Medellín as a Mass Transit Success Story

[phantom power]

My bold.

Francis Fukuyama and Seth Colby write about the incredible turnaround in Medellín, Colombia focusing on the mayor’s theory that improving the physical environment in the city’s poorest neighborhoods has made a huge difference:

The most striking feature of Fajardo’s approach was his plan to erect high-quality public architecture in Medellín’s poorest neighborhoods. “Architecture sends an important political message,” he says. “When you go to the poorest neighborhood and build the city’s most beautiful building, that gives a sense of dignity.” Fajardo and his colleagues believed in social urbanism: the idea that modernist buildings and transportation systems of the sort Libia Gomez now enjoys would help bridge the enormous gulf of distrust separating the poor from mainstream society. In barrios like Santo Domingo and Comuna 13, the city created digitized maps of every street and building, noting where drug gangs operated and money flowed, and devised architectural features to disrupt them.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/04/25/half_a_miracle?page=full

I saw a big exhibit about this at MOMA last year, and my reaction was to think that this story underrates the extent to which the improvement is being driven by the practical advantages of better transportation infrastructure much more than the rest of this stuff. Imagine a poor farming village located across a dangerously fast-flowing river from some vacant fertile farmland. Build a bridge over the river and the villagers will prosper. Build a road connecting a town to a gold mine and the town will prosper. Well, the “resource” that brings people to a city is access to the other people and especially the commercial centers where people with money are gathering to conduct business. Giving people the practical opportunity to get downtown is a huge driver of prosperity and economic opportunity and the Metrocable system seems like a very smart transportation solution to the specific geography of the city.

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2011/05/medellin-as-a-mass-transit-success-story/

Oh, and also:
http://www.eschatonblog.com/2011/05/cars-are-too-damn-expensive.html

[brooklynite]

1. I did a transportation briefing for the Metro de Medellin executives last month...

In addition to Bus Rapid Transit and a metro system, they're using ski-lift type cable cars to provide access from the valley up into the hills (where a lot of the poorer population lives).

[WhiteTara]

3. That is really novel.

Not mention, efficient.

[mitchtv]

2. I was in it a few years ago

very nice and extremely clean, very well policed as well.

[txlibdem]

4. Pretty buildings and a cable car does not make up for the lack of social justice

While I agree that public transport makes the lives of the worker slaves a little better but it can never make up for the lives lost and rampant social injustice in Colombia.

CIA-backed coups, murder squads, assassinations of anyone who isn't fully behind Corporate Domination. Capitalism... yay!