- Bruce Rich
- Environmental Forum
- May-June, 2016
- p. 19
Imagine a city of 2.5 million inhabitants with the highest murder rate on earth, where gunfights and terrorist bombings are everyday occurrences. The public areas are deserted, ruled by fear, and hundreds of thousands of refugees exiled by civil war in the countryside live in shantytowns ruled by criminal gangs. Another city the same size has a violence rate ten times lower, receives numerous international awards as a world capital of green innovation and sustainable transport, and is a continental leader in attracting new international investment and internet and tech startups. It attracts world-class architects to design some of the most striking new public buildings anywhere, and is carrying out an extraordinarily ambitious plan for climate change adaptation. It is the same place: Medellin, Colombia, in the early 1990s and today.
