Connecting slums to the city to create social opportunities and improve Medellin's security

摘要

Medellin, located along the Aburra Valley, is Colombia's second biggest city and is renowned as a commercial capital of merchants "paisa." At the same time, the city had been home to the world's largest drug organization "Medellin Cartel," where the homicide rate per 100,000 inhabitants has exceeded 350 in the 1990s. In the intensifying urban violence, Presidential Committee for Medellin was established so that Medellin's social issued has thus become a national affair, yet the series of urban regeneration projects under "Social Urbanism" initiated by the mayor Sergio Fajardo that commenced in 2004 had brilliantly revived the city, receiving international reputation as "the most innovative city." This Social Urbanism, scaling up the challenge of slums also known as "barrio" to that of the entire city, had implemented both physically intervention, such as development of public facilities and spaces, public transportation, named "Integrated Urban Project (PUI)" and social intervention, such as generation of employment opportunities through "Center of District Business Development (CEDEZO)." These series of urban regeneration projects are also spatially linked in the strategic way.