Eleven years have passed since the Ciudad Paraíso renovation project was announced as the panacea for urban development in downtown Cali. Today, just before the end of another administration, we see that the situation in the El Calvario and San Pascual neighborhoods does not seem to have improved due to the urban interventions of the project.
On the contrary, and as usually happens in our country, the situation has become paradoxical because after the purchase of land, the institutional absence and the deficiencies in the enclosures of the purchased lots, the propagation of activities such as robbery, micro-trafficking, invasions, and even murder. In short, what we have there today is anything but paradise.
Rather, what this situation has shown is that, as seems to happen in almost all Latin American cities, urban renewal becomes the object of political manipulation, administrative inefficiencies, economic interests and, in general, practices that end up generating socio-spatial gaps. and economic, losses in the treasury, gentrification, and even segregation.
Last year the Santiago de Cali District Council approved the agreement that introduced the change of corporate purpose of the extinct EMRU, now Urban Development and Renewal Company (EDRU). The motivation for this agreement lies in the need to open the profile of the company so that it can participate in new businesses and generate more resources.
This means that after the diversification of the activities that were included in its object, the company could have a greater financial muscle to support the projects that are within its mission. However, until today, and despite the recentness of the enlargement of the object, a significant advance in the capabilities of the EDRU has not been observed. A matter of concern and that will be analyzed in depth in the political controls programmed by the District Council.
Now, I must say that, despite the important advances in the construction of a 20-story building for residential use, a four-story parking tower and the bunker of the Prosecutor’s Office, the percentage of progress achieved so far has not It completely complies with the urban development expectations of the project. Moreover, this calls into question the institutional actions to correctly manage the planning and management instruments designed to achieve the expected objectives.
Hence, in the almost 24 hectares covered by the project, no representative advances are observed in the achievement of the 29,300 m² of public space, or in the 386,000 m² of commerce and services area, much less in the 135,000 m² of facilities . It is incredible that almost eleven years later, the urban transformation of the sector seems to have brought more problems than solutions, and that EDRU’s actions have become entrenched in the argument that property management has undermined the progress of the project.
The urgency of the urban renewal of the city is a pressing reality, but as a Cali native I cannot help but feel bad when other cities in the country have turned their territorial planning into a differential factor that generates territorial well-being and economic development. It is time for EDRU to bring this project to fruition, which, without a doubt, will change the face of our city center.
Comments