Medellín urban forums: Transnational assemblages of hegemonic and counter-hegemonic narratives

• In Event: Urban Policy Exchange Platforms: Tracing Translocal Innovation Networks and Infrastructures

Abstract

Mega events became transnational platforms crucial to understand the new politics of the urban. Medellin hosted the World Urban Forum organized by UN-Habitat in 2014 and became a global benchmark for urban social innovation. The city image mutated from the murder capital of the world in the 1980s to the most innovative city in 2013, title awarded by the Wall Street Journal. Has Medellin gone from the chaos of neoliberal restructuring and the drug wars into a paradigmatic process of assemblage that turned it into a global success? This paper examines the hegemonic and counter hegemonic narratives portrayed in the Medellin Charter, a recently enacted document promoted as the result of the World Urban Forum, and in the Alternative Social Urban Forum Declaration drafted by representatives of different social movements. We argue that today's forums are part and parcel of hegemonic boosterism constructing place from above so as to erase the reality of the underrepresented majority. However, the forums, as mega events, also enable that fragmented actors and social movements assemble transnational spaces of contestation. Therefore, the collision of narratives offers a crucial place to understand the new politics of the urban.

Author

• Catalina Ortiz, University College London