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Mobility innovation at the urbanmarginsPeter Brand & Julio D. DávilaPublished online: 12 Dec 2011.

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Mobility innovation at theurban marginsMedellın’s Metrocables

Peter Brand and Julio D. Davila

With the consolidation of democratic governments in the 1980s and 1990s, wholesale evic-tions of entire neighbourhoods ceased to be a solution to urban problems in Latin America.This paper discusses an example of a new generation of municipal programmes aimed atphysically upgrading informal settlements while integrating them both physically andsocially into the fabric of the city. In Medellın, a city with a recent history of violenceand social inequality, the audacious use of well-established ski-slope aerial cable-car tech-nology in dense and hilly low-income informal settlements was followed by major neigh-bourhood upgrading comprising new social housing, schools and other socialinfrastructure, as well as support to micro-enterprises. Although lack of mobility contributesto social inequality and poverty, the paper argues that the introduction of quick-fix highlyvisible transport technology on its own is unlikely to help reduce poverty. Although urbanupgrading programmes and the symbolic value of cable-car systems have instilled amongthe local population a feeling of inclusion and integration into the ‘modern’ city, they canalso be understood as mechanisms for the ‘normalisation’ of informal sectors of the city.

Key words: mobility, public transport, Medellın, settlement upgrading, poverty, aerialcable-cars

‘“They’re knocking our life and times away!”said an elderly Mancunian. We stoodtogether gazing over a wilderness on whichstill another vast slum had been razed, andhe spoke in grief. A kind of culture unlikelyto rise again had gone in the rubble, and heknew it. But most of the young who left suchspaces had no such regrets: the old ways theirfathers had accepted had long growninsupportable; better by far the “cliff”dwellings of modern Manchester.’ (RobertRoberts, 1971, pp. 9–10)

1. Introduction1

Unlike dwellers of England’s ‘classicslum’, as Engels called it, today’sresidents in Medellın’s informal

hillside barrios are likely to see some oftheir children and grandchildren grow upin the same area of the city where theyfirst settled a generation ago. With the con-solidation of democratic governments inthe 1980s and 1990s, the razing of entireneighbourhoods ceased to be a wholesalesolution to urban problems in LatinAmerica. The summary large-scale evic-tions in central locations aided by heavypolice presence of the 1960s and 1970shave largely been replaced by a new gener-ation of municipal programmes seeking tophysically upgrade existing settlementsand to integrate them both physically andsocially into the fabric of the city (Rojas,2010; Cavalcanti, 2009).2

ISSN 1360-4813 print/ISSN 1470-3629 online/11/060647–15 # 2011 Taylor & Francishttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2011.609007

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This paper examines an example of thisnew generation of municipal interventions,in a city that Alan Gilbert first visited as ayoung PhD student in the late 1960s, andwhose fortunes he has followed for fourdecades—Medellın, Colombia. It is also acity that triggers images of modern-daygangster culture mainly through theactions of its most notorious son—the drugbaron Pablo Escobar. As part of a major‘makeover’ (Hylton, 2007; Fukuyama andColby, 2011; Mendieta, 2011), this troubledcity now embodies an impressive combi-nation of imagination and boldness indealing with some of its long-abandonedinformal settlements (Medellın and IDB,2008; Rojas, 2010). The high murder ratesthat marked daily life in the 1980s and1990s, especially in the poorest neighbour-hoods, have dropped dramatically—thoughviolence has not disappeared altogetherfrom its streets as will be seen later.

In 2004, the city implemented the world’sfirst modern urban aerial cable-car publictransport system. The impact of the resource-ful application of ski-slope technology tohigh-gradient low-income urban areas hasbeen considerable. As a relatively cheap,quick and highly visible response to urbantransport problems, it has attracted wide-spread attention from city authoritiesthroughout Latin America, as well as Europeand Asia. A similar system has already beenbuilt in Caracas and others are being developedin Rio de Janeiro and various cities in Colom-bia. Cities as far apart as London and Bandung(Indonesia) are planning similar lines (thoughnot necessarily to reach informal settlements).

In Medellın’s case, whilst the first line hasbeen highly successful and runs at full capacity,the impact of a second cable-car line inaugu-rated in 2008 suggests that, to be economicallyand socially significant, cable-car systems(known locally as Metrocables) require specificminimum conditions in terms of urban mor-phology and population density, as well ascareful articulation to the existing mass publictransit network. Furthermore, considerableexpectations revolved around the social

benefits that the cable-cars would bring to thepoor and marginalised urban areas wherethey have been implemented. The assumptionhas been that improved access and mobilityoptions available to the poor would, per se,lead to improved opportunities and betterliving conditions.

While there is ample evidence to demon-strate that, in general terms, the lack of mobi-lity is an integral part of the condition ofdisadvantage and deprivation (Social Exclu-sion Unit, 2002; Kenyon et al., 2006; Urry,2007; Ohnmacht et al., 2009), it is far fromclear that the opposite is true: that marginallyimproved mobility options for the poor leaddirectly and inexorably to social improvement.Recent sociological theorising (Kaufmann,2000; Kaufmann et al., 2004) has emphasisedthe importance of context. Although mobilityis a generalised characteristic and requirementof contemporary society, how mobilityoptions operate and are inserted into economicand social routines, and the positive outcomesit produces, depend on the specific conditionsof any given community or social group.

The audacious decision to build cable-carsystems in the poorest and most violentsectors of Medellın was heavily influenced bythese sorts of social considerations, initiallyintuitively and later through more systematicplanning. The analysis of the impact of theaerial cable-car systems in Medellın offers anexcellent opportunity to test some underlyingassumptions about the significance of mobilityfor the poor and to evaluate the planning policyand urban responses to specific neighbour-hood realities that have accompanied them.

2. Mobility and urban exclusion

The research on which this paper draws wasmotivated by an interest in how mobilityaffects opportunity, and how, in the case ofMedellın, a local government intervention ininfrastructure such as the Metrocable systemmight contribute to poverty reduction byimproving income generation and the livingconditions of the population of the surround-ing area.

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The importance of mobility in contempor-ary society has been widely recognised, tosuch an extent that it has been proposed as anew paradigm for social organisation (Urry,2007), under which mobility has changedfrom being a luxury to become a generalisednecessity and heavy burden; being in move-ment, real or virtual, has become a demandingand stressful requirement (Bauman, 2000).The luxury nowadays, according to Bauman,consists of being able to escape the obligationsof incessant movement. Being able to‘immobilise’ oneself has become the act ofpower of the new elite, which in turn impliesan unlimited ability to choose where to be.At the other extreme are the social groupsanchored to a particular place through theabsolute lack of mobility resources andchoice (Zibechi, 2008). As Bauman observes,increased mobility does not homogenisesociety, rather it stratifies and polarises, liber-ating some individuals to act at a distance, freefrom any spatial ties, whilst imprisoningothers in a particular locality.

Much sociological work on mobility hasconcentrated on the hypermobility ofwealthy Western societies and the importanceof mobility to economic opportunity andindividual freedom (Ohnmacht et al., 2009;Freudendal-Pedersen, 2009; Social ExclusionUnit, 2002). In less-developed societies, thepoor have a narrow absolute limit to thenumber of journeys possible by virtue oflow and often erratic monetary incomes,which in turn limits their chances of becomingless poor. In his study of the implications oftransport costs for people living in the poorperiphery of Santiago de Chile, Ureta (2008)finds that this peripheral location limitspeople’s ability to travel by foot, at the sametime as the high cost of public transport rela-tive to household income restricts people’smovement to the strictly essential (work andeducation). Limited mobility constrains par-ticipation in urban life in general, and oppor-tunities to expand work horizons, social andleisure activities, political and civic engage-ment. Lack of mobility turns geographicalmarginalisation into deeper social exclusion.

Lack of mobility becomes an additional formof social inequality. On top of the traditional(vertical) stratification of society according towealth, income, education and status, mobilitydevelops a ‘horizontal’ dimension that furtherfragments and accentuates existing social div-isions around dimensions like age, gender, eth-nicity and lifestyle (Ohnmacht et al., 2009). Theyoung, old, infirm and uneducated becomemore vulnerable under hypermobility. More-over, mobility is closely related to leading-edge technology and its appropriation, newforms of surveillance, with important culturalimplications in terms of ‘creating flows ofmeaning’ and ‘cultures of movement’ in aneveryday sense (Jensen, 2009; see alsoMacDonald and Grieco, 2007).

Of course, neither transport infrastructuresnor social landscapes are flat and uniform.The need to recognise the social and culturaldifferentiation of contexts led Kaufmann et al.(2004) to consolidate the notion of motility,or the real or potential capacity to bemobile and its significance in differentsocio-spatial contexts. Mobility, they argue,constitutes a new kind of capital, the appro-priation of which requires:

. Access: or the range of possible mobilitiesaccording to place, time and other contex-tual restraints, constrained by options (thesystems of transport and communicationavailable) and conditions of that access(costs, logistics and other restrictions).

. Competences: or the skills and abilitiesthat relate directly or indirectly to accessand appropriation, whether physical, cog-nitive or organisational.

. Appropriation: or how agents (individuals,groups, networks, institutions) interpretand act upon those options; it incorporatesneeds, plans and aspirations as well asmotives, strategies and values.

In applying the Kaufmann et al. schema tothe Medellın case, we considered the accessfactor to be less important than might havebeen expected. The cable-car system wasbuilt in low-income areas with a deficient

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road infrastructure but relatively well servedby conventional buses. However, the cable-car system involves no additional cost forMetro users, and the tariff is only marginallyhigher than that of a bus (and much cheaperthan a two-bus journey). The logistics ofcable system use is more sophisticated anddemanding than buses, and considerableeffort was made to train users prior to andat the beginning of operations. This can beseen as developing user competences, interms of the knowledge and skills needed togain access to the system and use it appropri-ately. However, such competences are diver-gent from and often at odds with the moreinformal skills needed for everyday routinesin the ‘informal’ environments of low-income areas, and this was to be somethingwe as researchers needed to be sensitive to.

This leads us to the question of appropria-tion. The Metrocable provides an infrastruc-tural articulation to formal urban life,especially formal sector employment. Forsocial groups outside formal networks orwhose everyday routines are circumscribedto the locality, the level of appropriationmight be expected to be much lower, oreven antagonistic. Kaufmann et al.’s warningas to the different meanings and consequencesof mobility options, in particular, cultural andsocio-spatial contexts, proved to be a valuableone. In short, the context of informality, con-flict and violence into which the cable systemswere retro-fitted, became a key consideration.If poverty conditioned access, informality andconflict could be expected to affect the logicsof use and appropriation. Infrastructure wasalso a means for the formal sector and stateagencies of gaining access to previously no-go areas in the grip of local armed gangs—awell-known strategy throughout urbanhistory (but little considered in contemporarytransport research).

3. Medellın’s Metrocables in context

The addition of aerial cable-cars to the publictransport infrastructure was undoubtedly an

imaginative leap in this city of 3 millioninhabitants, Colombia’s second largest.With no recent urban precedent and someunmapped technical territory to negotiate,the proposal initially encountered consider-able local cynicism. However, the materiali-sation of the first cable-car system arosefrom a constellation of circumstances thatnot only explain the genesis of the projectbut also offer important signposts for theadoption of similar systems in other cities.

The first cable-car system, Line K (seeFigures 1 and 2), was built in the poor andinaccessible north-eastern sector of the city.This sector is characterised by a difficult,steeply sloping terrain broken by deepsmaller valleys carved by the numerousstreams running down the hillside to theMedellın River. Developed through informalsettlements and land invasions dating fromthe 1950s and 1960s, by the end of the 20thcentury it was the most densely urbanisedsector of the city, with over 400 dwellingsper hectare.3 As a consequence, road infra-structure was minimal and access difficult,although the area was relatively well servedby conventional buses, and the occasionaltaxi. The second cable-car line, Line J, wasto traverse a similar but more diverse physicaland social landscape in the western sector ofthe city.

The accessibility problem was made evenmore evident when the city’s over-groundMetro mass transport system was introducedin 1995. As the main Metro line (the only onein that sector of the city) runs parallel to themain river, a cable-car was an ingenious ideato bring passengers down from the hillsidesto the Metro system itself. The Metro auth-orities insist that this was always a sociallymotivated project—a way of extending thebenefits of the Metro to the poorest andmore inaccessible areas of the city—but italso provided a way of increasing passengernumbers for a then underutilised Metrocapacity. In the late 1990s, various studiesand technical consultations were undertakenby the Metro, so that by 2000 it hadbecome a technically and financially feasible

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project. Only the political moment of oppor-tunity was needed and 2000 happened to bean electoral year. The Metro de Medellıncompany presented the cable-car project tothe mayoral candidates, most of whomrejected it. However, the eventual electionwinner, Luis Perez (2001–2003), was askeen an enthusiast of cable-cars as the

newly appointed head of the Metro deMedellın company—who describes thisshared interest as being like an ‘alignmentof the planets’.4 Less than three years afterMayor Perez committed the municipal gov-ernment by providing 55% of the line’sfunding costs, the first Metrocable was inoperation.5

Figure 1 Medellın’s Metro system (north is on the left of the image)(Source: www.metrodemedellin.gov.co (accessed 1 July 2011))

Figure 2 Metrocable Line K with Parque Espana library in the background(Photo: Julio D. Davila)

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The speed of construction of Line K was insharp contrast to the building of the city’s twoover-ground Metro lines in the 1980s and early1990s. Construction started in 1985 despitetechnical advice warning of insufficientdemand for a mass-transit rail system (Gov-ernment of Colombia, 1993), but was haltedin 1989 when the specially constituted pub-licly owned Metro company ran out offunds.6 A flawed set of original financial esti-mates, re-design of the original project andincreased import tariffs were among thereasons for a hike in costs from an initial esti-mate of US$623 million to US$2052 millionby 1987 (Government of Colombia, 1993).The central government, as guarantor of thecompany, was forced to underwrite theadditional loans and start re-paying the debtbefore the system started operating. Construc-tion resumed in 1992 and the first line waseventually inaugurated in 1995. As a result ofthe financial rescue operation, the central gov-ernment continued to exert at least nominalcontrol over the company until recently,when the city and provincial governmentsassumed payment for the company’s debts.

The Metro’s financial fiasco was uncharac-teristic in a history of fairly efficient andpragmatic local government institutions thatcater well to the needs of local business inter-ests. For example, the design of the Metrolines seeks to transport workers swiftlyfrom low-income residential areas in munici-palities to the north of the city to southernmunicipalities where factories are located.The publicly owned Metro company is runalong commercial lines, single-mindedly pur-suing the aim of increasing ridership to helpreduce its large debt.7 This stance has argu-ably contributed to delays in the implemen-tation of a bus rapid transit system (BRT),since it is seen by some as competing withMedellın’s Metro lines.8 However, despiteBogota’s well-known trailblazing experience(Gilbert, 2008), Medellın is far from beingthe only Colombian city to encounter pro-blems in implementing central governmentpolicy of creating BRTs as the main urbanmass-transit solution.

3.1. Building and funding the Metrocables

There are currently three aerial cable-car linesin operation, two of which are urban publictransport systems (Line K inaugurated in2004 and Line J in 2008), along with a thirdLine L introduced in 2010 which connectswith Line K as a tourist route to an ecologicalpark on the edge of the city (see Table 1 andFigures 1 and 2).

Cable-car systems are relatively cheap andquick to construct, since they require littleland acquisition and the technology is welltested and relatively simple. The cost of thefirst Metrocable was close to US$24 million,and the second US$47 million (at currentexchange rates). The cost per kilometre inurban areas compares favourably with BRTand rail systems. The caveat is that, due totechnical limitations, aerial cable-cars are notmass-transit systems and cannot transport sig-nificantly more than 3000 passengers per hour.

The cable-car system is a public sectorproject, financed jointly by the municipalityand the Metro de Medellın. Modest construc-tion costs make public sector capital borrow-ing quite feasible, but in the case of Medellın,all three lines have been financed throughnormal capital investment budgets. The finan-cial contribution of the Metro de Medellıncompany is based on the calculation of futurereturns accruing from increased passengernumbers using the Metro over a 10- to 15-year period, and the difference is justified bythe city authority as a social investment.

An important source of municipal financefor these and similar projects is the publiclyowned Empresas Publicas de Medellın(EPM), the city’s large and efficient utilitiescompany (with assets worth c.US$10 billionin 2011) providing electricity generation anddistribution, water and sewerage, and tele-communications services. Statutorily, 30%of the company’s profits go to the municipalauthority, a sum equivalent to aroundUS$250 million in 2010. The Metro deMedellın claims to be one of the few metrosto make an operating profit (debt obligationsaside). Metrocable Lines K and J are part of

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the Metro system so their use involves noadditional cost for Metro users.9

3.2. Cable-cars and urban crisis management

The favourable ‘alignment of the planets’ alsohad much to do with the overall urban situ-ation. During the 1980s, Medellın emergedas the epicentre of Colombia’s burgeoningillegal drugs trade and during the 1990sbecame the world’s most violent city(peaking at 381 murders/100,000 populationin 1992), and many areas of the city were effec-tively ungovernable and out of bounds evenfor the army. Meanwhile the sudden liberali-sation of the national economy had forced abrutal restructuring of the city’s traditionalmanufacturing economy, pushing levels ofpoverty and unemployment to alarminglyhigh levels (Brand, 2005; Hylton, 2007).

It was in this context that the first cable-carsystem was conceived and implemented, andwhich the following municipal administrationtargeted as the focus of urban policy. Theindependent mayor Sergio Fajardo (2004–2007) set out to ‘re-pay the city’s historicaldebt’ with those forgotten areas, beginningwith the area around the newly completed

first cable-car, the poorest and most violentof all (Davila, 2009). The first cable-car linebecame a prototype for subsequent interven-tions in some of the poorest sectors of thecity. A coherent and energetic policy of inte-grating the cable-car systems into the urbanfabric through Integrated Urban Projects(PUIs in their Spanish acronym) was devel-oped, centred around transport projects butaimed at urban upgrading through a com-bined strategy of mobility, environment,housing and public space (see Figure 3), andthe goal of creating new dynamic centres inpreviously economically depressed areas(Medellın-EDU, 2011).10 The use of localmanual labour was to be a feature of allpublic work contracts, while the introductionof a participatory budgeting element provideda space for organised local communities tocollectively decide on the use of no less than5% of the municipal budget allocated tothese areas for investment.11

How successful all this has been, and howsustainable it will be, is far from clear.Dealing with the illegal drugs organisationshas been only ‘half a miracle’ (Fukuyama andColby, 2011), urban violence has increased inrecent years, new gangs control the barrios

Table 1 Metrocable lines: basic information

Line K Line J Line L

Launch date August 2004 March 2008 February 2010Construction time 14 months 15 months 10 monthsLength 2072 m 2782 m 4469 mCommercial speed 5 m/s 5 m/s 6 m/sNo. of pylons 20 31 25No. of stations 4 (incl. Metro station) 4 (incl. Metro station) 2No. of cabins

(capacity 10) 93 119 27Distance between

cabins 60 m 60 m 340 mInstalled capacity 3000 passengers/hour 3000 passengers/hour 1200 passengers/hourEstimated total cost

(US$ 2003)US$24 million (at average

2003 exchange rate)US$47 million (at average

2007 exchange rate)US$21 million (at average 2009

exchange rate)Cost per kilometre US$11.6 million US$16.9 million US$4.7 million

Sources of financeMunicipality: 55%

Metro: 45%Municipality: 73%

Metro: 27%

Municipality: 38%Metro: 34%

Regional Govt: 17%; Min.Transport: 9%; Other: 2%

Source: Metro de Medellın.

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(neighbourhoods) and intra-urban forcedmigration has grown alarmingly (El Tiempo,2011). It is quite clear from the above thatany assessment of the impact of increasedmobility on the living conditions of the localpopulation is a complex and multifaceted issue.

4. The Medellın Metrocables: mobilityimpacts and urban improvement potential

Precise measurement of the social and econ-omic consequences of the Metrocables is diffi-cult for two main reasons. Firstly, as discussedearlier, impacts are not direct and mechanical,but derive from a socio-spatial context that isitself constantly changing. Secondly, limiteddata availability in informal sectors of thecity makes the measurement of trends proble-matic, not to mention the issue of attributingcausality. Thus, for example, estimation ofthe impact of the cable-cars on the localeconomy, family incomes or house or rentprices is not only hampered by the lack of

official data, but also affected by short-termeconomic cycles, fluctuation in the level ofinternal violence, flows of people displacedby violence, other urban, economic andsocial programmes, and so on. Furthermore,the cable-car systems have been implementedin close conjunction with urban improvementprojects (PUIs), which makes disentanglingthe effects of mobility from general improve-ment even more difficult. This also applies tomore intangible impacts, such as their com-bined effects on local pride, community self-esteem, the sense of urban integration andsocial inclusion. In dealing with these chal-lenges, and in addition to documentary infor-mation, our research adopted a similarapproach to that suggested by Flamm andKaufmann (2006) using (travel) surveys,focus groups and a variety of interview typesto gain a better understanding of the localimpacts of the Metrocables. A number of pre-liminary findings follow.

4.1. Mobility and travel behaviour

The most obvious impact of the cable-cars wasimproved mobility in terms of shorter journeytimes and greater comfort. In optimum con-ditions, for example, a ride on Line K cuts a2.1 km journey from the river valley to thehighest station—400 metres above thevalley—from over an hour to 15 minutes.However, this assumption needs careful qua-lification. Firstly, access to the cable-car/Metro system can involve lengthy periods ofwalking and queuing—over an hour in peakperiods. Secondly, travel patterns need to betaken into account, especially multi-purposetravel (more frequent among women thanadult men) to more distant destinationsoutside the city centre. Thirdly, the combinedtariff, single ticket involving the cable-car/Metro + bus, makes cable-car use economi-cally attractive for long journeys with a trans-fer to another mode of transport (savings of33% compared to two bus journeys); andyet, for a non-transfer journey say to the citycentre, a conventional bus can be marginallycheaper and quicker once waiting/walking

Figure 3 Neighbourhood upgrading and new socialhousing along the Juan Bobo stream(Photo: Julio D. Davila)

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times are taken into account. Finally, unlike inbuses, bulky loads are forbidden in the Metrosystem, thus placing it out-of-bounds to anumber of professional occupations.

A consequence of the above is that themain group of cable-car users comprisesformal sector workers (in construction, man-ufacturing, services) with long north–southjourney to work patterns. Even for theseusers, advantages can be measured more incost than time. Advantages—and thereforeuse—are more limited for those in the infor-mal sector of the economy (the great majorityin the study area), children and young people,housewives, the elderly and infirm. Less than10% of the journeys in the area of influence(defined as the barrios where the stations arelocated, with an average population of10,000 people) use the cable-car/Metro com-bination. Conventional buses and walkingcontinue to be the major transport modes,while there is little evidence to suggest anincrease in the number of journeys for non-essential trips that might lead to greater par-ticipation in city life.

4.2. Mobility and the local economy

Although not explicitly stated in local gov-ernment communications relating to thedecision to build the cable-cars, our researchhas sought to examine the extent to whichgreater accessibility might have facilitatedcity-wide employment opportunities forlocal residents, while invigorating the localeconomy by creating new businesses andgreater opportunities for local businesses togrow, more (formal sector) employment,increased building activity, and perhapseven higher land and rental prices (and theassociated risk of displacement of local resi-dents, some 40% of whom are tenants).

The evidence to date indicates only modestchanges in this respect. While it is true that inthe immediate vicinity of the stations andwhere urban upgrading has been undertakenbelow the overhead cables, the number ofshops, bars and restaurants, workshops and

small businesses has increased significantly(Figure 4). Neighbourhoods like SantoDomingo Savio have become more attractiveto visitors and locals alike as witnessed bythe emergence of young tourist guides deftlyreciting the technical details of the more strik-ing architectural works and recounting therivalries between local armed gangs likelong-past epic battles. However, outsidethese tightly defined areas, neither small-scale economic activity nor house prices orrents appear to show important changes. Inthe second system, Line J, where the stationsare less well articulated to urban morphologyand street patterns, these types of benefits arestill less evident.

Advice bureaux for small businesses havebeen established in the community centres(park-libraries) close to each of the cable-carsystems, backing up better mobility with tech-nical and financial services for business set-ups(see Figure 5). However, poor connectionto city-wide institutions and markets, andlimited finance programmes, have restrictedthe scope of new small businesses to micro-

Figure 4 Santo Domingo Savio neighbourhood (LineK): the presence of commercial banks reflects a growingformalisation of the local economy(Photo: Julio D. Davila)

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scale enterprises and neighbourhood marketswith little prospect of sustained growth thatmight impact on city-wide poverty andinequality (Bateman et al., 2011).

From 2004 onwards, there was an increasein the number of formal property transactionsin the area, but this seemed to reflect a generaltrend across the city.12 There was no discern-ible trend in the quality of life index while thehuman development index has generallyimproved since 2004.13 Interestingly, neitherof these indices includes a measurement ofmobility.

4.3. Urban improvement, social inclusionand citizenship

The premise behind Medellın’s currentapproach to upgrading is that, if wider andsustained improvements are to be achieved,new transport infrastructure needs to be

complemented with investments in housing,schools, the environment and public space.The first PUI was developed around the firstcable-car line and since then three others arebeing implemented in strategic areas of thecity. The high quality of civic architectureand associated infrastructure is anotherfeature of this version of the ‘Barcelonamodel’ of urban regeneration (Monclus,2003) that became formalised and widely pro-moted as Medellın’s unique brand of ‘socialurbanism’ (Echeverri and Orsini, 2010; TheArchitectural Review, 2011; Brand, 2010).

It was hoped that this armoury of interven-tions would lead to a ‘profound social trans-formation’ and a ‘new social contract’ in themore deprived and violent sectors of thecity, on the basis of ‘spaces for citizenship’and ‘settings for democracy and peacefulco-existence’ (Medellın and IDB, 2008).This represents a radical political agenda inan otherwise fairly orthodox history of con-ventional urban interventions. And yet, ourresearch suggests that questions of age andgender equality and access for the disabled,for example, have only recently made anappearance in the policy arena. And thoughthere is no doubting the high levels of politi-cal and financial commitment by the munici-pality, the social impact of specific projectsremains somewhat unclear (MacNamara,2009; Blanco and Kobayashi, 2009; Canon,2010; Quinchıa, 2011).

Along Line K, there is evidence of increasedcommunity self-esteem and a sense ofinclusion brought about by the cable-carsystem and the associated urban upgrading.The great majority of residents seem proudof what has happened in their communitiesand welcome visitors and tourists; once stig-matised, they now feel part of the city.However, Medellın’s ‘social urbanism’ hasnot been without criticism. The early projectswere highly participatory (Carvajal, 2009),recent ones much less so; concerns havebeen raised about future maintenance costs;the architecture has been criticised for itslack of originality and ostentation; someargue that the city administration has been

Figure 5 Poster advertising municipal support to micro-enterprises(Photo: Julio D. Davila)

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carried away, literally, with its own success,has overstretched its resources and is nowmore concerned with constructing an imagethan transforming reality.

4.4. Political significance

The creation, via the cable-cars and associatedurban upgrading, of a sense of inclusion is animportant political benefit, both internallyand externally. City administrations gain inlegitimacy and governability vis-a-vis theurban population, whilst the aestheticimpact of cable-cars and high-quality archi-tecture in poor urban areas enthrals thearchitectural profession and can be used topromote an economically competitive andsocially progressive image. The attraction ofcable-car systems for city mayors, includingthose of Rio de Janeiro and London, is easyto understand.

In contrast to the modest impacts in termsof increased mobility and material well-being, the cable-car systems can be seen ashaving an enormous symbolic significance.Architectural and engineering gestures, aes-thetic experience and sensation determinethe political response of neighbourhoodresidents and external visitors alike. Adroitmanipulation of the symbolic world,especially in the context of the contemporaryurbanism of the spectacle, is undoubtedlyimportant and effective.

Alan Gilbert rightly cautions against theuse of the term ‘slum’ to describe the physicalembodiment of urban poverty and inequality,and to draw up prescriptions for deep-seatedstructural problems (2009). The use of thisemotionally and historically laden term hasall manner of negative connotations, notleast the fact that its use evokes the ‘suppo-sedly evil character of those who live there’(Gilbert, 2007, p. 702). Its use as shorthandfor a complex combination of poor housing,inadequate utility connections and lack ofopportunity goes hand-in-hand with heavy-fisted, short-term, simplistic responses fromauthorities, ranging from assumptions about

the social and cultural homogeneity of allresidents in informal settlements, to off-the-peg ‘solutions’ such as rows of identical(and usually unaffordable) housing on theedge of town aimed at those forcibly relo-cated from valuable central locations.

Since, as Gilbert has noted, people living inslums or informal settlements are somehowseen as being different, the cable-car systemscan also be understood as mechanisms forthe ‘normalisation’ of informal sectors of thecity. Cable-cars carry with them socialnorms, strictly enforced rules of behaviour,everyday surveillance, heavier policing,administrative procedures and informationregisters (see Figure 6).14 Our survey suggeststhat most residents accept this as somethingpositive or at least necessary, although itdoes provoke a degree of discomfort, incon-formity and resistance. As a form of socialcontrol it fails to reach illegal (rather thaninformal) social groups and organisations,for whom a parallel strategy of repression isbeing implemented in those same neighbour-hoods (Hylton, 2007).

Finally, the Medellın experience is a timelyreminder of the unique capacity and ultimateresponsibility of the public sector—publicinstitutions, public investment and state-runenterprises—with regard to urban upgradingof low-income informal settlements. Thereis little doubt that Medellın has done muchto redress decades of inexcusable oblivion,at least along Line K.

5. Conclusions

The success of the first Metrocable line wassuch that it made the implementation of sucha system look easy. The second line madeclear that such infrastructure requires carefuland systematic integration into social andspatial networks to ensure that increasedmobility results in more generalised urbanupgrading. In Medellın’s case, the value ofpublic investment in complementary urbanupgrading projects exceeded by a factor ofsix the cost of building the cable-car system

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itself—not counting the cost of the socialand small business promotion programmes inthe area.

However, doubts remain as to the widereffects of greater mobility brought about bycable-cars. They provide less than 10% ofdaily trips in the barrios in which the stationsare located, while the new public buildingsand open spaces probably cater for an evenlower proportion of the local population;benefits for the local economy have beenlimited, and land and housing market stimu-lus has been restricted to the immediateenvirons of the cable lines. Even so, thesebenefits should not be undervalued, giventhe relatively low cost of the cable-carsystems themselves.

However, the greatest benefits accruearound the symbolic value of cable-carsystems. These highly visible infrastructuresand the aesthetic experience they afford toboth residents and visitors create a feeling ofinclusion and integration into the ‘modern’city, help develop local pride and promote

individual self-esteem. They result fromrecognising the specific needs and qualitiesof these informal settlements, not as undiffer-entiated homogenous ‘slums’ but as areaswhere poverty is still present and the violenceof the past two decades could make an unwel-come return thus threatening the city’s long-term stability and long-term aim to attractforeign capital and recognition (Hylton,2007; Medellın and IDB, 2008).

They do, however, raise the question ofhow long this can be maintained without thenecessary material base to reduce povertyand inequality, whilst furthering the deepen-ing of local democracy and weakening of tra-ditional patron–client politics brought aboutby the participatory budgeting process. Thespectacular nature of the aesthetics of thecable-car systems loses its appeal against abackdrop of unmitigated poverty.

The case of Medellın’s municipal interven-tion in its north-eastern comunas raises impor-tant questions about the real effect of highlyvisible infrastructure investments, as well as

Figure 6 BiblioMetro lending library in Acevedo Metro station(Photo: Julio D. Davila)

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about the capacity of local governments todeal with the thorny issues of poverty,inequality and deepening democracy. Cable-car systems in Medellın have been successful(in transport, urban and social terms) in sofar as they are part of a concerted policy ofintegrated improvement of low-incomeareas. Against all prima facie visual evidence,a quick-fix approach motivated by short-term political impact and publicity-consciousgain are unlikely to be successful.

Notes

1 This paper is based on an ongoing research projectundertaken by the Development Planning Unit,University College London (UCL) in collaborationwith the Universidad Nacional de Colombia(Medellın campus), the Universidad de los Andes(Bogota) and UCL’s Department of Civil,Environmental and Geomatic Engineering. Formore information see www.ucl.ac.uk/dpu/metrocables. It is the first systematic appraisal of thepioneering experience of Medellın and looks toprovide pointers for successful application in othercities of the world. The research (Grant RES-167-25-0562) is funded by the UK Government through theEconomic and Social Research Council (ESRC) andthe Department for International Development(DFID) joint scheme for Research on InternationalDevelopment (Poverty Alleviation). This paper doesnot necessarily reflect the views of either DFID orESRC. It is the result of a team effort by the twoauthors along with a number of colleagues inMedellın: Professor Francoise Coupe, Professor IvanSarmiento, Angela Mejıa, Juan G. Cardona andLaura Agudelo. The authors gratefully acknowledgecomments from a number of commentators,including Professor Alan Gilbert and Dr PushpaArabindoo, from UCL; it also benefited from inputsfrom our London colleagues: Caren Levy, Prof. NickTyler and Diane Daste.

2 Although much reduced in volume, urban evictionshave not disappeared altogether and in fact seem tohave made a come back in recent years (COHRE,2009), as centrally located areas with marketpotential are occasionally cleared in bids to build orexpand infrastructure through ‘large urban projects’(Lungo and Smolka, 2005), and generally‘modernise’ the image of the city to make it moreappealing both to a local cosmopolitan elite and tointernational visitors. In Colombia, one of theconsequences of the long-standing internal conflicthas been the vast displacement of rural populationsfleeing violence and persecution by left-wing

guerrillas and right-wing paramilitary groups,making the country’s internally displacedpopulation one of the largest in the world. Mostinternally displaced people end up largely inperipheral locations of medium-sized and largecities, where many receive assistance from anumber of agencies including local and centralgovernment bodies (cf. www.defensoria.org.co).

3 The Municipality of Medellın, with an urbanpopulation of 2.2 million in 2005, comprises 16Comunas (districts). Line K traverses Comunas 1 and2, with a combined population of 230,000 in2005. Line J passes through Comunas 7 and 13,with a population of 295,000. Each comuna isfurther divided into barrios, of which there are 13 inComuna 1, 11 in Comuna 2, 9 in Comuna 7 and19 in Comuna 13. Medellın is the largest andrichest of the nine municipalities that comprise theMedellın metropolitan area, with a combined urbanpopulation of 3.1 million in 2005 (source: www.dane.gov.co).

4 Personal interviews with former mayor Luis Perez,and with Ramiro Marquez, General Manager ofMetro de Medellın (September 2010).

5 The remaining 45% was funded by the Metrocompany. The municipality was also forced tofinancially under-write the project, given thereluctance of international insurance firms to under-write what was regarded as the possible object ofterrorist attacks (personal interview with formermayor Luis Perez).

6 Created in 1979 under the official name ‘Empresade Transporte Masivo del Valle de Aburra Limitada’,the Metro company is jointly owned by theMunicipality of Medellın and by the province(‘Departamento’) of Antioquia, of which Medellın isthe capital, each with 50% ownership.

7 This is helped by the fact that five out of nine of itscurrent board members are prominent localbusinessmen appointed by the central government;the other four comprise two representatives each ofthe mayor of the Municipality of Medellın and of thegovernor of Antioquia province.

8 Launch of Medellın’s BRT is planned for the end of2011.

9 In mid-2011, the Metro’s single tariff for any lengthof journey stands at Col$1750 (US$0.97), thefrequent travellers fare at Col$1450 (US$0.80) anda combined Metro–bus fare at Col$2000(US$1.10). The basic conventional bus fare isCol$1500 (US$0.83). By comparison, theminimum daily legal wage is around US$11,including an 11.7% transport subsidy component.The return-trip on the tourist aerial cable-car toParque Arvı (Line L) costs an additional Col$2500.

10 PUIs are defined as a ‘model of intervention aimedat transforming positively, through social, physicaland inter-institutional components, a specific urban

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space, by incorporating all elements ofdevelopment in a parallel and planned manner,through infrastructure works with the highest qualitystandards, and with an ingredient of communityparticipation so as to ensure their sustainability’(Medellın-EDU, 2011).

11 Though public works have a clear attraction mainlyfor local skilled or unskilled workers who areguaranteed to be employed if only for short periods,not all decisions have involved buildinginfrastructure. The communities in Comunas 1 and 2agreed to use part of these funds to finance 700scholarships for local young people to pursuestudies at university level.

12 Given the origins of the neighbourhoods as illegalland invasions, where land titles have only recentlybeen granted, the vast majority of propertytransactions is officially unrecorded. Officiallyregistered residential property transactions inComunas 1 and 2 increased from 713 in 2000 to1256 in 2004 and 2590 in 2007 (source: MedellınMayor’s Office—Registro de Instrumentos Publicos,Secretarıa de Hacienda—Subsecretaria deCatastro). By 2010 a handful of small estate agentshad made their appearance.

13 Official figures for these indices are aggregated atthe level of comuna and cannot be furtherdisaggregated to examine the possible impact thatthe cable-cars might have had within a givendistance of the stations.

14 The search for normalising the informal is also afeature of the Delhi metro, inaugurated in 2002(Semiaticky, 2006). The Medellın Metro companyhas long promoted what it calls ‘Cultura Metro’, aset of norms of behaviour strictly enforced within thespace of the Metro system, supplemented by asystem of lending libraries. In its 2009 annualreport, the company argues that the Metro is ‘morethan a mode of transport . . . it is a lifestyle, a placefor social and cultural encounters’ (Metro deMedellın, 2009, p. 23).

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Peter Brand is Principal Lecturer at the Schoolof Urban and Regional Planning, Universi-dad Nacional de Colombia (Medellıncampus). Email: pbrand@unal.edu.co

Julio D. Davila is Principal Investigator of theresearch project on which this paper is based,and is a Senior Lecturer with the Develop-ment Planning Unit, University CollegeLondon. Email: j.davila@ucl.ac.u k

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