Introduction Today we see trends of urbanisation across the globe with predictions that by the year 2050 more than two thirds of the world’s population will live in urban areas (Ritchie. H & Roser. M, 2019). This is particularly the case in developing countries such as Colombia and is driven by factors such as increasing economic opportunity, access to healthcare and better education. In 2000 the population of Medellín was 2,733,00 by 2018 it had grown to 3,934,00 an increase of 1.2 million under 20 years. (macrotrends, 2019) This trend is set to continue with projections of 4,488,0000 by the year 2035 (macrotrends, 2019) which will only further increase the pressure to provide sufficient infrastructure to accommodate the population. Located in the Aburra Valley, a central region of the Andes mountains, Medellín is the second largest city in Colombia after Bogota, with nearly 4 million inhabitants. (Population Stat, 2019.) The city is situated in the north of the Los Andes mountain ridge, one of the most topographically broken places in Colombia. The city centre is in the valley, with a number of barrios on the hills that surround it (Centre for Public Impact (CPI), 2016). Medellín is a growing city experiencing rapid urbanization. The huge influx of people meant that the government was not able to create suitable housing for the vast amount of people migrating to the city (Blanco, 2009). This caused people to live in unsuitable housing on the outskirts of Medellín, because they could simply not afford to move to the city centre.
Figure2: Diagram of Medellin. Author.
Informal settlements City centre River (Cauca) Medellin outline 2.
