Medellin's Outdoor Escalator Part of Plan to Remake City

2013-01-02T13:07:00-05:00

The Colombian city of Medellín was once the murder capital of the world and ground zero for Pablo Escobar’s cocaine cartel. But Medellín has lately emerged as a hotspot for urban planning and innovative mass transit. The projects are part of a long-term plan to fight poverty and remake the fortunes of the city.

Another hopeful Medellín design initiative previously featured on Archinect: Student Works: INSITU Medellin

Fighting crime and poverty with design and inclusion

2012-05-18T13:18:00-04:00

Around the world, followers of architecture with a capital A have focused so much of their attention on formal experiments, as if aesthetics and social activism, twin Modernist concerns, were mutually exclusive. But Medellín is proof that they’re not, and shouldn’t be. Architecture, here and elsewhere, acts as part of a larger social and economic ecology, or else it elects to be a luxury, meaningless except to itself

Michael Kimmelman visits Medellín, Colombia and explores how architects and urban planners have used the power of public architecture and public space to remake the fortunes of a city. However, he suggests that it isn't just design but also more mundane changes such as participatory budgeting and civic initiatives that linked education and community development to new infrastructure and glamorous architecture.

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Medellin's Outdoor Escalator Part of Plan to Remake City

Fighting crime and poverty with design and inclusion