Medellín's Green Corridors

> Colombia looks to have a GDP per capita about 1/10th of the US, so if we scale it up 10X...

Ah, yes, but costs for public projects like this in the US is far greater than 10x Colombia's.

You have to keep PPP in mind when you look at numbers like this. In San Francisco, for example, the park and recs dept gets the budget in the tune of hundreds of millions. Does it mean they are wasting the money? Absolutely not. Land acquisition, construction, hourly wages (with minimum wage at $36000/year excluding benefits) etc. are all very expensive in absolute dollars in some parts of the world, while in others, it is very cheap. You simply cannot compare the two.

In a cold climate, these wide boulevards lose their leaves in the autumn and the turn into enormous ducts for cold wind to traverse freely. You freeze just while crossing it.

In cold climate, you definitely do not want tall buildings with space between them, or straight roads. Unfortunately that's what gets built.

Colombia is equatorial. It rains a lot; the green spaces probably don't need irrigation. It might not be so easy or cheap to pull this off in places like Los Angeles, Los Vegas, or Phoenix.

Are you from Colombia or you moved there? If you've been in Medellin for more than 10 years how does it compare to today?

That a city in still-developing South America was able to prioritize vegitation deserves a huge kudos.

Higher density of vegitation is what I dearly miss in the sprawl centric cities of California and what I like about my city back in India.

>the rising tide hasn't quite lifted all boats

It turns out that, in spite of what libertarians might like to tell everyone, people and societies aren't actually boats and marinas. Who would've thought?

One possibility is that some homeless may move to the city in hopes of either finding work or catching a break to get out of the homelessness.

We see that a lot in Seattle, that people who became homeless out in Enumclaw or Goldbar or wherever slowly get drawn towards the city because the systems that support the homeless are there, whether it be infrastructure that can be used for shelter or soup kitchens or day labor or even just a good corner to beg from.

Its not the only source of the homeless by any stretch of the imagination, but it is a source.

Similarly, we can't plant enough trees to offset our total carbon emission because we've released SOOO much carbon that was previously just buried underground as oil. We would need to plant more trees than we have ever seen.

> They are a one-time carbon sink

Depends how you manage them, and their detritus

If you burn it, you are correct

There are other approaches that sink the carbon and improve soils.

It's improving...

...or maybe just fewer cars because of global recession...

Username checks out :)

You must not have been to all parts of it. There are some very grungy, crowded, run-down areas as well.

(The nice parts are pretty nice though.)

Check out permeable concrete and permeable pavers:

https://youtu.be/ERPbNWI_uLw

Seems like a microplastic source.

Air quality in Bogota is terrible as well.

I think a good first step would be ditching all the diesel vehicles that have minimal/non-existant exhaust emissions systems.

Many factories are relocating outside the valley, and the use of electric vehicles (including cars and motorcycles) is increasing.

> I love Medellin and lived there for many years, but the air quality is terrible and getting worse

The good thing about hill cities such as Medellin (sadly not a format available for big cities say in Europe or the US) is that you can choose your altitude, and at around 2000 thousand meters (the city starts at ~1500m) the air quality is not so bad, used to be worse years ago (maybe you lived there 2 or 3 years ago), but now it's much better.

> You can talk with any locals and they say that the climate is noticeably different than it was in the past.

Yeah, the city is much warmer compared to say 10 years ago, whether this is due to the city growing into previously-forest areas or /global/ warming I don't know... but yeah, locals agree it was MUCH colder 10 years ago...

> Medellin is surrounded by mountains and the contaminated air cannot escape.

See comments above about living at 2000m altitude (up in the mountains a bit away from the high-rise buildings and such, think of Beverly Hills or something like that.).

> The hills are steep and old busses spew black smoke.

As of now, there's almost no remaining old busses spewing black smoke anymore, but there's some cargo trucks still doing it.

> Saying Medellin's temp decreased by 2 degrees Celsius based on "Mejorar el microclima hasta 2°C" is a misinterpretation. I think this article is quite misleading.

I wouldn't know, but locals do say that it was a much more colder city in the past...

The SF moma has a living wall on the patio. It is refreshing. The new transit center has a park on the roof. One of the most calming and comfortable public spaces in SF.

It's not by design, but one thing I loved about living in Raleigh, NC is how many of the trees were preserved as it developed. It's quite nice (except during pollen season if you have allergies) and the shade is pretty valuable when dealing with those summers. It's especially noticable compared to Durham, which was not able to preserve as many trees close to it's downtown core and some big roads. Though Durham still has something like 52% tree coverage? The housing development craze in that area is definitely making a dent in the the coverage for the region as a whole though.

> We certainly need more of this.

Caracas is reportedly green-ner than Medellin, but obviously under a dictatorship thus mostly not available to digital nomads.

You also have Buenos Aires, designed from the beginning to be green (only in certain places I think? but still very green in those places)...

The Middle East has existed in arid conditions for centuries. Generally, you want to engineer lots of shade and narrow paths for breezes.

The American Southwest and the baking suburbia is basically the opposite of how one should design for such a climate.

I assume there will be more insects but also more insect predators. I mean, life always finds its way, and usually a balance as well.

Indeed, there is an abundance of butterflies, bees, and other such creatures amidst the urban area —a surprising sight for a densely populated city. However, it's not to the extent that it becomes bothersome.

I just checked and the pm2 levels are as bad as they were when I visited pre Covid (50 μg/m^3). I was there for 3 months, in El Poblado neighborhood and the air quality was horrendous, I would never go back. The depression in which the city lays also keeps all the pollution in place for longer.

:(

The typical temperature chart is an average across the planet or a region. Definitely not population-weighted.

Temperature inside one of these green corridors is, say, 24 Celsius when outside of these corridors it can reach up to 30 at the same time of the same day.

I do think that's like the most extreme difference you could find in any given day.