulnerability and hazard. Hazards can come in the form of environmental shocks such as earthquakes, violent storms, landslides, volcanoes, tidal waves, floods, droughts, crop disease and any other shock not caused by human action. They can also be human or social constructs such as war, economic failure, political collapse or infrastructural failure.
Pelling (Pelling 2003) has noted that small impact events such as traffic accidents and air pollution have more cumulative impact than localised large scale events. Everyday risks such as poor sanitation and unfit housing are less visible and receive less attention but are linked in many ways to larger disasters. Following disasters, people’s resilience to chronic stresses is severely lowered, leaving them vulnerable to future catastrophic events.
Urbanisation
By 2030 nearly 60% of the global population is projected to be urban with the developing world housing nearly 80% of this population. (DFID) With the growing urbanisation in the developing world (95% of all urban growth occurs in the developing world (Habitat 2013) there is also a growing number of large scale disasters due to unsustainable urban development and growth and this is significant of the inequalities inherent in our cities. A survey of 650 earth- quakes found that only 20 events involved over 10,000 deaths all of which were in an urban setting. (Coburn et al, 1989) Nature does not cause disasters but risk in the urban environment is an outcome of a myriad of feedback loops, competing ideas and mechanisms and the reaching of a threshold can lead to a ripple effect that has large repercussions throughout the urban fabric. (Pelling 2003)
Resilience
Barnett (Barnett 2001) refers to Wildavsky in his 2001 paper in stating 6 prin- ciples of resilience. These principles translate specifically to urban planning strategies and on a wider scale to development on a whole when one considers the economic, social and environmental strains that a disaster can put on an economy or government, draining national budgets and perpetuating poverty (Sanderson 2001) but unfortunately they are rarely applied in either. They are key to building resilience is not necessarily in addressing the disaster response abilities of cities but rather the ability of urban planning to prevent a hazard becoming a disaster. Even though event prediction systems are now widely used and effective, very little is done in the way of preparation for such events (Sanderson 2001)
Sustainability as disaster prevention
There is a school of thought that building sustainable livelihoods can protect individuals and communities against shocks and stresses by linking the agency of the population to many of the principles outlined by Barnett. The theory is that increasing the access to assets helps in the building of resources thus providing a buffer to shocks and stresses. (Sanderson, 2001) In an urban context ¨intricate processes by which people design their own places and spaces, how they sustain yet adapt local technologies and traditions, and how they deploy innate capacities to adapt cultural precepts to a modern idiom¨ tend to be overlooked in development yet are essential in creating sustainable communities. While the environmentalist aspect of sustainability is important, there are also other factors such as economics and social and political development and participation to be considered. (Watson 2006) Social assets such as access to networks and relationships, and education can be extremely important in facing shocks as they can help to bond communities, combine knowledge and skills and maintain growth and rebuilding after and before shocks. Delica-Wilison and Delica (Delica-WIllison 2004) declare that ¨poor people, having no adequate resources and opportunities for earning reasonable income, have many vulnerabilities to hazards....poverty and vulnerability can be considered two sides of the same coin. Therefore, addressing vulnerability also necessitates addressing poverty¨ and propose that hazards only become disasters when they strike vulnerable people.
The principle being championed by ADCP (ADCP 2013) is that by reducing underlying vulnerabilities and exposure to disasters is critical to achieving sustainable development which is both a means and an end and disaster risk management must be fully integrated into urban management in order to achieve this.
Pelling (Pelling 2003) argues that there are five components needed for a holistic view of sustainable urbanisation; social, economic, political, demographic and environmental and that a balanced system is essential as all sectors are interlinked. UN Habitat also proposes a similar model as can be seen in their diagram below.
Poverty, exclusion and risk
“Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.” (Mandela 2005)
The lack of proper policy responses to and understanding of the in- crease in vulnerability caused by urban poverty in developing countries is systemic in causing catastrophes on a large scale. The use of poverty scales to measure poverty has artificially reduced the ratio of urban to rural poor, resulting in less recognition of the problem. While rural dwellers may have less daily income, they may be much better placed to withstand shocks and stresses as they may have access to basic needs without financial resources. The cost of living is generally lower in rural areas which drives down national poverty line measures but for urban dwellers where costs of land and access to services can be more costly, they remain un-categorised as poor. The structural adjustment policies of the 1980s had a profound effect on the rate of urban poor with Mexico for example experiencing a 7% rise in urban poverty from 1988 to 1992. (Pelling 2003)
Urban poverty restricts house construction and reinforcement due to lack of access to money, non-tenure and lack of public funding. Poverty in cities can put strain on governing bodies and take funding from urban administration leading to resource scarcity and a lack of strategic urban planning and where it exists it tends to lack some key characteristics such as participation. Global competitiveness has had adverse effects on cities as they are sometimes forced to turn a blind eye to poor employment standards in an attempt to secure direct foreign investment and the shifting of risk from private companies onto labour. Anti-poverty measures are key in the creation of resilience.
In 1982, Sen (Sen 1981) put forward the hypothesis that famine was a result of reductions in household productive capacities relative to prices of food, resulting in the household’s inability to access food and increased vulnerability to famine. Economic poverty can also exclude people from market consumption and basic needs but can also act as a barrier to social and communal networks which are vital in building resilience. When one combines this idea with the idea that poverty is a lack of capacities that can be tackled by creating sustainable livelihoods the importance of creating a sustainable city in reducing vulnerability is clear.
Informal Settlement
The peripheries of cities tend to grow more rapidly with prices of centrally located areas growing more slowly. The rapid rise in the demand for access to the services and infrastructure of the city has seen a rapid process of urbanisation over the last century. This demand has risen much quicker than the abilities of governments to provide these services and land in developing countries which has resulted in the formation of informal settlements. According to UN Habitat, an informal settlement is characterised by one or more of the following; chronic overpopulation, precarious state of housing (in relation to structure and surroundings), absence of public services and lack of legal tenancy. This definition is limited by its definition in a purely physical and legal context leaving out socio-economic factors which are essential for an integral understanding. (Echeverri 2010)
This phenomenon is borne out of the necessity but also inability of poor people to access the formal city. It also relates to a self-perpetuating cycle of low education and health. These areas also tend to coincide with the highest rates of crime and violence caused by the high level of social inequality that exists in urban areas. This physical and economic exclusion from the urban fabric makes these areas and their residents highly vulnerable in times of stresses and shocks as their livelihoods and access to assets (Sanderson 2001) are severely reduced.
A brief history of settlement in Medellin.
Informal settlement has been a defining characteristic of Medellin throughout the previous century beginning at the end of the 19th century with widespread industrialisation of the Aburra Valley and making Medellin an urban and economic centre. (Echeverri 2010)
The construction of the railway and airport in the city in 1932 marked a clear determination to be part of larger markets within and outside of Colombia but also underlined the geographic complications of its location, located in the Aburra Valley of the Andes, and some 350 Km from the Atlantic Coast. The first University of Antioquia, was founded in Medellin, securing its importance as a centre for education (Gonza- lez Escobar, 2007) and had a formalised urban planning authority thirty years before New York in the form of the Sociedad de Mejoras Públicas. (Hylton, 2007, 75)
Industry grew, founded on the hard-working ethic of the “Paisas” (people from the deparment of Antioquia), and diversified, due to entrepreneurial initiatives, so rapidly that Medellin was hailed as a “capitalist paradise” by Life Magazine in 1947, due in part to industrial paternalism and the fragmentation of the working class. Medellin had skyscrapers, cinemas, wide avenues, parks, churches, schools and universities and a perfect climate. (Hylton, 2007, 75)
The ten year period from 1948 to 1958, known as La Violencia, a period of brutal nationwide conflict, caused extreme social upheaval and displacement of rural populations to the cities of Colombia. As many as 200,000 people died (Pamowski, 1997) and the population of Medellin doubled (Bahl, 2011) as displaced rural workers sought employment and security as the city remained relatively untouched and was portrayed by leading industrialists as an oasis of peaceful capitalist productivity, a precedent for future settlement patterns. (Hylton, 2007)
From the mid-60s the numbers streaming into the city increased due to increased poverty, violence and unemployment in rural areas compounded by the elite’s blocking of agrarian reform which led to squatter neighbourhoods popping up on the hillsides of the valley. These settlements were hand-built in precarious positions from cheap materials without much consideration for the instability of the terrain. With the lowered coffee prices of the 60s and 70s and the competitiveness of Asian countries, industry began to suffer, leading to higher unemployment and social exclusion within the city. (Hylton, 2007) . A large public education system helped produce a new middle-class with high expectations and low professional prospects and the hopes raised by the Antioqueno model of industrialisation were dashed. This led to the rise of a disenfranchised and marginalised population within the urban confines of Medellin, easily accessed by drug cartels and guerrilla recruitment.
Informal settlements continued to grow in size and intensity generating a deep social and economic segregation in the city. To the north and to the steep valley sides can be seen the informal slums and the location of the city’s poor while the middle- and upper-classes generally occupy the central and south areas. Medellin is a city divided deeply by geography, social class and level of housing. (Echeverri 2010)
Medellin the Miracle
“You have to touch people’s lives. There are plenty of beautiful plans drawn up by architects but they require political action to implement”. Sergio Fajardo, Ex-Mayor of Medellin
The past two decades have seen architects and urban designers of different generations, under the patronage of progressive mayors, enhance the “livability and self-esteem” of some of the areas of Medellin worst effected by social problems. The challenges were immense but the city has advanced greatly with homicides falling from 381 per 100,000 people in 1991 to 26 in 2007. (Webb 2011) Many of the social issues highlighted previously still exist but there has been a dramatic transformation that has been, in part, accredited to the ‘social urban- ism’ movement, the radical social agenda, modern governance practices and set of urban interventions envisioned by a tightly-knit network of individuals. The Urban Land Institute called the transformation ‘one of the most remarkable urban turnarounds in modern history’. (Brand 2013)
Jorge Perez Jaramillo, the dean of the Pontificial Bolivarian University (UPB) architecture school from 1993 is stated as saying, “As young people we were fearless in experimenting with new ideas…the crisis of the 1990s spurred our efforts to explore solutions in workshops and conferences”. Perez’s influence was seen throughout the city with graduates going to work with their teachers or starting their own offices. (Webb 2011)
2002 saw the demobilisation of the AUC, a paramilitary organisation, which led to a drastic reduction in killings within the city. Paramilitary groups had carried out ‘cleansing’ in some of the poorer ‘barrios’ or neighbourhoods of the city and were funded by private industrialists and land owners who invested in infrastructure, transport, mining and industry with the aim of creating “the best corner of America”, a beacon for foreign investment. (Hylton 2007) This combined with the radical leadership of reformist mayor and son of an architect, Sergio Fajardo, who began his term in 2003, created the environment in which architects could “touch people’s lives”. This transformation involved political action that would permit the implementation of the projects envisioned for the most problematic areas of Medellin. The previous investments allowed him to focus on more conspicuous projects
The Barcelona Model
Many of the principle architects and planners involved in the urban development of Medellin were greatly influenced by the new urbanism that had come out of Barcelona before and after the Olympics in 1992 that reconstructed the urban fabric and rearticulated a sense of cultural identity and place. (Brand 2013) Many of these architects studied or worked for a period in Spain and as dean of UPB Jorge Perez Jamarillo, who studied in Barcelona, invited architects from Europe to share their experiences and he has said that “the new democracy of Spain exemplified what could be achieved through architecture and urban design”. (Webb 2011)
Three key characteristics of the Barcelona model have been highlighted. (Marshall 2000) The first feature is dialogue between architecture, planning and infrastructure at all levels promoting integration of plans, and projects. The second is highly urban, dense and compact planning and the third is a tight collaboration of politicians and professionals and citizens. The critical foundation on which the success of the model was built was a socially inclusive and architect-led design approach based on extensive research and archiving of the urban environment, including its existing public spaces and infrastructure.
Social Urbanism
The period from 2002-2010 saw the social ‘movement’ that has be- come known as ‘social urbanism’. The model was the manifestation of an approach with emphasis on education, culture, entrepreneurship, inclusion and social coexistence. Social urbanism was a complete re-imagining of the approaches to development of the city and involved targeted and strategic restructuring of how the Mayor’s office and the public sector worked together with massive revisions to planning policy. The Empresas Publicas de Medellin energy company became a huge private funder of many of the urban projects throughout the city. (Echeverri 2010)
Specialised teams were formed for each Strategic Urban Project which planned, executed and monitored the projects under the supervision of the Private Municipal Secretary. The projects were defined as instruments of planning and physical intervention in zones of high levels of marginalization, segregation, poverty and violence in an attempt to increase the physical presence and perceived investment of the government and mayor.
Importance was put on access can be seen in the provision of some innovative infrastructure projects in the form of, first the Metro and then the Metrocable, combining transport technology usually reserved for tourism with traditional urban transport. Building on the history of Medellin as a centre for trade and commerce which was connected to other parts of the country by train, planning of the metro line began in the 1980s and opened in 1995 linking the industrial north of the city to the economic centre of Poblado, passing through the city centre and thus linking strategic zones for development.
The Metrocable
The Metrocable, the perfect embodiment and representation of social urbanism, is a cable car system that links the metro with the previous- ly isolated and excluded comuna of Popular, an area with one of the lowest standards of living, (HABITAT 2008) an informal settlement that grew rapidly from the 1970s which is located on the steep hillside and is physically removed from the city and the metro line. Access by road was difficult due to steep and narrow streets making travel to the city centre or industrial areas difficult for residents. Unemployment was high, gang violence and drugs were widespread with invisible borders common across which it was dangerous for residents to go. This led to a stigmatisation of the residents as they were discriminated against when in finding jobs and in education.
The decision to build a cable car connecting the heart of the comuna to the metro line changed the face of the area. The journey to the city was now a fraction of what it was previously, giving more opportunities to the residents in finding and keeping employment. Up to 3,000 passengers per hour now ride the metrocable and it now constitutes 18% of journeys by residents in the Popular comuna. (Agudelo 2008) It also became somewhat of a tourist attraction encouraging outsiders into what was a no-go area thus increasing security and investment in the area. The construction of modern, innovative infrastructure instilled pride n the people of the area. It would be interesting to further investigate the psychological effect of having a cable-car system passing overhead and whether that invokes a sense of ‘being watched’.
Biblioteca de Espana
This innovative infrastructure investment was coupled with the con- struction of one of the many Parques Bibliotecas or Library Parks that were initiated under the ‘Medellin, The Most Educated’ programme in the Popular comuna with the construction of the Biblioteca de Espana or Spanish Library, close to the last stop on the metrocable line. This library became a principle reference point within the neighbourhood becoming a propellant towards knowledge and education owing to its strategic location and educational programmes. (Echeverri 2010) Architecturally speaking, the architect Giancarlo Mazzanti, aimed to create a modern aesthetic that would instil hope in the future of the residents of the neighbourhood. This aesthetic, which was adopted by other architects in public urban projects throughout the city, represented innovation, leadership, transformation, development and ingenuity (Dolan 2013) for the residents of Medellin, transporting the local users away from their impoverished surroundings (Prizeman 2011).
The urban project became the driving force for inclusion and social development as an alternative to violence in the city. Not all of these interventions were on the same scale as the library or the metrocable. Sometimes simple foot-bridges connecting zones that were previously divided by invisible gang lines became symbolic.
Social Inclusion
Behind the execution and planning of the projects was the active participation of the users in the process accompanying the social workers and communicators in their work. The users formed neighbourhood groups to represent themselves at a political level due to the size of the area covered by the influence of the projects. One example of these groups is the Talleres de Imaginarios (Imagination Workshops) where the community participated directly in the definition of the design of the projects. This participation helped to increase leadership, ownership and the level commitment of the communities. (Echeverri 2010)
Another output of the social urbanism movement was the coordination of various social programmes which saw an investment of $650,000,000 pesos or the equivalent of 80% of the total invested in the area. These projects included improvements in eduction, recreation, culture and sports in the most vulnerable areas.
Impacts of Social Urbanism
Politicians, architects and business people claim that the direct quantifiable impacts of social urbanism in Medellin are plain to see. Murder rates have fallen dramatically and direct foreign investment has increased. According to official figures from the Bank of the Republic, Antioquia ranked second among FDI targets in Colombia between 2007-2011 with a 23.5% share above the total flows into the country, reaching $2,616 million USD at the 2011 cutoff. Among these investments, 34.8% reached Medellin in the Industrial (54.4%), Real Estate (19.9%), and Trade (14.2%) sectors.
This can be seen as a direct result of the reduction in crime and branding of Medellin that has been very successful in changing the once-tarnished image of the home-town of Pablo Escobar. Public transport has increased access to essential parts of the city for the more excluded areas and their impact on resilience can be seen in the variety and redundancy that they offer the city. In times of hazards, the fact that there is more than one form of access and transport offers more lines of access for goods and resources.
Policies have been improved that encourage further participation from residents which can only be seen as positive in that resilience and sustainability can only be built through discovering the distinctive processes of a place in dealing with stresses and shocks more than the physical manifestation of a place. This is also key in building place identity which is essential for a long-term sustainability as globalisation is leading to an erosion of place identity and the construction of defensive identities built around more fragile concepts. (Watson 2006) Perhaps the biggest impact of social urbanism and the construction of a modern aesthetic is the hope that residents of the city seem to have. The Most Innovative City in the World award was done on a nomina- tions basis carried out by experts until the final stage which was de- cided by popular vote. Medellin was pitched against New York and Tel Aviv and was the clear winner. The sheer number of voted from Medel- lin residents was a display of the pride and hope that the Paisas have for their city.
Potential smoke-screen?
“It’s poverty that is at the core of these disasters.” Sálvano Briceño, Director, UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR)
I contest that unfortunately, this pride may be a dangerous thing. As seen before in Medellin during the 70s when the rural poor arrived to Medellin with high hopes and dreams, only to be met with further un- employment and disillusion, the building of these modern monoliths in neighbourhoods that identify more with a colloquial architecture, can create expectations that the city just cannot uphold.
The destruction of historic architectural areas can have damaging effects for building solidarity. Historic cities are important for understanding cultural diversity and sense of identity which are major components in creating long-lasting stability and a belief in the communities’ reality. (Watson 2006) Depriving urban areas of their local identity which is important in maintaining a sense of belonging that keeps communites together during times of difficulty.
As far as quantifiable factors of change, it has been noted that despite being nominated as among the world’s most resilient cities and to hold the UN Habitat World Forum in 2014, Medellin is still on eof the world’s most unequal cities in terms of economic disparity. Just this week, the same week the Rockerfeller award was anounnced, Eduardo López Moreno, the director of Research and Development of Capacities of the Global Office of UN Habitat, announced that inequality increased by 15% between 1990 and 2010 with Medellin being the city showing the highest rate. He suggests that hoarding of riches and elitism are the root causes and that the social urbanism of the city will have effects in the future but they are yet to be seen. He professes that it is impossible to reduce inequality through policy change if the urban space tends to generate it. He suggests that this will only change with greater public power that can fight against monopolisation of industry. (El Espectador, 2013)
A recent survey carried out by UN Habitat showed the separation of standards of living by neighbourhood. The neighbourhoods in which the social urbanism projects were implemented still represent the areas with the lowest standards of living by some way. These areas also show the highest numbers of housing in precarious condition. (UN Habitat 2008). In the recent weeks, several buildings constructed by construction company OCD, owned by Conservative Party mogul and ex-mayor Alvaro Villegas, in the wealthy neighbourhood of El Poblado, have collapsed, killing several people. This shows the severe lack of building standards that prevail throughout the city due to corruption and lack of resources of the planning department. Building contracts are won by the best connected constructors and they tend to build to mini- mum requirements if even to that. If this can happen in an upper-class area during normal conditions, what would happen in the more precarious, informal areas on the hillsides?
Did 'cleansing' of barrios do more for reducing violence than 'social urbainsm'?
The motivation for this new approach is unclear and it has been argued that it was due to a historical debt to the city’s “long –abandoned poor sectors” (Brand 2013) while others have argued that it was the continuation of a “pacification” campaign initiated by the gang boss Don Berna who carried out ‘cleansing’ of certain ‘barrios’ making it safe for urban redevelopment. (Hylton 2007)
Whether this was a principle motivation or a tactic of the new mayor, it was certainly an enabling factor for the beginning of a shift in urban planning policy. The gangs who carried out the ‘pacification’ processes of the 1990s were also investing in infrastructure to encourage economic development and improve foreign investment in the city, stating that they were creating the ‘necessary climate so that investment returns, particularly foreign investment, which is fundamental if we do not want to be left behind by the engine of globalization’ (Hylton 2007) whereas social urbanism was doing so to improve access to services of those living in marginalised areas putting emphasis on aesthetic quality with the aim of projecting the idea of social inclusion. (Brand 2013)
Conclusion
The branding of Medellin as The Most Educated, The Most Innovative and the most modern city in Colombia may have positive effects in drawing more foreign investment but I argue that there is a danger of repeating history in drawing more and more people from rural areas that will put further pressure on already strained resources and will only benefit the elites and industrialists of Medellin as has happened several times in the past. While this not may have disastrous effects immediately, I can only imagine that the true effects on the city will be seen during times of disaster or serious strain such as will be seen once a potential peace treaty is signed and 350,000 government soldiers and 25,000 guerrilla members will be demobilised. (EFE 2013)
It is plain to see that while social inclusion and urban projects are essential for development and sustainability, great care must be taken in not ‘papering over the cracks’ of a broken society. Tackling the root causes of poverty and social exclusion would be far more beneficial for Medellin in creating a long-term sustainability that will be able to withstand inevitable future shocks. The familiarity of ‘pacification’ used previously by para-political bodies is being implemented yet again. It’s necessary to also develop more programmes for the socio-economic, cultural and educational stability of the users which would transcend the temporality of the physical interventions to build capacity at local levels and permit further sustainability.
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