Flowers growing on a hill of garbage, where an entire neighborhood was erased

Flowers growing on a hill of garbage, where an entire neighborhood was erased The case of Moravia neighborhood in Medellín, Colombia Danny Andrés Osorio Gaviria Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Development and Cultures [S0E06a] Master of Urbanism and Strategic Planning KU Leuven

2015

Flowers growing in a hill of garbage, where an entire neighborhood was erased – Danny Andres Osorio Gaviria

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Image 1: Moravia Micro-Stories (Source: Pérez, 2014)

FLOWERS GROWING ON A HILL OF GARBAGE, WHERE AN ENTIRE NEIGHBORHOOD WAS ERASED The case of Moravia neighborhood in Medellín, Colombia

Danny Andrés Osorio Gaviria Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Development and Cultures Master in Urbanism and Strategic Planning Department of Architecture, Urbanism and Planning Faculty of Engineering Science KU Leuven

Abstract This current paper is part of the Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Development and Cultures 2015 – 2016, organized by the KU Leuven Institute for Anthropological Research in Africa (IARA) and the Department of Architecture, Urbanism and Planning (ASRO) with focus on Cities in Development: Spaces, Conflicts and Agency. As part of the evaluation of the course this paper is related to the topic of the debate: Occupy the City by Gautam Bhan and AbdoMaliq Simone, with cases from India and Indonesia.

Colombia has a long history of violence in rural areas, which is the main cause of the forced displacement of people to the cities. This phenomena has created a lot of problems related to housing, people displaced from rural areas to the cities are occupying empty land in urban areas and living in “illegal” neighborhoods without the minimum health, dignity and social security conditions. They are the poorest population in the city, whom do not have the possibility to have a house through the formal housing market, which is the reason why they have to live in informal settlements. This situation is creating new communities settled in high risk areas around streams and peripheral zones where the access to social, economic, cultural and infrastructural services of the city is very difficult.

Flowers growing in a hill of garbage, where an entire neighborhood was erased – Danny Andres Osorio Gaviria

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Image 1: Moravia micro-stories (Source: Pérez, 2014)

Flowers growing on a hill of garbage is about the environmental recovery of the former dump of the city of Medellín where poor families displaced for the violence found a way to survive working in the separation of garbage for recycling processes. After the dump closed an entire neighborhood was established in the old dump of the city and the area was under an intense informal urbanization process for many years. The dense settlement located on top on the hill of garbage started to be a problem for the city when the life of the people living there was in danger because of the risk of fire due to the gas emanation from the garbage under the settlement. In that moment the plan for the recovery of the Moravia hill started as a governmental initiative of the Colombian state.

In this case, the informal human settlements were established due to the forced displacement, violence and the inequality in the state and the country, the entire neighborhood was built for families and communities fighting for a piece of land, occupying and overpopulating the former dump of the city. In contrast to the case in Delhi presented by Gautam Bhan, the high risk of the area was the argument of the local government for the eviction of the entire neighborhood and the relocation process of the people living there, as part of the solution to the issues of this popular urban community settled in the garbage, as a way to give them the rights that they deserve as citizens.

Keywords: Informal settlements, slums, illegal occupation, overpopulation, popular urban communities, eviction, informal neighborhood, urban relocation, citizenship.

Introduction and historical context Moravia neighborhood is located in the city of Medellín, the capital of the department of Antioquia and the second largest city in Colombia where almost 50% of the population is living in informal settlements and occupying high risk areas. Moravia is a neighborhood situated in the northeastern side of the city with almost 48.000 inhabitants living in an area of 42,7 hectares, one of the highest densities in the country.

The informal and spontaneous settlement processes in Moravia are one of the most ancient of the city starting for first time in the 60's, stimulated mainly for the proximity to the former train station and the materials extraction activities from the Medellín River. In 1977 the Medellín Municipality established in the area the municipal dump of the city which triggered the settlement's growth. One of the most important qualities of the area for people, mostly forced displaced from rural areas, was Flowers growing in a hill of garbage, where an entire neighborhood was erased – Danny Andres Osorio Gaviria

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the possibility of occupy “empty” land having the opportunity to earn money working in the separation and recuperation of the recyclable materials from the municipal dump of the city where also it was possible to find materials to build a “house”.

Nevertheless the worst moment was yet to come, in the 80's the wave of violence unleashed by the drug trafficking activities in the city, the economic crisis and the forced displacement from rural areas increased the number of inhabitants in the neighborhood.

Image 2: Medellín's dump (Source: Melguizo, 1982)

However, the breaking point was in 1983 when the Medellín Municipality decided to relocate the municipal dump of the city in a place away from the urban areas because for that moment, the city had grown reaching the former municipal dump in Moravia. It was in that time when the poorest people started to establish settlements on top of the hill of garbage which was the last empty space in the neighborhood, creating an entire community living in a kind of isolated

labyrinth

disconnected

from

the

existing urban fabric. The density of the settlement on top of the hill of garbage grew uncontrollably and serious problems started to appear, for example, violence, drugs, gangs, murders,

among

other

social

problems

combined with the fires, which killed entire families.

Image 3: Medellín's dump (Source: Melguizo, 1982)

For these reasons in 1990 the Land Use Master Plan established Moravia as an important area

Flowers growing in a hill of garbage, where an entire neighborhood was erased – Danny Andres Osorio Gaviria

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of intervention for the improvement of the neighborhoods of the city. But it was not until 2006 when the process of eviction of the inhabitants living on top of the hill of garbage started; the plan was relocate the evicted people in secure areas, decontaminate the hill of trash and recover it as public space.

Flowers growing on a hill of garbage, where the neighborhood was erased The overpopulation and density of the Moravia neighborhood on the former dump of the city was one of the most crucial issues to solve related to popular urban communities in Medellín, in this case the local government decided to evict the entire neighborhood; in contrast to the case in Delhi presented by Gautam Bhan where the government used excuses to evict people, in Moravia the evict was based on clear arguments like the high risk for people living there, dwellings with dangerous structures, the danger of fires, the absence of the basic home utilities, infrastructure and rights for their inhabitants.

The former dump of the city was the place where for decades the city deposited the waste, the smell coming from this place started to be a problem not just for the surrounding areas, “children fighting with buzzards for leftovers”, the

neighborhood

environmental

experienced

crisis

aggravated

an

for

the

unemployment, informality, extreme poverty and

the

violence.

At

that

time,

in

the

neighborhood 92% of the dwellings were in illegal possession.

Nowadays in Colombia, especially in Medellín, the new urban policies are oriented to involve democratic participation as part of the urban

Image 4: Moravia neighborhood in 2004 (Source: Tobón, 2004)

planning processes, as well as elements required to generate new forms of social participation in the solution of urban and

Flowers growing in a hill of garbage, where an entire neighborhood was erased – Danny Andres Osorio Gaviria

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environmental issues related to the cities and the improvement of the welfare and quality of life

of

the

citizens.

The

plan

for

the

improvement of the Moravia neighborhood started in 2004 as part of the Land Use Master Plan of the city.

After the eviction of the population living on the hill of garbage, the relocation process of these people has been difficult due to the deep social and economic issues. The municipality argued that

“still

it

is

much

remains,

there

is

Image 5: Moravia (Source: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2001)

tremendous poverty in many homes and insecurity in many places, but Moravia is a very different neighborhood today than it was six years ago. In 2011 we will have a completely green hill with no dwelling on it as a result of a very strong process of environmental recovery and with foreign cooperation we will implement a recycling industrial park, a health center, a quality

school,

linear

parks,

the

urban

boulevard of Carabobo and the Cultural Center of Moravia�.

The solution from the local government to the resettlement process of the population living in the hill of garbage relocate the people in new housing projects, in the proposal for the new multifamily

developments

the

affected

householders were involved to consolidate a

Image 6: Mirador de Calazanz (Source: Montoya, 2009)

new urban area where the dwellings are in an acceptable location related to the city center and the providing of the basic home utilities are guaranteed. Nevertheless some inhabitants

Flowers growing in a hill of garbage, where an entire neighborhood was erased – Danny Andres Osorio Gaviria

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involved in the relocation process resist the resettlement of their houses due to the absence of opportunities to develop informal economic activities to survive as they used to do it in their houses on the hill. There were two alternatives for the relocation process, the first one was relocating the people in site and this means resettle some people in new housing developments close to the neighborhood. However, the second alternative was not received in a good way because establish the relocation of thousands of families in new densified multifamily housing projects in new expansion areas in other side of the city, really far away from Moravia.

Conclusion The plan for the improvement of Moravia neighborhood establish three main strategies of transformation, the first one related to economic, social and environmental regeneration of the neighborhood, the second one was about the environmental restoration of the hill and the last one was related to the generation of productive units related to community organization involved in the relocation process of the families evicted from the hill. The environmental recovery of the hill was also important as a source of work for families involved in the gardens and productive units in the neighborhood. The improvement of the neighborhood involved the most representative elements of the city: the flowers and mountains.

From

my

point

of

view,

the

Moravia

neighborhood is a clear example of how the state is trying to not “impoverishment the poverty”. The illegal settlements in Moravia, known as tugurios are the result of decades of violence, forced displacement, economic crisis, poverty and a clear example of how the inequality of an entire city could be reflected in one neighborhood. The Medellín municipality, in an attempt to environmentally recover the hill, implementing egalitarian urban policies, is trying to reconstitute the citizenship of the most vulnerable families and communities that were

Image 7: Moravia Hill (Source: Cátedra Unesco, 2014)

Flowers growing in a hill of garbage, where an entire neighborhood was erased – Danny Andres Osorio Gaviria

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claiming for their rights as citizens.

In the city of Medellín, and in general in the most populated cities in Colombia, people from rural areas are arriving to the urban centers and they are being confined to the peripheries without the basic economic, social or cultural services where they are building the informal city, the illegal city; isolated from the urban culture without the possibilities to improve their condition. These marginalized urban communities are condemned to be isolated because, as Gautam Bhan mentioned it in his lecture, ““poverty” and the “poor” are passive words that make invisible the processes by which poverty is produced and reproduced”.

As well as in the case presented in the lecture about Delhi, where the “master plans consider bastis “illegal” because they are built through the occupation and settlement of public or private land that basti residents do not own in title”, the inhabitants of the Moravia neighborhood occupied empty land of the former dump of the city because gave them the possibility to have an informal economic activity, for this reason we can compare the phenomena with the Indian case, where “the basti is not just the materiality of housing, a spatial form or a planning category – it must be read instead as the “territorialization” of a political engagement within which its residents negotiate their presence in, as well as their right to, the city”. The most vulnerable population of the city was occupying the city, occupying a place where they tried to negotiate their citizenship that was denied to them as “foreigners”. In this case the vulnerable population was displaced for the violence in a difficult economic situation; we can say is a parallel phenomenon as in Delhi, where “basti residents are vulnerable and have meager resources. This vulnerability is articulated not just through a lack of income but also through gender and caste – a majority of residents are dalits, the most marginalized in India´s caste hierarchies. Their vulnerability, they argue, is the responsibility of the state. In a “democratic country like India”. Consequently the wellness of the affected population in Moravia is the responsibility of the Colombian state.

In contrast with the case presented by Gautam Bhan, the resettlement post-eviction was not arbitrary and according to the Colombian law, providing alternative sites for the relocation of the evicted people and seeking the welfare and the improvement of the quality of life of them. The challenge of the Colombian government is the inclusion of this population, in the past they were excluded of the rest of the residents of the city from being citizens in inequality conditions; with the relocation process the state is trying to give them the rights that they deserve as part of the city, as Medellin citizens.

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The plan for the improvement of the Moravia neighborhood as a governmental initiative was looking for the reconstitution of the citizenship in this part of the city, the resettlement process is giving to the most vulnerable population, living in precarious conditions, the right to the city, generating adequate conditions for the development of the urban life of the families and the communities in Moravia.

Image 8: Moravia (Source: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2001)

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