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June 03, 2009
Moravia´s Transformation
Today I visited Moravia, a neighborhood located on Medellin´s old trash dump. I toured the neighborhood with one of the people working directly on the Moravia project and a lifelong Moravia resident who now works at the neighborhood´s new cultural center.
The ambitious urban transformation project underway in Moravia is simply astonishing. I arrived with two Spanish journalists, and we were given a tour of the cultural center. The brand new center is an example of the kind of public space that did not exist in Moravia just five years ago. Medellin aims to provide all its residents about 4 square meters of public space per person (the UN standard is about 12 square meters). In Moravia, public space was previously negligible. The Cultural Center offers music and arts classes for children, as well as entrepreneurial training for adults, but perhaps its most important role is as a safe place for neighborhood socialization and recreation and as a dignifying symbol in a previously marginalized community. There, children whose families earn less than $300 dollars a month have access to musical instruments, personal contact with well-trained teachers, and high-tech computers. There was a palpable sense of pride, belonging and optimism at the cultural center, and our tour guide was eager to tell us the history of his neighborhood.
Moravia has a long history of marginalization and violence. The city administration kept the municipal trash dump there for ten years despite the growth of an entire community of people, many of them displaced by violence in neighboring regions of Colombia, on the site of the dump. When a terrible fire broke out in the late 1980´s and destroyed thousands of homes there, druglord Pablo Escobar relocated the victims of the fire in a neighborhood he built for them in Medellin, now called Barrio Pablo Escobar. Other drug trafficking organizations and armed actors would come to Moravia throughout the 1990´s to recruit footsoldiers. Further, Moravia´s strategic location near a local bus terminal, downtown Medellin, and several important roads made it a battleground where paramilitary groups, drug gangs and urban militias associated with Colombia´s guerrilla groups battled for control of drug routes and territory.
By the early 2000´s, Moravia had become a virtually impenetrable and uninhabitable neighborhood. The state had very little presence in Moravia. Electricity and water were acquired largely illegally, school attendance was limited, and the police rarely dared to enter. The health and public safety issues associated with the trash dump - toxic chemicals, methane gas, carcinogens, water pollution, etc - went entirely unaddressed by the city.
When recent administrations decided to intervene in Moravia, they faced several challenges. It is one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in Colombia. 98% of its families earned less than the established minimum wage in Colombia (about $200 dollars a month). Entire areas had to be cleared of residences to make way for schools, public spaces, environmental rehabilitation, etc. After a long process of resident relocalization, planning and building, Moravia now features the Cultural Center mentioned above, as well as a day care facility, several parks, a bike route, newly paved roads, and several public housing units.
Many problems remain. Student dropout rates remain high, some criminal violence still plagues the neighborhood, some residents are resistant to leave their houses on the trash dump, and it remains a impoverished area. Still, Moravia is an example of how multidimensional urban interventions can end self-perpetuating cycles of poverty, violence and marginalization. It is visibly dynamic, with many stores and small businesses. Its residents are mostly committed to keeping its public spaces safe and clean. People can now move from one block to another safely, and seem to enjoy their neighborhood and all its new recreational and educational facilities. The Moravia Megaproject has transformed not only the neighborhood, but also how its residents feel about it and, by association, themselves.
Posted by Pablo Rojas at June 3, 2009 09:26 AM
