Community senses in Nuevo Occidente Residential Complex, from the perspective of city founding, Municipality of Medellín.

Abstract

In Medellín (Colombia), families coming from neighborhoods like Moravia, Santo Domingo, Popular, and others, with different long-established types of settlement like self-construction and illegal division of land into lots, moved to occupy state-subsidized  houses  at  “Ciudadela Nuevo Occidente”. The inhabitants from the aforementioned neighborhoods had lived under particular social dynamics, and even with some forms of economic production, like recycling. This relocation process brought about some changes in the city‟s physical structure, with new patterns of settlement such as multi-storey buildings and new senses of community-belonging among their dwellers, which were visible in new patters of organization and space appropriation, as well as community participation and coexistence. What makes this relocation process different from others of a similar nature is that it did not only produce a change in the relocated inhabitants‟ quality of life, but also in Medellín itself, and this would generate a new urban development model that will for sure change not just the vision of city but also the very concept of community in terms of locality.