Endless Journey for an Equitable City: Medellín – A Lecture with Alejandro Echeverri

The Challenge to make life in our cities more vital, inclusive and sustainable is an endless journey, it is extraordinary and exciting. In our experience from the government of the city of Medellín with the Social Urbanism strategy, we developed highly complex, comprehensive urban processes and projects for sectors of the city with critical conditions of poverty and violence. The collaborative work with the communities, the institutional coordination of the processes, and the power of urban and architectural design left us extraordinary lessons. Today from URBAM at the EAFIT University in Medellín and from the Center for the Future of Cities at the Tecnológico de Monterrey, we have made progress in the environmental areas, climate change, data science, and trust-building processes, to link the capacities of universities with the critical problems and territories of our emerging realities, where people develop their collective lives.

Bio:

Alejandro Echeverri Distinguished Professor in Urbanism TEC Monterrey. Alejandro believes in the ethical responsibility of designers to contribute towards a better society. His experience combines architectural, urban, environmental projects and planning. He is co-founder of URBAM, the Center for Urban and Environmental Studies at EAFIT University in Medellin Colombia. Is Distinguished Professor in Urbanism at University TEC Monterrey in México. He is a Loeb Fellow from Harvard GSD, and was given the Obayashi Prize 2016.

Between 2004 and 2010 as Director of EDU, the “Empresa de Desarrollo Urbano” of the Municipality of Medellin, and then as the city’s director of urban projects, he led the Social Urbanism strategy to improve the most impoverished neighborhoods, making Medellin a blueprint for the future for other distressed cities worldwide.

Since 2010, from URBAM, he delves into the urban, environmental, and social issues of emerging developing countries, particularly those with weak political and institutional structures. In addition to his work in Colombia, he also has a broad experience as a international consultant and advisor of multidisciplinary teams for urban, environmental and social projects in the global south countries like, Mexico, Costa Rica, Brazil, India, among others.

He is also active in design through his studio, Alejandro Echeverri + Valencia Architects, focusing on projects with low environmental impact for tropic regions. His work has earned the Colombian National Architectural Award in 1996, the Pan-American Biennale in Urban Design Award 2008, the Curry Stone Design Prize in 2009, the 10th Veronica Rudge Green Prize in Urban Design from Harvard GSD in 2013, among others.

Alejandro has collaborated as a professor, lecturer and juror in various international and national institutions. His intellectual production includes publications and articles focused in architecture, urbanism and environment.