"Medellín developed a model that many cities around the world could learn from. For instance, the local energy company, EPM, is neither private nor nationalised but owned by the city, and it was decided that its profits (about $450m a year) should be fed back into the city. Where most mayors, including London's, have to lobby central government for money, Medellín's have tremendous spending power. Alongside this public-private partnership, the mayors have actively sought out the advice of an architecture community trained in the problems of their own city. Again, this is all too rare. In a short space of time, Medellín has turned itself into a model Latin American city, with good transport, dynamic public spaces, new schools and a culture of civic architecture. The real design project, however, was one of social organisation, with a section of society grouping together and deciding to rewrite their city's story."

"I was recently asked to do a conversation/talk with Janette Sadik-Kahn, our commissioner of transportation, at the  AIA New York Center for Architecture Center (American Institute of Architects).  Since I imagined there might be some architects or designers in the audience, I took some time to share some of my notes and photographs from my summer Latin American bikes and cities tour. I also took this opportunity to finally organize some of the notes I had taken and post them. So here it is, many months late."

While in the last years, the global city became primary site of economic consumption & cultural display, local neighborhoods in margins of such centers of economic power remained sites of cultural production…peripheral communities & neighborhoods where new economies are emerging & new social, cultural & environmental configurations are taking place as catalysts to produce alternative urban policies towards a more inclusive social sustainability…<br />
<br />
…continues to engage pressing regional socio-economic, urban & environmental conditions across San Diego-Tijuana border. These meetings have been focusing on a critical analysis of local conflicts in order to re-evaluate meaning of shifting global dynamics, across geo-political boundaries, natural resources & marginal communities…will focus on Neighborhood as a Site of Production, investigating practices in arts, architecture, science & humanities that work w/ peripheral neighborhoods worldwide…"

"The cable cars were originally built to connect Medellin's poorest neighborhoods to the rest of the city, but they've drawn tourists with their spectacular views. In February, the city extended the original cable car line from Santo Domingo Savio, which has struggled with drug violence, to Parque Arvi. Santo Domingo is the site of one of the many libraries that former mayor Sergio Fajardo had built to revitalize neighborhoods throughout the city. Designed by architect Giancarlo Mazzanti, the black three-building complex stands out on the mountain slope."

"Estas arquitecturas representan una novedosa forma de hacer ciudad y política, una nueva generación de arquitectos de cara al mundo preocupados por desarrollar discursos y arquitecturas más acordes con el momento histórico en que vivimos. Son arquitecturas que comprenden y trabajan con los lugares en que se insertan, con la cultura a la cual pertenecen; arquitecturas mestizas, múltiples y respetuosas de las diferencias, de las diversas formas del hacer arquitectónico. Estas arquitecturas no pretenden desarrollar un discurso totalizador y único, ni imponer una sola forma de hacer o pensar. Son arquitecturas incluyentes en las cuales se reúne lo global y lo local de manera transversal, actuando al mismo tiempo con un sentido social y urbano. Estas arquitecturas múltiples y experimentales son el espejo arquitectónico en el cual se refleja una sociedad cada vez más abierta, inclusiva, y tolerante, basada en las políticas pluralistas y respetuosas definidas por…Sergio Fajardo."

"Continuing his critique, Fajardo argues that poor communities should not receive infrastructural 'crumbs' wrapped around claims of meeting basic needs. In short, these communities deserve the best from the professions that are serving them. In architecture that means, for Fajardo and Mazzanti, to be able to bring high aesthetic values to the comunas. The larger point, I think, is that architects are at their best when they work by closely looking at historical precedent and discourse, even in a context like Medellin. The challenge is finding ways that the constraints and challenges found in the comunas can become opportunities to further design ideas and the profession itself."

"In Colombia, an eccentric former Bogota mayor may win the presidency. Antanas Mockus, the son of Lithuanian immigrants, is trying to succeed Alvaro Uribe, a U.S.-backed hard-liner who was prevented from running for a third term. However, Mockus, whose trademark is an Amish-style beard, is better known for his antics than his politics."

"Medellín, in the end, is more than an isolated urban success story or an example of a city that has managed to bridge contemporary architecture's great divide. It also offers a timely model for Los Angeles and other cities that have long turned almost exclusively to New York and Europe for ideas about how architecture ought to look — and how cities ought to operate.

"when two city officials in Medellín, Colombia – now former mayor Sergio Fajardo and former director of urban projects Alejandro Echeverri – launched a plan to rejuvenate the entire city, once one of the world’s most notorious drug and murder capitals, the bar seemed almost insurmountable.

"In the meantime, to get a feel for what this fascination with messiness means, consider the example of an ongoing project in Medellín, Colombia – begun by the city’s former mayor, Sergio Fajardo. Facing urban poverty and crime in the enormous slums around his city, the mayor chose to ignore the possibility of Big Bang renovation. Instead he decided to invest money and energy in the erection of precious cultural infrastructure in the very middle of the poorest parts of his home. Beautiful modern libraries, schools, and cable cars now connect the slums to the rest of Medellín; but what is most interesting is that his additions are not walled off from the existing urban landscape."