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...
moreThis 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 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.