Once known as the most dangerous city in the world, this January Medellín in Colombia was named the number one travel destination on the rise in South America. From a world full of darkness and crime, the city has stepped into the light – thanks to its own society, which remembered its values at the darkest moment.
The fifth and last part of the Medellín series by Alejandro Restrepo-Montoya is about the five guiding principles of the Centre of Medellín Urban and Environmental Plan.
Different studies have been carried out regarding the centre of Medellín, with the objective of rehabilitating it and creating a plan to that in coming years will allow for the settlement of more than 80,000 new families. This justifies the construction of new public spaces, the improvement of existing ones, urban development around urban spaces that includes sustainable public transport so that the city can be found in collective spaces designed for the improvement of the quality of life.
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The development of the city in the valley reduced the presence of natural elements, and changed the course of the river over time. Some of the valley’s natural conditions were altered, causing some of its components to disappear. Therefore, the relationship between the centre and its natural origins is one of the starting points when talking about an urban and environmental plan. Being surrounded by mountains and having the presence of the river, the Centre of Medellín Urban and Environmental Plan is also a proposal that extends to other spaces within the city and which has been organised around five guiding principles:
Quality of life
The activity of legal and illegal commercial exchange has displaced housing and other uses of a balanced ecosystem, to give rise to various pathologies that responds to exclusion and impoverishment. Although this territory has some of the oldest arboreal species that also have a patrimonial value, the natural component has also been displaced to give rise to a space transformed by other conditions. In addition to generating new housing through the use of the instruments defined by partial plans, to re-inhabit the centre all the necessary conditions must be considered in order to create a neighbourhood of neighbours, with public spaces where citizens can meet, recreation, culture, education and life. For all these reasons, this principle is the first priority and defines the general approach: the centre of Medellín as a vital space, a place to meet and coexist.
Public space
The streets, parks, squares and urban paths articulate the uses and spaces that make up the interventions in the centre of Medellín. Public space is the place to have dialogue, to traverse or to spend time in. It is the expression of public culture and the way the city generates different relationships with those who inhabit it. Equity and security are indicated in the use of public space, and – in part – the vitality of a city and its territory is expressed in this measurer of citizen encounters. Streets, sidewalks, squares and parks are all places for the construction of a democratic, diverse centre that articulates its urban spaces with the rest of the city. Public space is a scenario of coexistence and security, citizen participation and the construction of citizenship. Through the proposed interventions, it is intended to improve air quality, increase shade with the presence of new plant species in order to improve climatic conditions, increase the area of accessible public spaces by more than 250,000 square meters and guarantee pedestrian and non-motorised mobility, and to articulate these places with the existing buildings and our patrimony, to consolidate diverse public spaces for meeting and coexistence.
Culture
The creative, convoking, analytical, recreational and formative capacity of art and culture plays a dominant role in the conception of the Center of Medellín Urban and Environmental Plan. Its actions revitalisee public space and give it a meaning associated with the enjoyment of the collective space. Traditional cultural institutions and many others that seek to have their headquarters in the mansions and premises of the centre, and the students and communities that walk the streets of the commune are one of the most important assets that deserve to be summoned to add ideas – once again – through their messages and actions. It is necessary to provide a special place for the patrimonial wealth and identities that the centre of Medellín gathers together. The interaction between times and uses, the generational dialogue, the reuse and re-signification of history as a structuring axis of the collective space will be one of the priorities of the Plan, due to its capacity for communication, inspiration and commitment.
Education
The centre of the city is one of the areas that has managed to summon one of the most populous and active student populations, with 120,000 prople. The summons that are glimpsed from this principle reach all possible forms of family in contemporary societies, ideals and dreams, thought and analysis. The challenge that arises from these lines in educational terms is the consolidation of a pedagogical centre; structured from knowledge, and from the exercise of teaching and learning. The corridors that communicate the classrooms of these educational institutions must be their streets, sidewalks, squares and parks; a sensitive, aware centre of education as an activity that strengthens individual and collective growth. The Plan also aims to create public programmes and projects for early childhood, recreation and sports. The centre of Medellín has not been considered permanently, and with the proportions that its importance demands in the interventions that the city has achieved in terms of integral human development and that – in a joint vision – has partially marginalised it from the contemporary dialogues and actions around citizenship, which hopes to base its relationships on co-responsibility and trust.
Mobility
The convergence of the different transport systems that the city has managed to build in the last three decades has been one of the events that gives the centre its commercial capacity. A lot is still missing in trying to find a balance that benefits the pedestrian and his/her use of public space from a principle of order and respect. By organising mobility systems based on the criteria of safety, efficiency and the articulation of collective space will establish new orders and routes for pedestrians, alternative transport systems (such as bicycles), and public and private vehicles. In this case, establishing interfaces between private interests and public initiatives is one of the underpinnings necessary.
Steps into the right direction
Consequently, the articulation and implementation of the ordering principles contained in the Center of Medellín Urban and Environmental Plan generates the use and enjoyment of the centre and its urban space as a place for coexistence and diversity. The integral improvement of our centre is an activity directed to human situations, achieved through urban planning and architecture and arising from social needs, the vocation of public spaces and the history of the city and its identity.
The issue of housing that begins to redensify these places is very present in strategic planning in these urban centralities and the integral urban projects follow their course on the suburbs of the city. To this end, new lines for the Metro Cable and the Tram have been designed together with the improvement of other urban spaces. All these conditions of contemporary Medellín are part of a city that continues to look to the future with hope and that continues to think that inhabiting the city in its centralities and peripheries is a task that must continue to be carried out in order to bring some communities closer together, to generate recreational spaces where leisure, entertainment, fun and the exchange of thought will improve the quality of life.
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It’s not over yet
Medellín continues to be illuminated by the value of the illusions and the ability to build our dreams. We have not finished the task yet; it will continue to be carried out continuously. We are aware that the problems are not over yet. It is undeniable that Medellín continues to suffer from situations of violence, but the work that has been maintained for generations has reported a condition of life that has strengthened hope.
Medellín has built its present state from the consecutiveness of its government plans, from the observation of social schemes and the evaluation of the social intention and priority to improve the condition and quality of life within the communities; to build the living spaces that our city has today.
That hope of belonging to, and living in, an ideal city is still possible. For this, the continuity of the commitment of its inhabitants, their critical and creative capacity and the will of our leaders will be fundamental. The purpose of governing citizens to provide security, well-being and growth to communities will be fundamental in the planning of urban strategies.
Thus, the city continues to rely on citizens meeting in its public spaces, with environmental quality, with environmental and sustainable hills, parks, rivers, corridors and road junctions; places where life passes by, where education and culture remain fundamental pillars of our society.
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More than just a city
Medellín is both neighbourhood and life, water and mountains. It is also made up of dreams and hopes. It is the place for meeting friends, it is the street and the square, it is the park with its memories. It is the history – alive and present – of a city built among everyone. These reflections that explain the intervention in different physical spaces of the city from an urban and environmental perspective also aim to generate questions in order to define what the most appropriate strategies could be for continuing with these processes over time, for definging their conceptualisation and their development. Each intervention in the physical is the pretext for improving the quality of life of our communities. We dream of a city where one can travel with tranquillity, harmony and tolerance; values that will allow us to look forward to the future without forgetting about our history.
First part of the Medellín series.
Second part.
Third part.
Fourth part.
Once known as the most dangerous city in the world, this January Medellín in Colombia was named the number one travel destination on the rise in South America. From a world full of darkness and crime, the city has stepped into the light – thanks to its own society, which remembered its values at the darkest moment.
The fourth part of the Medellín series by Alejandro Restrepo-Montoya is about Medellín’s interest of the consideration of its tutelary hills, the integral social and physical intervention in its centre and the alternatives for the generation of new conditions of sustainable mobility.
The present and future Medellín
This present and future Medellín is the result of what we have built and will be the consequence of our actions as a community. Dreams and permanent work allow us to continue building the history of a city that, from its deepest illusions, has approached the community, has improved its living conditions and through education, culture, urban space and social cohesion has established a path to the future. In the city of today we continue to consider that any model of development must consider the processes of growth, the natural conditions, the characteristics of our topography and the dreams of society. It is necessary to continue with the creation of public space in the settlements where our communities live, to plan the redensification of the centre of the city, to propose housing plans that accompany urban development and to create new public space along the axis of the Medellín River, in the tutelary hills, in the centre of the city and in our neighbourhoods.
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New urban processes
An urban development project on the banks of the Medellín River has begun to generate public space with high environmental quality that integrate the eastern and western banks of the city. In different neighbourhoods located on the outskirts, the public space that surrounds the water tanks that have supplied the city for years has been returned to the community. Today, these elements are surrounded by open space and have generated new possibilities for the development of the public space around the water supply facilities.
The current political administration, led by Mayor Federico Gutiérrez Zuluaga, has proposed the development of new, environmentally friendly public spaces, new sustainable mobility programmes, the integral intervention of the centre of Medellín, urban and environmental intervention in its tutelary hills and has defined conditions for the creation of collective spaces that allow us to continue integrating the community into urban processes.
In accord with nature
In these urban conditions, continuing with the dynamics of intervention in the peripheral territories and accompanying urban development simultaneously around the sustainable redensification of its centre has all been proposed. Increasing environmental quality in all the urban spaces has been suggested, as has the establishment of principles of ecological connectivity by linking the brooks and considering an increase in vegetation as an urban structure. The city today is oriented to the consideration of its tutelary hills as permanent flora-and-fauna repositories, to the integral social and physical intervention in its centre, to continue the natural approach along the edges of the river and the consolidation of alternatives for the generation of new conditions of sustainable mobility. A plan to articulate the natural components of the city through an urban ecological network defines the El Volador, Nutibara and La Asomadera hills as natural spaces from which the environmental condition of the city can be reclassified. The plan also proposes the creation of urban spaces through environmental corridors that establish natural connectivity between different parts of the city.
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The ecological and spatial integration of the city centre with its surroundings has been proposed through the development of 30 urban corridors with characteristics and conditions of environmental improvement, where more than 15,000 trees and other plants will be added. An intervention project in 40 parts in the centre of Medellín links them with the urban space through environmental paths that place a priority on pedestrians and non-motorized vehicles. These spaces, recognised as neighbourhood centres that attract families and visitors, where some of the most representative institutions of the city have been at home for years, are part of an ecological network that is linked to the hills, to the urban structure, to the patrimony and to natural components. In the perimeters of each park and square, the patrimony determines aspects and conditions necessary for the rehabilitation of these spaces. Therefore, urban intervention according to the regulations established by the corresponding dependencies must be driven, promoted and assisted by an Urban and Environmental Plan. This should allow for improvement of the use of public space through the development of new projects that maintain and stimulate the presence and growth of the institutions that have historically occupied these sectors of the city.
First part of the Medellín series.
Second part of the Medellín series.
Third part of the Medellín series.
Once known as the most dangerous city in the world, this January Medellín in Colombia was named the number one travel destination on the rise in South America. From a world full of darkness and crime, the city has stepped into the light – thanks to its own society, which remembered its values at the darkest moment.
The third part of the Medellín series by Alejandro Restrepo-Montoya is about new transport infrastructures and integral urban projects that allowed the city to be woven and integrated through its streets and public spaces.
The city of the new century
One of the most remarkable and profound thoughts that resulted from reflections about creating a better city was that a historical social debt had to be balanced, one that concerned the peripheral neighbourhoods and the city’s more distant places. Those places where the State was not seen, and where violence among the inhabitants and youth gave rise to to the illusion of making money in exchange for their own lives.
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In these places, where violence had found ideal conditions due to a lack of opportunities and promises made to find a better living condition at any cost, the political administration arrived with its social development programmes, new infrastructure, education and culture. In places where previously there had only been space for violence, spaces were created for the community to meet.
Efficient connection with other spaces
The city approached its most remote neighbourhoods by connecting them to the centre viah new means of transport, such as the Medellín Metro, which linked the south with the north and the centre with the west in the mid-1990s. Later, other transport systems – such as the Metro cables to the northeast and western centre of the city – were planned in order to join with the layout of the metro and generate new connections with the most remote neighbourhoods, where a lack of accessibility had separated the inhabitants from urban structures. The articulation of these transportation systems allowed the inhabitants of those communities to have a faster, more efficient connection with other spaces in the city.
Over the years, in the surroundings of these transport infrastructures, integral urban projects were built that allowed the city to be woven and integrated through its streets and public spaces. New urban connectivities, educational spaces, schools, cultural spaces and other spaces, such as parks, new streets and squares, were planned and constructed so that the city’s inhabitants could meet each other.
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The city and inhabitants of these neighbourhoods found in these public spaces places to see how life goes on. In their buildings they found other activities that had not been close to the environment they inhabited for years. Through public invitations and international architectural competitions, different urban spaces, new libraries, kindergartens and educational institutions were designed and built. The most beautiful projects were part of the urban development in the neighbourhoods occupied by those communities that – for years – had lived with violence. Thus, various sectors of the city began to intervene in the centre and in the north on the eastern and western slopes through the development of new transport systems and public spaces that articulated the life of the community.
Medellín’s social and urban transformation is the result of the reflections of the community, of different social and institutional sectors and academia, and of the political decisions made to improve the living conditions of the community.
In the new century the city began adding to these interventions in transport infrastructures with the construction of new public spaces and buildings for culture and education, where different activities are still part of community life.
Nearly 20 kindergartens were built as a result of public architectural competitions, where – through participation in open invitations – the guild of architects and urban planners could propose for improving the quality of life within these communities.
A new mental structure
These activities were followed by physical interventions and specific improvements in more than 200 educational institutions; open space and sports venues were adapted to receive the South American Games in 2011. New connections – such as the Ayacucho tram in the centre of Medellín – were proposed. New Metro cable lines continue to be built and the city has intervened in different ways to benefit the communities that inhabit it. This city of the new century brought about a reduction in rates of violence through institutional presence, accompanied by the quality of urban space and the generation of meeting places where the citizens of tomorrow are educated according to modern parameters. We still believe that a child who takes a pencil or plays a musical instrument will never take up a weapon in order to attack his community. This way of thinking has allowed the inhabitants of the city to develop a new mental structure.
Through education, culture, care for families, high-quality public space and attention to the community, profound changes have been generated in the way of feeling and inhabiting a city that, until a few years ago, walked in the shadows, but – through culture, education, hope, dreams and the realisation of those dreams – has changed the mentality of its inhabitants and has improved the quality of life in our communities. The city that was developed and planned from the early XX Century, that city of industrial splendour that also attracted activities of illegality, that city reinvented from culture, education and public space, has given way to the city we now have today.
Click here for the first part of our Medellín series.
And here for part two.
He was named lighting designer of the year at the 2017 German Lighting Design Awards: Thomas Mika, board member and executive management team member at Reflexion AG, a Swiss lighting design firm. We met when working on the latest Topos issue “Darkness” and spoke with him about the key to success for a lighting designer.
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Mr Mika, you founded Reflexion AG along with a partner in 2001. However, you really don’t have any experience in lighting design and actually studied business. How does someone with a background in business get involved in lighting design?
That’s not entirely true. Yes, I studied business, however I worked at a lighting firm as a student alongside my studies. Working there I learned to understand light as such. However, it’s my background in business that made it possible in the first place to found a company. I analysed the market situation and realised: there was a service missing in the lighting design segment. So I offered it.
It was that easy?
Actually, yes (he says laughing). I had this idea during my studies. Without a care and with an eye to the future I got to work buoyed by an entrepreneurial drive.
And everything that you know today about light and lighting design you learned on the job?
A lot of it yes, however I also took graduate courses at the TU Berlin. Maybe it’s the case that a little theoretical background is needed after all.
Sounds like a success story. What was behind the sale in 2014?
My own personal goals. I asked myself whether I wanted to still be carrying the full responsibility until 65, whether I wanted to be an entrepreneur who rocks it alone with his 25 employees or whether it really would make sense to have a business partner in the background who could offer me a certain degree of freedom. I chose the second option.
How do you get projects at Reflexion?
As part of competitions that we enter in collaboration with architects and planners as well as direct inquiries. But I’ll be honest: The more established you are as a lighting firm, the more you step back from the competitive environment. They are simply so time-consuming and resource-intensive.
Reflexion AG took over the lighting design for the project “The Circle” at Zurich Airport – a multi-million Euro project that challenges and fascinates Thomas Mika and his team with a diversity of scales.
You also offer consulting services. How should we picture that?
In addition to our core service – lighting design consulting – we also receive supervision and consulting commissions on occasion and provide support to general contractors and builders during the planning process. In addition, we have a daylight studio where it’s possible to perform daylight simulations using physical models. In principle, we notice that a great degree of uncertainty has arisen along with technological change, digitisation and the development of LED and OLED technologies. Planning requires experts who take lamps and special luminaires into measurement labs and test them. And that’s who we are.
That requires the right kind of know-how. What does it take as a lighting design firm to always stay up-to-date?
You give your employees a kick in the rear over and over again (laughing). But seriously: I believe that our employees have to engage with the world and keep pace with the times. And they’re doing that. They are intrinsically motivated, want to progress and work on projects that are enjoyable. In addition, we take advantage of the size of our office. We have the attention of the industry and a regular supply of news, people approach us and also inform us about new developments.
Speaking of development. Where do you see Reflexion AG in five years?
The truth? I’ll probably be observing it from afar. For me, it’s important for the AG to be shaped by a new generation. I want to pass it along. It was a great time, but even more is possible.
“If you can’t express light in words, then you’re really already lost.”
In an interview, you said that a lighting designer always needs to know exactly what the task is and what the client wants. I think that has to be difficult. Light and the ideas that one associates with it are difficult to express in words. That means that you have to be a communications expert in addition to being a lighting designer…
At the start of every project I have to grapple with what the people who will be directly affected, the clients or users want. However, the problem is that in many cases they don’t know themselves. The path to creating the ideal lighting concept is often bumpy. There are ups and downs and as a lighting designer I have to moderate the process – and yes this does require communications skills. Especially because we’re never just talking about technology, but generally about atmosphere, aesthetics, rhythms and the variety of different states of mind. If you can’t express that in words, then you’re really already lost.
So is that the key to success?
Yes, the greatest skill that a lighting designer needs to have is the ability to take the client’s idea and draw a picture out of words that aids the client and the builder in making decisions for other parts of the project. It’s pretty hard to explain…
What if you, as the expert, believe that the customer is going in the completely wrong direction?
In that case, you need to correct him. Subjective preferences always leave room for differences, however with the help of the right questions it’s possible to bring the client’s ideas in line with technical requirements. I can’t light an office the same way as a living room. Once the rough concept has been set, I can expand on and customise the design.
And how do you do that?
We have started working with a very simple diagram – with quadrants. Using these, the client can define what lighting he imagines. In this case, the scale runs from hard to soft light and highly-integrated or independent lighting. We ask the client: Where do you want to go? Do you want to see the lighting, do you want to perceive it, does it represent furnishing for you or should it simply function in the background? We design the room based on this feedback.
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I can picture that easily in the case of a single-family home where your client is also the user. But what is your approach when you can’t ask the user? For example, if it’s the public and you are designing a project for a public space?
In that case, I believe success lies in coordination with the planning. From our perspective, it has the highest priority of design. When we work on a project together with an architect or a landscape architect, we follow their lead. Of course we are part of the discussion, make our contributions, but at the end of the day we don’t make the decisions but instead provide support for the concept through our lighting design. When engage in a direct dialectic dialogue with the planners, you can assume that – even for a project intended for a public space – the results will be in harmony and appealing to the users.
“For me, it’s unfortunate that darkness so often has negative connotations.”
In other words, a communications expert. You also said that you picture the room in the dark before you start your design work and then let in the light little by little. Do you take this same approach when designing lighting for urban, open spaces?
Yes, and it’s really not all that easy. I imagine the specific urban space with its surfaces and space. I know what the space feels like in person, based on its granularity and proportions and I then think about where the light needs to be. For example, when a design includes a tram stop, I think about where the people who are getting off will be headed and where they will need light. I picture the space, the urban environment and, in my mind, distribute the light based on the requirements – sometimes higher and sometimes lower. In other words, I really imagine the lighting mood and scenes.
And in an enclosed space?
That’s much simpler. In that case, you can stand in a corner and think about where the light should come from and whether it should be cool or warm. You just have to start somewhere.
So, can it be said that at the outset of every project you’re in the dark? What else does darkness mean to you?
If you look at it that way, you’re right. For me, it’s unfortunate that darkness so often has negative connotations. Like the saying “Where there is light, there is also shadow”. Because light only becomes interesting when it makes shadows and defines shapes. I’m fascinated by the interdependence between light and darkness, the bipolarity, the beautiful systematic – then really that’s what’s interesting, not just the light but really the back and forth between light and dark.
“Light only becomes interesting when it makes shadows and defines shapes.”
Can I use this transition to quantify the quality of lighting design? Or put another way: Is it even possible to quantify that?
It’s absolutely impossible to quantify. It’s measurable normatively, that’s the good news. The bad news is that perceptions and subjectivity are always layered on top of the normative level. That’s because our perception of light is shaped to a great extent by subconscious perceptions and experience. There are certain parameters that can be used to evaluate the quality of design, however when you’re looking at the nuances, the dramatic staging, the degree of contrast, how much softness, how much hardness and how much light there is as such, all of that is subjective in any event.
Does that mean that you as an expert never stop critiquing lighting design?
On the contrary. However, I’m not the fiercest critic of our own work. I’m really never satisfied and that’s important – because otherwise you can’t progress.
For a total of 354 days, Bears Ears was a National Monument of 540 hectares until President Donald Trump abrogated Barack Obama’s Presidential Proclamation and reduced the protected areas by 85 percent. Some see this as a new war for federal control of Utah’s land – but not our author, Sean Michael. In TOPOS #102 Darkness, he reported about the Bears Ears. Here is the full version of the article.
“Speed”, J.B. Jackson opined, helps us to “re-establish a responsiveness—almost an intimacy—with a more spacious, less tangible aspect of nature.”
Were that always the case, the pace with which newly inducted Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke visited the ochre landscape of Bears Ears National Monument in Utah’s vast southeast corner, and in mere weeks later, recommended a reduction of its 547,074 ha, would suggest his intimacy was short-lived. Operating on directions from President Trump, and perhaps equally the wishes of the state’s most influential political voices—Senator Hatch, Rep. Bishop, Senator Lee, Rep. Chaffetz, all staunch Republicans—the outcome was considered a fait accompli. The die, in fact, was likely cast in the excess and hubris President Obama demonstrated through his monument designations (224M hectares), as he continued the history of Democrats establishing major land protection. The lone question most were asking was how grave the impending reduction would be, and the parlay it might represent in a larger reproach to earlier federal land protections.
Ironically, as both a Utahan and an avid explorer of our state’s canyon country, I had barely a clue where Bears Ears lay. And so, in 2016 and 2017, having studied the Monument further, I ventured there by motorcycle and later via Land Cruiser. Defined by redrock and Pinyon-juniper forest, it’s typical Southwest “4 Corners” landscape: jaw-dropping geology, rarely another vehicle, and a sense that we are strangers in this quiet land of hidden mysteries. The warnings of famed desert author Ed Abbey and wilderness guide Kent Frost echoed in my mind as the sun and temperature correspondingly fell, and the firmament of dark skies emerged over a warming campfire. Both desert rats and prophets, those men warned of the danger and allure of this country. And both warned of how competing interests vie for its exploitation.
“The question, however, is whether the alternative future the states propose is better.”
Battles over the West and its lands—most recently with Bears Ears, now renamed Shásh Jaa’ National Monument, but going back for centuries—afford a revealing look into both our history and psyche as Americans. Foisted from ancestral owners, the lands argued over today tell of a hypocrisy writ large. Private property advocates, such as the hero/criminal Cliven Bundy and most Western U.S. politicians, are unwavering in their belief in private property protections, and continue to cry “land grab”, calling for the federal government to abandon claims to the acreage once stolen from Shoshone, Blackfeet, Pueblo, Navajo, Utes and others, and to pass title to the states. When one considers that within Utah’s boundaries over 66% of the land is federally controlled (second only to Nevada, at 81%), it’s understandable that a governor or legislator would want less meddling from Washington, DC. The question, however, is whether the alternative future the states propose is better.
Wallace Stegner, the incomparable chronicler of the Intermountain West, observed in Wolf Willow (1973), ”Anyone who has lived on a frontier knows the inescapable ambivalence of the old-fashioned American conscience, for he has first renewed himself in Eden and set about converting it into the lamentable modern world.” Mormon pioneers both ran from modernity and to the oasis they hoped to find beyond Illinois mobs. Their arrival in the Salt Lake Valley would spell an end to their remarkable journey, yet no true escape from the meddling of others, and the federal government in particular.
Though successful at taking land from the resident tribes, Mormon church leader and prophet Brigham Young and his followers were less effective at wresting control of the vast territory they sought in proposing the “State of Deseret” (encompassing current Utah, Nevada, over half of Arizona, and fully a third of California and Colorado) in 1849. That snub by the U.S. government forms an essential yet largely forgotten backcloth against which these contemporary land battles wage. More evident, the sense of property ownership “rights”, forged in our forefathers’ view of Manifest Destiny, lives on. And influence of both is strong, at least ‘out here in the West’.
“Only time and Tweets and the courts will tell what lies ahead.”
Yet more than ever before, westerners today are a dichotomous breed. This was evidenced by the factious split in the outdoor recreation industry over threats to Bears Ears, and the resulting imbroglio over the continued presence of its Outdoor Retailer Show in Salt Lake City. Such battles are far from over. Barely a year into an incomprehensible presidency, new lines are being drawn in the war over environmental protection. Even the seemingly sacrosanct Antiquities Act, the basis upon which presidents from Roosevelt to Trump have created (and now rewritten) national monuments, is poised to see a skirmish. What lies ahead? Only time and Tweets and the courts will tell. But of this I am sure; to love this land is to have spent time in it, to have Utah’s red dust infused in your gear as well as your soul. Longing for a land alone, however, is not enough. The devil lies in the details of how the land will be managed, for whom, and for what gain.
Dr. Sean E. Michael is Head of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning, Utah State University.
Find out more about Topos #102 Darkness.
Once known as the most dangerous city in the world, this January Medellín in Colombia was named the number one travel destination on the rise in South America. From a world full of darkness and crime, the city has stepped into the light – thanks to its own society, which remembered its values at the darkest moment.
The second part of the Medellín series by Alejandro Restrepo-Montoya is about the drug history of Medellín and its effects on society and urban development.
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The illegal economy of drug trafficking generated other social dynamics and led to acts of violence in the city that grew over the years. Drug trafficking generated an attractive economy for criminal groups that organised themselves around this activity and – as a consequence – the city changed its planned development process due to an environment of violence that grew over the years.
The spiral of illegal business
The illegality of drug trafficking attracted new capital and profoundly damaged the part of society that was rapidly transforming its values. The Medellín of those years was blind in its march to a stage of violence that began in the 1970s; while in the 1980s and 1990s it reached its highest crime rates. The offer of new opportunities and economic privileges from crime reached the less well-to-do sectors and the poorest neighborhoods (barrios), captivating those who did not have opportunities and leading to blame of a system that provided a scarcity of options. The lack of education, coupled with the attraction of money, made many groups of young people join this army of terror. Large groups of our society fell in love with the illegal activities and criminal transactions that represented – in a short time – large sums of money. This crisis, which began in the 1970s, worsened in the 1980s and 1990s. The rates of insecurity and homicide in Medellín reached alarming figures. According to Bogotá’s El Tiempo newspaper, 1991 was the most violent year in four decades in the city, with 7,273 murders; a rate of 266 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.
The drug war against the National Government was open and direct. This crisis led us to position ourselves as one of the most violent cities in the world. On 11 August 2008, the portal razonpublica.com indicated that “in 1983 a period of nine years began, lasting until 1991, in which violence grew rapidly, and the number of homicides almost tripled (increasing 290%)”. The same article also included another alarming figure: “Between 1983 and 1991, the rate went from 34 to 79 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, the period of the greatest growth.”
The city had reached its most crucial point. Violence and a change in the perception of values had caused profound damage to the social structures of the city.
At that moment, when darkness and disillusion had reached every point of the city, a light opened to recover a society consumed by a scarcity of values, by violence and illegality. The illumination of thought and dialogue made society begin to organise itself and to ask about fundamental values and about life at the darkest moment.
This initiative, driven by reflections from academia, from art and culture, and from different sectors of society, generated other alternatives for public discussion, and citizen and political movements that expressed the feeling of a community that had been overwhelmed by illegality, crime and the loss of values during three decades of violence that overshadowed the urban development that had consolidated the city.
The light in the middle of the crisis
Civil society and academia were precursors of a reflection that had political consequences and brought about change at the most difficult moment. At that time, when the crisis of values was deepening, society began to organise itself, generating deep reflections about the meaning of life in our community.
Academia, in the midst of the years of crisis, had already provided different reflections in the field of social issues. In the field of science, academics continued research processes and the production of new knowledge, and also increased urban development from the faculties of architecture. In its classrooms during the 1980s and 1990s, academic proposals were made concerning models of city occupation, new urban development, the role of the river, the role of the hills in the urban structure, the planning of growth on the river banks, the re-densification of the city’s central area, the study of environmental conditions and urban structuring based on natural components and transport. These topics were subjects of permanent reflection among the academic community, and these ideas and proposals had great social repercussions.
Among the many actors and with the participation of different sectors of the city, other conditions began to be perceived as a result of these reflections. Academia formed permanent-dialogue groups composed of teachers and students who were also part of the policies of the city’s mayoral candidates, who put into practice the theories that were developed and, in their administration, accompanied several of these university professors who were part of these reflections.
A succession of local governments, from different political parties – but with a unity of purpose concerning social welfare and urban development – began to build the city we have today. Although this is unfinished, and some problems persist, hope has been cultivated.
Click here for the third part of our series.
And the first part of our Medellín series can be found here.
Once known as the most dangerous city in the world, this January Medellín in Colombia was named the number one travel destination on the rise in South America. From a world full of darkness and crime, the city has stepped into the light – thanks to its own society, which remembered its values at the darkest moment.
The first part of the Medellín series by Alejandro Restrepo-Montoya is about the history and urban development of the city.
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Medellín is in the middle of the mountains, in a valley where water comes from the hills and crosses the city from south to north. The growth of the city advanced on terrain that originally had a close, deep relationship with nature.
The city is located close to the Equator in western Colombia, in a valley in the Andes mountains at 1444 meters above sea level. Founded on March 2, 1616 and named Villa de Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria de Medellín on November 2, 1675, the original settlement of indigenous villages grew during the following centuries into settlements along the river as it flowed through what is now the city. Between 1890 and 1930 the city began a growth process that was consolidated with the construction of the Antioquia Railroad, as well as its first public spaces, religious and administrative buildings and new housing.
The desire to improve
Medellín has experienced a growth process accompanied by massive inter-regional immigration that generated another dynamic in its relations with the rest of the country. The desire to live in better conditions attracted enterprising people who promoted urban development and industry. The idea of progress was imposed and – at that moment of splendour – foreign citizens and companies were established, and with their capital they promoted the urban development of the city. Between 1900 and 1920, industry, which generated economic progress and attracted new investors and residents, generated (along with other factors) permanent and planned urban growth. The city was the place that evidenced the desire of the inhabitants of those times to improve themselves, and as a result sustained, organised growth processes made it more attractive. In 1920 the layout of the roads that structured transport in the city began, and in 1925 electric trams began to operate. In 1931 Aviation Field (today, the Enrique Olaya Herrera Airport) was built, and in 1940 the channelisation and rectification of the Medellín River bed was undertaken and the city consolidated its growth throughout its valley.
According to José Orlando Melo in The Three Threads of Modernization, “Medellín had about 65,000 inhabitants by 1912 and 145,000 by 1930. Urban development was marked by essential physical investments: the installation of electricity, construction of a telephone network, a covered aqueduct, trams and cars, the first large recreation park, two theatres with a total seating capacity of 8,000, and the arrival of the train.”
The accelerated growth of the population generated the expansion of housing in an urban space that began to spread – in a planned manner in some cases, but also with informal settlements – into the mountains surrounding the valley.
The industrial city: the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s
The growth process generated a series of favourable conditions for the construction of different industrial settlements and for the strengthening of the economy. In 1949, architects and urban planners Paul Lester Wiener and José Luis Sert developed a Pilot Plan for Medellín, that – at different scales – structured the city around the river, and defined land use and road layouts for the articulation of the city. The plan also proposed the location of industry in the south, noting that the winds came from the north. It proposed the construction of new residential units, commercial areas, green areas, social services and a Civic Center on the eastern bank of the river as the city’s main administrative space.
The model of development proposed expansion toward the north and the south; it proposed the construction of roads and consolidated the Center Plan (Plan Centro) as the city’s administrative and institutional space. With the arrival of the automobile, the adaptation of roads opened up part of the urban fabric for the construction of ring roads that aimed to link the centre of the city with its outskirts. The industrial splendour and the urban development of a metropolis in constant growth presaged the arrival of new times and new developments.
Darkness in the midst of prosperity
Given the urban conditions and the possibilities offered by a city in constant development, society relied on industrial activity as one of the pillars of its growth. During the 1970s, some manifestations of emerging illegal economies began to become apparent in the city. Contraband, tax evasion, insecurity linked to the process of accelerated growth that also caused unplanned settlements on the periphery, and the desire for economic growth at any cost presaged the arrival of illegal activities at the moment in which urban development continued with its building activity.
