Medellin has undergone renaissance
City has cleaned up and homicides down 90 percent
MEDELLIN, Colombia - Once the shadowy and violent domain of drug kingpin Pablo Escobar, Medellin has undergone a renaissance over the last decade due to enlightened civic policy and public works, offering government officials proof that urban decline can be reversed.
Once one of the world's deadliest cities, Medellin's homicide rate has dropped by more than 90 percent since the mid-1990s. Former rebels and paramilitary fighters are being reintegrated into Colombia's second-largest city in an innovative program adopted by the nation's demobilization director.
The urban transit system has been upgraded to include a spectacular tramway that has cut commutes and become the city's icon.
And then there's the new sewage system, which has cleaned up the formerly malodorous Medellin River and 24 creeks and greatly improved the city's image - and smell. The project has become a regional model for cleanup projects in densely populated areas.
The system, which includes educating residents and businesses near the river on how to prevent pollution, has converted the river district from an open cesspool to a zone where corporations such as Bancolombia and Carrefour have built major facilities. The sewage system project is receiving $580 million in loans from the Inter-American Development Bank, the Washington-based multinational development lender that is holding its annual meeting here this weekend in part to showcase what leaders believe is a success story.
In an e-mail to the Los Angeles Times, Luis Alberto Moreno, bank president, said the project shows that "investing in sanitation can have huge payoffs that go far beyond public health."
Despite the global financial crisis, the annual meeting is expected to draw 6,500 delegates from around the world, 40 percent more than the 2008 meeting in Miami. Main attractions include presentations by China, which joined the bank last year as part of its strengthened ties with Latin America.
China is expected to announce two multimillion-dollar development funds to provide loans for infrastructure and "increase the flow of credit amid the global financial crisis," according to a preliminary draft of the announcement.
China has invested $4 billion in such a fund in Venezuela.
Another lure for delegates is the host city's makeover, one so dramatic its principal architect, former mayor Sergio Fajardo, is a contender in the 2010 presidential race. Offering education and training in violent neighborhoods was crucial to his goal of offering youths an alternative to drugs and violence, he said.
"Whenever we reduced violence in an area, we immediately came up with projects - libraries, cultural, health, and entrepreneurship centers - in the poorest areas so the community could see the society was providing opportunities," Fajardo said.
