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An initial cost of 16 million, and yearly maintenance of 600,000, for a city of 2.5 million? Per person, $5 initially and $0.25 per year.

That seems incredibly cheap for the benefits. Colombia looks to have a GDP per capita about 1/10th of the US, so if we scale it up 10X...

I live in a relatively cold climate, and I would still be delighted to pay $2.50 a year for this kind of infrastructure development. Heck, even scaling it up 100X seems like it would be worth considering.

Maybe there's a cost I'm missing here, but for a hot city, the AC savings alone seem like they would be worth it, not to mention the 40% reduction in respiratory infections through increased air quality.

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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.

A counterpoint is their $1.7M toilet.

But yeah at 10x that’d be taking away from significant programs never mind 100x.

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.

Those places (all places) should be primarily using local flora.

Yep exactly. I decided to look up the local flora for Los Angeles and found this nice article. It notes that Los Angeles has a Mediterranean style climate, and there certainly are plenty of local flora options to choose from:

https://la.curbed.com/2018/8/23/17720768/los-angeles-plants-...

I'm in year two of turning the front yard (half-acre) in to prairie. I'm _mostly_ using local flora but the climate is changing so there are more options. More challenging is that I had started with drought resistant indigenous stuff but the predictions are that anticipating the coming years weather is "unpossible" and that even the local stuff is going to fail half the time.

I grew up in LA and still spend a lot of time camping in the southwest. I think I'm pretty familiar with what the natural environment would look like without cities. It's not green. It's mostly dirt, peppered with scrub plants.

You can get a pretty good idea what "LA or Vegas with natural green belts" would look like just by going outside the metro areas. I'm not saying it's bad - I love southwest desert - but natural desert "greenbelts" are probably not what you're picturing if you think "why don't we do Medellín here?"

To pull off a rain forest yes, but to get green is not impossible.

The problem for LA is that most of the drainage is there to move storm water away as quick as possible, which means that local water is hard to come by.

> the green spaces probably don't need irrigation

Truly they don't, but even inside Medellin the precipitation rates are not as great as the lands around...

...because of the deforestation that /already/ happened, say, 50 years ago...

Ain't no commercial high rise neighborhood (semi-common in Medellin) that can "pull in" as much precipitation as a virgin forest no way, and you can see this if you visit there and then you visit an actual virgin rain-forest...

...but of course, this is what they are trying to alleviate and if the outskirts of the city are super-green it can help...

Btw all of the outskirts aren't super green but a lot of them are...

> 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.

Yes, amazingly paying someone $2/hour won't fly in a major US city.

It will if they’re convicts on a chain gang.

Acknowledging the general ickyness of prison labor, I'd be curious what the overall effect on wellbeing and recidivism among prisoners would be of spending time working outside planting trees to make the local community a better, more beautiful place.

Probably better than making garments for McDonald’s and Walmart, but yeah we should abolish prison labor (and prisons).

Here’s a report on the state of human rights abuses in prison labor in the United States:

https://news.uchicago.edu/story/us-prison-labor-programs-vio...

It was pointed out to me awhile back that the 'slave states' that utilize this kind of labor need all sorts of low-level nonviolent crimes to lock people up with.

Why, you may ask? It turns out giving violent offenders (murderers, wife beaters, gang bangers) tools like shovels in an open environment can be pretty dangerous. Guards would rather have some pothead teenager to order around.

> It was pointed out to me awhile back that the 'slave states' that utilize this kind of labor need all sorts of low-level nonviolent crimes to lock people up with.

Arguably a continuation of their post-civil-war Black Codes [0], where--if you had a certain skin color--it was effectively a crime to ever leave/lose your abusive "employment", then that crime led to fines, then the fines led to more fines from compounding court costs, and once you were in prison, you were forced to labor for private interests. Perhaps even the same "employer" you tried to leave.

[0] https://www.history.com/news/black-codes-reconstruction-slav...

Are you saying that the people building those parks in Colombia were only paid $0.2 per hour?

> The groundwork is carried out by 150 citizen-gardeners

Probably lower on average given a lot of them got paid $0 it seems.

I'd happily pay $25/year. $2/mo to live in a city with that kind of greenery and QOL improvement? Absolutely sign me the fuck up.

Highly recommend Medellín if you can swing the remote expat life.

How is the COL compared to the local salaries? And how is the job market there?

I live here as a nomad. Job market is pretty bad. Haven't seen any official statistics but I've heard many locals anecdotally say that the pay even for people with econ / engineering degrees is pretty bad.

Lots of young people with advanced degrees just end up working in call centres, or onlyfans.

Unless you’re in tech or a few other sectors (eg: long tail exports such the company that manufactures transistors for Tesla, which is near here) the local job market is very bad. Particularly with new prices, in the wealthy areas it’s comparable to a city like Lisbon now.

If you have a remote job however, it’s a no brainer. For example, renting a 3 bedroom in a wealthy area (through the local route, not Airbnb) within a gated community that has a pool, a gym, etc = $1,000. A private maid/chef once per week = $80. Normal Uber ride = $4-$6. Meal for 2 in a very fancy restaurant = $50 - $75.

Makes SF prices feel insane.

Agree with everything in your comment.

Yeah but then you get mugged on the street daily if you flash your phone. What's the point of life being cheap...if your own life isn't worth anything

I have never been mugged in Medellin living here 22 years out of my total 30.

because guess what...you're a local.

local thugs can smell expats a mile away. Just Google : medellin violence and tell me what you find

I agree that being a local you’re not a target.

Regarding the crimes against some foreigners: - It shouldn’t happen. That’s why we elected a new major with a very different philosophy from the previous one. - 1,8M foreigners came here in 2023 and 35 got killed. Again, the number should be 0, but once you see it as a statistic it feels improbable. - If you don’t do ilegal stupid stuff you shouldn’t be doing in the first place (you know what I’m talking about) you’ll be fine.

I dunno man, I'm a nomad, I looked long and hard at where to spend a few months this winter and Medellin sounded attractive...until I read more about it.

In the end, I opted for Europe.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12164423/Moment-gan...

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/breaking-british-to...

No thank you. 35 deaths is the worst possible outcome. I don't want to leave the house in fear of getting mugged at knife/gun point and I'm sure those stats aren't even remote to being listed/accurate anywhere.

A significant portion of deaths resulted from drug overdose, and there was also a notable absence of acknowledgment regarding criminal activities perpetrated by migrants/tourists who arrived last year, despite numerous reported cases.

> Yeah but then you get mugged on the street daily if you flash your phone.

I agree, that’s another good reason to avoid sf

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.

Fascinating! Got any examples of particularly good or bad cold-climate cities?

Particularly good: Central St. Petersburg, especially Petrograd island[1] and other districts with smaller streets such as Peski/Kolomna. Smaller streets, slightly broken grid and uniform height 5-storey buildings lead to never experiencing serious wind. It has a different pest that is ice on the sidewalks, though. Vasilievsky island is slightly worse as there's wider streets and more regular grid.

Particularly bad: The same St. Petersburg but now Brezhnevist and contemporary built up districts such as Murino[2] or Veteranov[3] (but any of these, actually). Even the pompious Stalinist Moscow avenue[4] would be quite uncomfortable in chilly wind and -15C. Wide streets mean faster winds and more walking. St. Petersburg is very transit oriented so most people do walk.

The newly build Vostochnyi Cosmodrome Tsiolkovsky town[5] seems super chilly as it is the same pattern of high-rises separated by a long nothing. And it's located way north. You would need a space suit just to get groceries.

1. https://yandex.ru/maps/-/CDFjZUm4

2. https://yandex.ru/maps/-/CDFjZU-0

3. https://yandex.ru/maps/-/CDFjZY7J

4. https://yandex.ru/maps/-/CDFjZY2B

5. https://yandex.ru/maps/-/CDFjZR0D

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