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Ecologism and Urban Space: Nature,

urbanisation and city planning in
Medellin, Colombia
Peter Brand
Published online: 18 Aug 2010.

To cite this article: Peter Brand (1995): Ecologism and Urban Space: Nature, urbanisation and
city planning in Medellin, Colombia, Planning Practice & Research, 10:1, 55-66

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 Planning Practice and Research, Vol. 10, No. 1, 1995

Ecologism and Urban Space: nature,

urbanisation and city planning in
Medellin, Colombia
PETER BRAND

Introduction
The evidence to support the thesis of the greening of western society is far from
convincing. Despite the introduction of ecological concerns in everything from
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the law to marketing, ecological politics appear to be on the wane and the more
structural forces behind environmental deterioration are increasing. A recent
European Comm unity report (1992), identi® ed `disquieting trends’ in energy
consum ption, carbon emissions, car ownership and mileage, use of fertilisers,
waste production and water consumption. Amongst other things, a change of
gear was called for to put environmental policy in line with the new economic
realities of the internal market and international competition.
In sharp contrast to the above, the greening of towns and citiesÐ of urban
spaces as opposed to economic organisationÐ becomes everm ore blatantly
self-evident with the dawning of each new spring. In particular, the transform -
ation of the old industrial centres in England has been quite rem arkable. Over a
period of 20 years, hard industrial cityscapes have been converted into a m osaic
of soft micro-landscapes, swathes of green connecting corridors and global
panoramas reminiscent of the garden city aesthetic.
Indeed it might well be argued that town planning has been at the front edge
of environmental practice. Especially in certain leading local authorities, there is
abundant evidence to demonstrate the effectiveness of land use and development
control instruments and local urban management techniques in reconstructing
urban environm ents in ecologically sensitive terms. Academic and professional
debate is also moving back to fundamental issues of urban design, concerning
the appropriate size and organisation of settlements, in a kind of ecological
update of the early pioneers of planning such as Howard and Geddes.
This apparently contradictory situation in which ecological concerns are
concentrated in urban environments has been comm ented on in a recent review
of European environm ental planning by M arshall (1992). He suggests that the
linking of ecological and economic processes has progressed more rapidly at the
continental and urban levels, whilst citing Janicke’ s condemnation of `state
failure’ at the regional and national levels. This concentration of environmental
advances at what I would characterise as the discursive (continental) and
symbolic (urban) levels, whilst causal economic factors of environmental de-

Peter Brand, Postgraduate Programme in Urban and Regional Planning, National University of
Colombia (Medellin Campus).

0269±7459/95/010055±12 Ó 1995 Journals Oxford L td

 Peter Brand

terioration continue substantially unchecked, constitutes an underlying theme

behind the present work.
Additionally, it m ay be reasonably put forward that this is a universal trend
affecting, in varying degrees, cities throughout the world. The greening of urban
environm ents m ay well appear as a perfectly `natural’ phenomenon, in the
context of the British attitude towards nature, English urban tradition and the
opportunities for cleaning up urban environm ents provided by deindustrialisa-
tion. However, environmental concern is in very essence a global issue, and one
of the more recent additions to the environmental debate is that of `sustainable
cities’ , heavily prom oted by United Nations and other international organisa-
tions, both as an urban proposal and as a target for and condition of ® nancial aid
and credit. In the light of the above, the hypothesis that environmentalism
constitutes a new global spatial ideology for urban development will be explored
in the present paper.
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Urban Ecologism: towards new models of spatial organisation and urban

form?
The relation between ecology and economy, and hence their articulation through
spatial organisation is undoubtedly a complex one. At a purely functional level,
the restructuring of urban economies has of course received considerable
attention. The redistribution of industrial activity on a global scale has provoked
a wide body of literature on themes such as global cities and new m etropolitan
regions, which increasingly operate on the basis of inform ation, science and
technology, ® nance, culture and the leisure industry.
On a practical level, the reality of urban econom ic restructuring presents a
comm on enough challenge to m any local authorities and their planning staff.
Attracting private investment, securing government or European Comm unity
funds, and job creation are frequently priority issues, which have relegated
traditional strategic land use or comprehensive planning to the back seat. Over
the last decade or so, planning has assumed a much more pragm atic and
management style of operation. Questions of urban form have been increasingly
left to market forces, the m aximum expression of this tendency being enterprise
zones.
However, this shift in urban practise raises important questions at a theoretical
as well as practical level. In short, if urban econom ies are being restructured,
what are the form s of spatial organisation and urban imagery appropriate to
modern sectors, technologies and organisation of production? A brief citing of
two examples m ay help illustrate these concerns more clearly.
Firstly, let’ s take a look at Leeds. Since the 1970s, the traditional industrial
base of mining and textiles has been severely depleted. As a spatial correlative,
the infamously progressive Quarry Hill housing estate has been replaced by the
even more m onum ental DHSS of® ces, a once throbbing and vital city centre has
been modernised with eclectic and trendily vacuous pedestrianisation schemes,
and traditional working class areas are now clean, sm oke-free, quasi-Arcadian
districts surviving, as is often the case, on low-paid jobs in the service sector.

56
 Ecologism and Urban Space

Birmingham is another interesting case in point. Particularly illustrative is the

contrast between the Bull Ring centre, that show-piece of 1960s drive and
enterprise and the Victoria Square/concert hall area. Here the enorm ously
successful urban design work, articulating and restoring traditional historic
spaces (even absorbing the brutalist public library with panache), has been
clearly linked to various culture initiatives: concert hall, conference centre,
sports facilities and tourism. The crowning symbol of the whole complex is the
Hyatt Hotel, with its sleek, bi-dimensional, high-tech aesthetic of the advertising
image. If the Bull Ring represented a last great act of self-con® dence of
autonomous local entrepreneurship, the latter is distinctly more cosmopolitan, a
seductive architectural gesture by and to the national and international business
comm unity. M eanwhile, in a similar way to that of Leeds, the urban surround is
insistently softer and greener, and increasingly characterised, in the now ironi-
cally named Black Country for example, by the environmentally based leisure
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and heritage industries.

The important point is that urban economic change has a very clear impact on
urban form, and that this impact is taking place in two different and complemen-
tary directions. Firstly, post-modern architectural monumentalism of footloose
international investment capital and high-technology industry, and secondly, the
greening of urban contexts. Both are global and international phenom ena. It is
the second of these aspects which I want to go into in more detail since, amongst
other things, it is increasingly the remit of the m ain thrust of planning practice
itself. Site speci® c architectural statements are m ore often a matter for the
private sector. Their urban settingsÐ the control of m ore m undane everyday
lifeÐ still requires state intervention.
The underlying rationale behind these trends is a complex one, dating from the
economic crisis of the early 1970s and frequently described in terms of `late
capitalism’ . It is not the case here to go into the economic analyses behind the
`bewildering new world-space’ of transnational capital. Harvey (1990) and
Jameson (1991) both provide excellent introductions speci® cally referenced to
spatial and cultural patterns. The practical consequences, however, are quite
evident, whether they be de- or re-industrialisation in northern England, new
urban imagery in Birm ingham, or rapid industrialisation in the `Third W orld’
countries.
For the purpose of this paper, it is suf® cient to simply observe the coincidence
of the econom ic and ecological crisis which arose in the early 1970s and, within
this schematic perspective, suggest that the contemporary ecological crisisÐ a
distinctively global affairÐ is inseparable from the internationalisation of capital,
touching the physical/ecological limits to accum ulation on a world scale. This
itself is a consequence of the dynamic and innovative nature of capital, in terms
of products and m ethods and organisation of production, and its inherent
expansiveness in a spatial sense.
The spectre of an absolute incom patibility between in® nite growth and ® nite
material resources was set out in the Club of Rome’ s `Limits to Growth’ . It m ay
be argued that such a situation has been postponed, at least for the time being,
by the technological widening of what is, in production terms, a resource,
through new techniques of material transformation and product design, recy-

57
 Peter Brand

cling, m ore ef® cient use of energy, etc. This is the so-called technical ® x. In
reality, probably m uch more important has been the securing of unhindered
access to existing resources on a world scale, through such m echanisms as the
deregulation of international trade, free ¯ ows of ® nance capital, the opening-up
of protective markets and capital penetration of ex-comm unist blocks, the
abolition of price-® xing agreem ents and the formation of trade blocks.
W hatever the case, some 25 years later there is now an abundance of raw
materials and prices have fallen throughout the world comm odity markets.
Attention has shifted radically from non-renewable physical resources to ecolog-
ical life-support systems. The environm ental question is not now merely an
economic concern but one for humanity itself and, along this line of argum ent,
social interactions with nature as a whole (technology, lifestyles, consumer
habits, urban form , etc.) have to be adjusted accordingly.
Scienti® c evidence, regarding the degree and implications of ecological
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disturbance is far from clear, in part due to the enorm ous com plexity of the
natural processes involved. However, the fact that the so-called ecological crisis
has so thoroughly penetrated contemporary consciousness in such a short period
is a testament to its ideological character and success. Ideologies function by
being accepted as self-evident truths.
A more critical approach would emphasise the production and use of ideas
and values in relation to the m aterial conditions of the societies which produce
them. Lefebvre (1976) has described ideology as `any representation which
contributes mediately or imm ediately to the reproduction of the relations of
production’ . Ideology in this sense is not so much a m atter of truth or falseness,
but rather a certain version of the truth which gives support and legitimation to
a speci® c form of social organisation (including space). In this sense, the
veracity of imminent ecological catastrophe is secondary to the structural
necessity of the discourse itself.
W hatever one’ s view in this respect, the fact that ideologies operate within
(economically determined or not) socio-spatial spheres is fairly incontrovertible,
and contemporary space is incontrovertibly planetary. Ecologism m ight be
de® ned, then, as the global ideological counterpart to the highly articulated
world-scale spatial organisation of contemporary economic activity.
As such, it contains the classic attributes of ideological representation. It is a
historical (with its temporal references located in the creation and som e looming
apocalypse), universal (affecting the planet/m ankind as a whole) and m oralistic
(the obligation or moral imperative of protecting life-support systems for future
generations). It displaces social contradictions into the ® eld of nature. It
embraces the world communityÐ the contemporary web of capitalist relationsÐ
and all its new re-groupings on ethnic, gender, religious, national or interest
group lines. It constitutes a blood m etaphor for the post-m odern sense of the
dissolution of history, an ecological expression of the `fantasies of sheer
catastrophe’ of post-modern culture (Jam eson, op. cit.) and dram atic visualisa-
tion of the contemporary `supra-national, non-class speci® c, global hazards’
underlying Beck’ s (1992) thesis on post-industrial risk society.
Our immediate interest in ideology is, however, a limited but by no m eans
dismissive one. Ideologies have to be expressed and operationalised through

58
 Ecologism and Urban Space

different form s of representation, and spatial representation through urban form

is well-trodden ground to urban historians. In concrete terms, the ecological
crisis, as a new paradigm for conceiving issues of urban development and
management, would appear to be leading towards the construction of a new
organic model for urban spatial organisation and form . If this is the case, then
it would constitute a slowly emerging replacement to the last great urban utopian
vision: the Modern M ovement. Given the global nature of the ecological crisis,
then urban environm entalist spatial organisation is potentially of international
signi® cance and, moreover, organic in content, in the sense that it necessarily
involves the adaptation of environmental principles to highly variable cultural
and ecological situations.
The above hypothesis clearly requires not only considerable international
research but also the development of appropriate m ethods of investigation. The
traditional variables or parameters for m easuring the environmental `friendli-
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ness’ of urban space, such as those concerned with purely m aterial consider-
ations (energy ¯ ows, pollution, technology, waste management etc.) are
insuf® cient. Any hypothesis concerned with spatial m odels or quasi-utopian
visions needs to incorporate the symbolic content of urban space and its capacity
to in som e way represent the collective aspirations or ideals of a particular
period.

M edellin, Colombia
Medellin, Colombia’ s second city, nestles in the inter-m ountain valley some
1500 m high in the central cordillera of the Andes. A traditional industrial centre,
the m etropolitan area population exploded from 380 000 in 1951 to an estimated
current ® gure of around 2.3 m illion. Some 60% of the city was built outside
planning controls, in the form of squatter settlem ents and inform al developm ent.
In these respects it may be considered typical of Latin American urbanisation.
The research work in question aimed to look at the process of m etropolitan
spatial con® guration from the environm ental perspective as previously outlined.
The characteristics and distribution of vegetation cover were taken as key
indicators of space/nature relations. Additionally, a recent historical analysis of
change and evolution aimed at providing an integral, dynamic perspective of
environm ental change in relation to concrete social processes of urban growth.
In this respect, it is worth mentioning two fundamental hypotheses underlying
the work.

1. The urbanisation process is never a completely destructive one in ecological

terms but, rather, involves a `capturing’ or domestication of nature. For this
reason, not only (dis)functional relations are established with territorial
ecosystems, but also aesthetic and symbolic value systems. The latter, which
are culturally conditioned, are expressed through the conscious introduction
of nature into urban space, via the action of individuals, comm unities,
developers or the state.
2. Ecologism constitutes the dominant contemporary urban ideology. As such,
it conditions ever m ore aspects of urban intervention and, in particular,

59
 Peter Brand

provides the global logic behind modi® cations to urban form through the
articulation and content of public space by natural or `nature-sympathetic’
elements. This ecological urban form is, in turn, a spatial expression of the
transition from the m odernist ideal of progress to the postmodern ethic of
sustainability.
The late 1960s was taken as a starting point, as it marks the beginnings of
general public concern and institutional reaction to latent or emerging environ-
mental problems. Given limitations concerning data availability, primary infor-
mation in the form of aerial photographs was taken for the years 1969, 1983 and
1989. Interpretation of vegetation cover was undertaken with the aid of a
zoom-transfer, allowing areas of 2 m 3 2 m or greater to be included in the
database. This was then m anually m apped to a standard scale (1:10 000), and
® nally introduced into a GIS database. The characteristics of the vegetation
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cover were classi® ed according to the following ten categories:

1. Areas of dispersed free-standing housing (subclassi® ed in terms of uncon-
solidated land invasions, small rural farms and low-density, high-income
country-style housing).
2. Contiguous internal areas within the traditional street blocks.
3. Green space within new large-scale residential developments.
4. Green areas within and integral to highway systems.
5. Green spaces adjacent to urban river system (areas of protection).
6. Public parks and recreational areas (as discernible from aerial photos on the
basis of infrastructure provision).
7. Pasture or grassed areas not included in the above categories (such as
cemeteries, golf courses, playing ® elds within educational or industrial
establishm ents, green spaces within residential zones, etc.).
8. Unused rough ground.
9. Plantations.
10. Areas under crop cultivation.
The above is, in effect, an adaptation of vegetation cover characteristics to
certain land use categories, in such a way as to permit subsequent analysis
according to social processes of urbanisation and different built form character-
istics at a comprehensive, city-scale level. W ithin the above fram e of analysis,
a detailed estimation was also made of the urban forest or tree population.

Urban G rowth and the Reconstitution of Nature: some initial results

Gross data indicate a steady decrease in overall vegetation cover within current
city boundaries, as would be expected during a period of intense urbanisation,
over which time the population approximately doubled. In 1969, vegetation
cover accounted for 57% of the total (1989) urban area, a ® gure which was
reduced to 46% in 1983 and 41% in 1989. Tables I and II illustrate the overall
vegetation losses (especially through the urbanisation of previously unused
rough ground, but also of pasture land and river setbacks) as well as some
surprising `nature gains’ , especially through plantations, highway developments

60
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T ABLE I. Changes in vegetation cover in Medellin, 1969±1983, by classi® cation (in ha)

Year I Pt R S V Zp Zr Cr P Cu L Total

1969 917.2 2208.7 1922.2 58.6 43.9 270.1 161.0 7.4 1.2 4.0 * 5594.3
1983 875.8 2072.2 788.7 74.0 160.8 216.9 179.9 69.1 114.3 15.9 53.7 4621.3
1989 1040.8 1679.7 562.2 61.8 173.1 186.3 160.2 100.1 103.4 3.2 48.5 4119.3

Change 69±83 2 41.4 2 136.5 2 1133.5 15.4 116.9 2 53.2 18.9 61.7 113.1 11.9 * 2 1026.7
Change 83±89 165.0 2 392.5 2 226.5 2 12.2 12.3 2 30.6 2 19.7 31.0 2 10.9 2 12.7 2 5.2 2 502.0
Change 69±89 123.6 2 529.0 2 1360.0 3.2 129.2 2 83.8 2 0.8 92.7 102.2 2 0.8 * 2 1523.5

I, Areas of dispersed free-standing housing.

Pt, Grassed areas not included in other categories.
R, Rough ground
S, Contiguous internal areas within traditional street blocks.
V, Green spaces within and integral to highway systems.
Ecologism and Urban Space

Zp, Green spaces adjacent to rivers and streams.

Zr, Public parks and recreational areas.
Cr, Green spaces within large-scale residential units.
P, Plantations.
Cu, Areas under crop cultivation.
L, Lineal separators of one m etre (between road and pavement).

61
 Peter Brand

T ABLE II. Changes in vegetation cover in Medellin, 1969±1983±1989, by district

(Comuna), in ha.

Area of vegetation cover % of Total District Area No. of trees

District 1969 1983 1989 1969 1983 1989 1969 1983 1989

1 146.7 102.6 106.1 64.7 45.2 46.8 6239 7796 9279

2 87.1 55.4 63.0 39.6 25.2 28.5 3221 2786 4811
3 116.1 109.4 106.0 35.6 33.5 32.0 6053 6451 6523
4 118.1 114.6 94.9 24.1 23.3 19.3 4808 6833 5429
5 314.8 221.9 189.4 50.8 35.8 30.6 15 345 10 167 12 693
6 242.6 144.3 117.6 60.7 36.2 29.3 4069 3904 4988
7 671.3 558.6 465.8 83.8 69.7 58.1 24 635 26 462 39 300
8 256.7 220.7 227.1 56.5 48.5 49.9 10 922 12 402 12 217
9 461.0 413.2 389.7 70.4 63.1 59.5 1879 47 262 41 056
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10 93.6 91.0 74.1 14.0 13.6 11.1 5067 3166 5313

11 220.1 137.1 117.1 28.8 17.9 15.3 15 890 9450 10 630
12 174.8 130.1 114.8 38.1 28.3 25.0 8202 3118 6451
13 397.1 358.9 338.3 72.3 65.3 61.6 12 745 15 681 21 759
14 1271.4 1154.1 1026.1 83.0 75.3 65.1 84 751 181 686 160 054
15 365.4 247.5 196.4 54.4 36.9 29.3 18 363 8047 9668
16 655.8 508.1 444.5 68.0 52.7 46.4 28 031 26 391 27 056

Totals 5592.6 4567.5 4070.9 52.8 41.9 38.0 250 220 371 602 377 227

and large-scale housing projects. A signi® cant feature is that nature is being
incorporated within urban space in important new ways, through the opportuni-
ties provided by new urban forms and functions. Traditional patterns, involving
a spatial con® nement of nature within equally tight city boundaries, has virtually
disappeared. Contrary to what might be expected, recreational areas (as de® ned
in the present study) are unimportant in terms of contemporary urban ecology
(just 4% of the total vegetation cover in 1989).
This spatial relocation of nature varies considerably across the urban
spectrum. In older urban areas, subject to permanent processes of piecemeal
redevelopment, densi® cation and cityscale infrastructure projects, highway
improvements are especially signi® cant (Comunas 2 and 4, for example). In
similarly located m iddle-incomed districts (Comuna 11), overall vegetation
cover almost halved, whilst green space related to highway improvements and
large scale housing developments increased three- and ten-fold respectively.
In peripheral areas of recent urban growth, the overall pattern is an even more
complex one, due to the diversity of urban social processes at work, varying
from land invasions to high income country-style residential districts. The
former, established in large part by inhabitants from rural areas, tend to have
initial vegetation cover characteristics similar to those of high-income areas, as
the already deteriorated sites are cultivated with fruit trees, subsistence crops,
ornamental plants, etc. However, consolidation of the settlem ent through

62
 Ecologism and Urban Space

densi® cation and the eventual provision of basic services leads to the virtual
elimination of all space for nature.
Thus the expansion of squatter settlem ents involves an initially positive urban
ecological pro® le, as described above, but containing within itself an inexorable
deterioration over time. On the other hand, high-income areas have shown a
propensity to adopt high-rise living in exchange for generous ecological environ-
ments. Urban plantations have also occasionally been introduced to try to
prevent erosion and control land instability or to protect sites of strategic
importance from further land invasions.
Socio-spatial differences, typically attributable to normative and market in-
strum ents in industrially advanced societies, are produced in developing coun-
tries by these processes and by less formal actions which structure urban areas:
(i) formal processes (undertaken within the legal fram ework of property rights
and transactions and the regulatory planning control system), (ii) informal or
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`pirata’ processes (involving legal land transactions but development outside

planning controls) and land invasions (outside both property and planning law).
In general terms, it can be seen that consolidated low-income areas, developed
largely through a process of `pirata’ developments and land invasions, have a
2 2
`nature ratio’ of less than 10 m per inhabitant, compared to over 200 m in the
highest incom e areas of the city (Table III). The `nature ratio’ of m iddle-income
areas was found to be highly variable, between 10 and 36 m 2 per inhabitant.
Similarly, in terms of tree distribution, for every tree per inhabitant in the poorest
areas of the city, the wealthiest sectors enjoy 54 trees per inhabitant. Middle and
mixed-income areas have an average of almost three times as m any trees per
inhabitant than the poorest sectors. Location and age of the settlement prove to
be important m odifying factors.
These quantitative indications of the social differentials of space/nature
provision are clear enough illustrations of a general situation of environmental
inequality. However, of equal importance from an urban perspective are the
ways in which nature is physically reconstituted within different architectural
and urban forms in the developm ent process.
W ithin Colombian urban tradition, colonial development perceived the vast,
exuberant tropical geography as hostile and threatening, thereby excluding it
from public space all together and enclosing it ® rmly within the walled con® nes
of interior patios. Late nineteenth and early twentieth century romanticism led to
the controlled contemplation of the beauty of nature, and with it the introduction
of ornamental set pieces within the urban landscape, in formal squares and
public parks (Arango, 1980).
In late twentieth century urban space, however, nature is becoming a ubiqui-
tous and emphatically public affair. Nature is being increasingly squeezed and
ousted into the public and semi-public domain, through a mixture of the social
imperatives of new urban development processes and forms, and the persuasive
and all-pervasive effects of ecological ideology. As such, it acquires an increas-
ing importance in overall spatial organisation and urban form, conditioned only
by the physical opportunities afforded by particular local conditions.
The state and local planning have been active in promoting urban environmen-
tal adjustment. Environm ental disasters have undoubtedly stimulated such action

63
 Peter Brand

T ABLE III. Distribution of vegetation cover by district/comuna and per inhabitant, 1989.
Project: Ecologism and urban space

Area Area veg. Area veg.

District (ha) cover (has) No. Trees Population cover/hab.

1 227 106 9279 85 878 12.3

2 220 63 4811 98 279 6.4
3 326 106 6523 114 725 9.2
4 492 95 5429 141 207 6.7
5 620 189 12 693 120 214 15.6
6 400 118 4988 143 006 8.2
7 801 466 39 300 82 171 56.6
8 455 227 12 217 99 863 22.7
9 655 390 41 056 102 994 37.8
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10 668 74 5313 69 903 10.6

11 765 117 10 630 108 206 10.8
12 459 115 6451 83 698 13.7
13 550 338 21 759 92 754 36.5
14 1532 1026 160 054 45 881 223.6
15 671 196 9668 54 995 35.7
16 965 445 27 056 131 776 33.7

Total/ 9806 4070.9 377 227 1 575 550 33.8

Average

(in a particularly tragic case, 500 people died and a further 1500 were left
homeless after a landslide in 1987). Over the last few years risk m anagement,
housing relocation, pollution control, river basin management, stricter planning
regulations and decentralised, more environmentally sensitive local planning,
have all been introduced. Spatial problems are increasingly being de® ned in
speci® cally environm ental terms, which in turn has led to the de® nition of new
units of spatial analysis, new planning techniques and participatory procedures,
and the adjustment of adm inistrative structures and ® nancial priorities.
However, the issue of `sustainable cities’ has been as much a practical
question of survival for the urban poor as a theoretical discourse. Even so, the
technical displacement of inherently social problems on to the natural ® eld
brings with it its own set of problems. A concrete example of this m ay be cited
in terms of a m ajor project involving the relocation of over 2000 fam ilies
living in what were classi® ed as high-risk zones. The rigid environmental
rationale behind the program me led to a disregard of local, inform al social and
economic survival networks, and the rehousing area has become a ghetto of
unemploym ent, state dependency and crime. In current risk management termi-
nology, environmental vulnerability has been replaced by an accentuated social
vulnerability.
The symbolic insertion of nature into urban space has perhaps been more
successful. The local authority has again been energetic in this sense, currently
planting some 6000 trees per year and providing an estimated 60±70 000 trees

64
 Ecologism and Urban Space

to comm unity groups for planting in a diverse range of local projects. The total
tree population increased by around 130 000 between 1969 and 1989. Between
1983 and 1989, the number of trees located in streets and highways increased
from 23 230 to 38 481, or from 6% to 10% of the total tree population for each
year. In densely developed urban areas (Communas 4, 10, 11, 12) these ® gures
represent between 28% and 46% of the total tree population in each district.
The effect of all this, especially over the last 5 years, in conjunction with the
initiatives of individual householders and private developers, has been to
transform the appearance of the city as a whole. The spatial presence of nature
within the city has diminished radically in absolute terms, as was shown earlier,
yet at the same time a dramatic ecological shift has taken place within the urban
spatial and conceptual environment as a whole.
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Conclusions
The real and metaphorical greening in the case of M edellin can, I believe, be
argued fairly convincingly on the basis of the evidence brie¯ y presented here,
and in this sense provides some useful data for comparative studies. The extent
to which it is representative of a general trend in Latin America is still unclear.
In Colom bia, current national research proposals concerning the elaboration of
an urban environmental pro® le involving the 30 largest cities, should provide
greater better indications in the near future.
Secondly, the essential universality of urban environm entalism is quite clearly
suggested, though far from proven, in relation to British and Colombian
experiences. Diversity within unity is a fundamental environmental principle,
and local differences are not only to be expected but actively encouraged,
according to speci® c ecological and cultural conditions. The British experience
has seen the introduction of new urban elements such as city farm s and urban
nature parks, quite unthinkable in the Colombia context. However, it is not
dif® cult to see the connection between them and say, the urban forestry of
highway improvements and the prevention of land invasions in M edellin, whilst
a quite clear link exists in terms of the greening of residential environments and
urban ecological imagery in general.
However, the further telling question rem ains as to how to interpret urban
environm entalism. Just as econom ically related `disquieting trends’ persist in
Europe, so do they in Latin America, in the form of rain forest depletion, loss
of biodiversity, soil erosion and, increasingly, pollution. Once again, urban space
and planning appear to be swimming against a tide of stronger undercurrents of
environm ental deterioration.
The hypothesis of this paper suggests the need to look more closely, however,
into the economic forces and social relations of emerging urban ecotopia. It is,
after all, accom panied by social inequality in the distribution of wealth (unpre-
cedented in England since the nineteenth century), structural unemployment,
social m arginality, crime, violence, the loosening of comm unity structures and
weakening social solidarity in general. In Colom bia cities, arguments have been

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put forward suggesting that that very environmental concept of the `quality of
life’ has improved, despite the fact of falling real incomes.
Nature is pleasant and cheap to introduce into all the everyday corners of
urban life, and cities are an effective means of representation and comm unication
of value systems. In the face of postmodern change and uncertainty the
ecological ideology thesis presents the green symbols of sustainability as
the contemporary urban agenda of social unity, a biological metaphor of
human interdependence which dissimulates the rampant competitiveness and
individualisation of contemporary economic change and postmodern culture.
Environmentalism seems here to stay, but isn’ t it also time to put ideology
back on to the planning agenda?

References
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Beck, U. (1992) The Risk Society: towards a new postmodernity (London, Sage).
Commission of European Communities (1992) Towards Sustainability (Brussels, CEC).
Harvey, D. (1990) The Condition of Postmodernity (Oxford, Blackwell).
Jameson, F. (1991) Postmodernity of the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, (London, Verso).
Lefebvre, H. (1976) The Survival of Capitalism (London, Allison & Busby).
Marshall, T. C. (1992) A review of recent developments in European environmental planning, Journal of
Environmental Planning and M anagement, 35, pp. 129±144.

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