MEDELLÍN & BOGOTÁ

     The transformation of Medellín and Bogotá is, in my opinion, a valuable example of how theories of human and social development can actually be brought into practice. Considered the “deadliest city in the world,” Medellín was once crowded with violent people as a natural consequence of the high levels of drug trafficking. In recent years, however, murder and kidnapping have been reduced considerably as the government’s spending on educational opportunities has increased. Mayors of both cities have developed efficient plans to reconfigure/improve the public space, pedestrian zones, and the coverage of domestic services, among other strategies. Enrique Peñalosa, who served as a mayor of Bogotá from 1998 until 2001, was considered a hero. He dedicated himself to carry out the construction and maintenance of roads as well as the design of a more well-organized transportation system and an educational campaign. In an attempt to make Bogotá a model of urban renewal, Peñalosa took on a creative operation or “the economics of happiness,” establishing the Día sin Carro and trying to infuse a new optimistic aura to the process of revitalization of the city.

     Architecture, on the other hand, played an important role in the social and urban restoration of Medellín. As described in the novel La Virgen de los Sicarios by Fernando Vallejo, the city had become a dangerous place with constant assaults and assassinations. The youths were ready to shoot one another for whatever reasons: whistling, discussions, misunderstandings in the streets. Both Vallejo’s novel and Barbet Schroeder’s movie, inspired by the book, are impregnated by a distressing feeling of hopelessness, as if the city’s desperate situation were a permanent curse. And the situation did change, though. Through a new method of doing politics, Sergio Fajardo grew to be regarded as the city’s most popular mayor. He increased government spending on education, public space, and the designs of beautiful architectural projects within the poorest neighborhoods. Great opportunities altered the course and the “curse.” Architecture impacted urban planning and transformed into a vehicle for bettering society. The rate of homicides decreased as a long stream of libraries, schools, parks and other educational and recreational places were created. It seems that hope, after all, does exist, and it has been rightly installed in the minds of the Colombian people.