Crime rate Medellín was once known as the world’s most violent city (Jakobsen, 2016). In the 1990’s, Medellín had the highest murder rate in the world and was known as the murder capital. However, now due to the metrocable and PUI’s, Medellín is adding to more positive recognition. In 2013 it was named the most innovative city in the world by the international urban land institute (Young, 2019) and has come top of the list for most liveable cities in south America (Young, 2019). Crime rate has slowed down considerable due to the positive transformation of the city. Margarita Castaño Echavarría who has lived in Medellín all her life notices the difference made by the metrocable and PUI’s. “Life has improved, both here in this city and in the country generally. In the nineties we were always afraid of walking on the streets, because a bomb could go off at any moment. Almost no foreigners dared visit Colombia either. But now we see more and more tourists, and we also see that more foreign companies invest and set up their offices here in this city,” (Jakobsen, 2016). Figure 21 shows the different districts and their crime levels between 19992008, before and after the MetroCable was implemented. The results from the table show that line “K” had the biggest impact and reduced crime in the areas of Santo Domingo, Popular and Andalucía (where there is a MetroCable station) by an average of 87%. The results also show that line “J” did not have as big of an impact in crime reduction with Belen and Castilla only showing an average of 9.5%. Given that the survey was also conducted in 2008, the impacts of the implementation of line “J” are unlikely to have fully taken effect, thus the reduction in crime appears lower. Despite this, the building of stations itself will have had an impact on the community as it is a tangible improvement and investment from the government.
Figure20: Military on streets combating everyday crimes. (villatorro, 2014)
Line “K”
Line “J”
No Line
Figure21: Table of crime rates before and after the metrocable. (Borraez, 2015) after Author
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