Medellín: A City Reborn? by Holli Drummond, John Dizgun, and David J. Keeling Photographs by the authors Contextualizing Medellín Cities all around the world experience physical and cultural transformations over space and through time. Sometimes these changes are subtle, slow, and unspectacu- lar. At other times, the pace of urban change can be quite rapid, dramatic, and newsworthy. Think of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, Sarajevo during the Bal- kan conflict, or Dubai over the last decade, and the broader context of urban transfor- mation comes more sharply into focus. Observing changes in a city’s infrastruc- ture, such as buildings, transportation, or green space, for example, can lead to important questions about planning, pol- icy, and growth strategies. These shifts can be reasonably easy to examine through maps, landscape surveys, photography, and other methodologies. In contrast, teas- ing out changes in a city’s culture or iden- tity can prove a little more challenging, especially when conditions are not ideal for analysis and interpretation. Understanding urban change in Pyongyang (North Korea), Yangon (Myanmar), Mogadishu (Somalia), or Grozny (Chechnya, Russia), for instance, can be fraught with practical and political difficulties. Violent crime, war, political conflict, terrorism, and street gangs can all shape how outsiders perceive a specific city and how the denizens of that city see them- selves (see Covey 2010). Few cities in the world have experi- enced the level of violence and brutality that characterized Medellín, Colombia, during the 1980s and 1990s. The escapades of Pablo Escobar, Colombia’s preeminent drug lord until his death in 1993, Holly- wood movie depictions such as Clear and Present Danger (Clancy 1989), and sensa- tional news exposés of drug- and guerilla- related murders in the city, have shaped many people’s perception of Medellín as one of the world’s most dangerous urban environments (Borrell 1988). In the early 1990s, Medellín recorded about 6,500 mur- ders annually, with city police afraid to enter certain areas of the city controlled by street gangs, guerilla groups, and drug cartels. In the city’s poorest neighbor- hoods, like Comuna 13 sprawling up the Andean slopes on Medellín’s southwest side, daily life became a struggle for secu- rity and survival. It seemed for a time that the local and national governments had abandoned neighborhoods like Comuna 13 to the gangs and cartels, causing serious disruption in the urban socio-economic fabric and stunting any likelihood of posi- tive development. As part of the American Geographical Society’s Bowman Expedition program, which is designed to focus attention on the spatial context of change in communities, our team visited Medellín, Colombia, to study Comuna 13 and its constituent barri- os (Figure 1). The project’s goal is to understand how the residents of Comuna 13, especially young people, have adapted to changing socio-economic conditions since the government reasserted control over the neighborhood in 2002 after Oper- ation Orión. Of particular interest are questions of security, economic develop- ment, perceptions of the community, and accessibility and mobility in the Comuna. In this illustrated essay, we present a brief history of the city, discuss infrastructural improvements critical to the continued incorporation of the Comuna’s residents into networks of employment, education, and opportunity, and analyze social change from the perspective of young adults. Our goal is to shed light on both the symbolic and practical impacts of in- frastructural improvements, and on gen- eral perceptions of change in Comuna 13. From Oasis to Orión Founded in 1616 by Spanish conquista- dores in the fertile valley of Aburrá (named for one of the indigenous groups that had lived in the region for over a thousand years), Medellín grew in stature in the nineteenth century thanks to the produc- tion of gold and, more importantly, coffee. In 1875— at a time when the development of railroads was gradually becoming the symbol of modernization and progress in much of Latin America— the recently- formed Ferrocarril de Antioquia or Antio- quia Railway completed La Quiebra Tun- nel, a colossal engineering feat that connected the Andean city to the Magda- lena River, Colombia’s central artery to the Caribbean Sea and, by extension, the industrial powers of the North Atlantic. That geographic breakthrough coin- cided with the regional discovery of coal and the construction of hydroelectric plants, providing Medellín with the energy and transport infrastructure to fuel its industrial growth. As coffee exports Figure 1. Medellín, Colombia, highlighting the Metro system and Comuna 13. 146 Focus on Geography Volume 55, Number 4