Evan Todtz

Abstract

Situated in the western hillsides of Medellín, the central stairway in Las Independencias (I) historically served as the primary neighborhood circulation route, but also acted as an invisible border delimiting conflicting spatial claims by disparate armed factions vying for territorial control. Decades of intense urban violence culminated in the early 2000s with a series of state-sponsored military interventions that left the community reeling. The emergent model of social urbanism in the mid-2000s sought to redress historic inequities in the city’s peripheries. Under this directive, the state executed a physical intervention in the community to de-territorialize the underlying geographies of violence by replacing the central stairway with a new public escalator system. While projects executed under social urbanism frequently attribute success to the project’s design merit and broad social impact, this mixed-methods design study completed along the public escalators shows that the primary driver of individual and neighborhood advancement in Las Independencias (I) has been the re-territorialization of these spaces through insurgent spatial practices by residents rather than the state’s physical intervention. Intimate insights into daily life along the public escalators reveal how women, in particular, emerge as critical actors in the re-territorialization of the escalators, despite persistent gender imbalances in public space and shifting geographies of violence encroaching into the domestic realm. Focusing on people rather than the state underscores how centering the narratives and perspectives of women allows these community ambassadors to plan for, create, and steward emancipatory spaces where individual and community autonomy reside. 

Keywords

Re-territorialization; Women in Planning; Insurgent Planning; Social Urbanism; Invisible Borders; Public Space Appropriation 

Introduction

Once one of the most violent places in the world, the district of San Javier in Medellín, Colombia, has emerged as a global model for urban transformation through equitable planning and urban design practice. Nowhere is this change more evident than in the neighborhood of Las Independencias (I), where an informally constructed stairway became the historic borderline between various armed groups fighting for territorial control throughout the late 1980s until the early 2000s. Following a series of violent military raids on the community, the mayoral administration of Sergio Fajardo in the mid-2000s instituted the Integrated Urban Project (PUI) in San Javier as part of a state planning strategy known as social urbanism. The plan sought to disrupt the existing geographies of violence, referred to by local residents as invisible borders (fronteras invisibles), while simultaneously creating new mobility infrastructures and public spaces to promote a culture of coexistence (convivencia) and civic culture (cultura ciudadana). In Las Independencias (I), this strategy materialized through the installation of a public escalator system along the former stairway in the heart of the community. While architects and planners have since critiqued social urbanism projects for their design merit and broad equity impacts, this article focuses on the public escalators and asks: What are the unintended day-to-day consequences of having constructed the public escalators and how have residents, particularly women, responded to the physical changes to their neighborhood? 

Scholars of Colombian planning and urban design practice often wholly attribute the observed advances in social and economic security under social urbanism to the emblematic public space and mobility megaprojects designed to de-territorialize existing geographies of violence, expand access to resources, and increase state visibility in historically marginalized communities. I argue in this article, however, that the primary driver of individual and neighborhood advancement is the re-territorialization of these spaces through insurgent spatial practices by residents rather than the state’s physical interventions (Souza, 2015). Employing Souza’s definition of territorialization as the act of embedding social meaning and power onto space, this article documents how these spatial practices manifest along the public escalators in the neighborhood of Las Independencias (I). Highlighting the insurgent nature of such spatial practices underscores the political intentionality and power struggles occurring in and associated with urban space. 

As a key scholar of public space in Colombia, Rachel Berney’s investigations on new public spaces in Bogotá expose the underlying contradictions between how spaces like “equalizing networks,” (2010) or linear circulation routes designed to enhance mobility and access, are intended to advance social equity while simultaneously enforcing desirable social behavior through surveillance and policing (2011, 2017). Though Berney’s work highlights how public spaces shape social behavior and further deepen certain socio-economic inequities, this study expands on how residents, in turn, shape public spaces and respond to inequities imposed by the state, particularly those related to gender. Similarly, Luisa Sotomayor (2017) investigates the policy strategies and physical interventions employed by the state in San Javier and their role in historically embedding and perpetuating socio-economic inequities in the district under constantly shifting spatial relationships. In so doing, Sotomayor centers her critique on the deterritorialization of San Javier on behalf of the state, whereas this article instead shifts the focus to the re-territorialization of the community by residents as evidenced through symbolic and deliberate acts along the public escalators. Orlando Alves dos Santos, Jr. (2014) reflects on the scholarship surrounding these persistent social and spatial tensions within urban common spaces, noting that through the careful study of the material and personal dimensions of these spaces, researchers are able to develop more heightened awareness towards acts of physical appropriation or re-territorialization. 

My field research along the public escalators of Las Independencias (I) documents some of these practices, demonstrating how residents use graffiti, performance art, and the physical appropriation of space through activities such as street vending and neighborhood tourism to generate local economic activity, collective healing, and to build community. At the same time, my study reveals that the installation of the public escalators did not eradicate networks of crime and violence, but instead dispersed these activities into different, less visible geographies in adjacent neighborhoods, side alleyways, private businesses, and the domestic sphere. Ultimately, my findings underscore the vital role of women in re-territorializing the public escalators, who, despite prevailing gender imbalances in public spaces and increased vulnerability to the shifting spatial networks of crime and violence, leverage their individual entrepreneurship and collective pride and sense of community to improve their economic and social welfare. 

Research Methodology

This article presents findings from a year-long study including a three-month field research effort in the summer of 2017 at the public escalators of Las Independencias (I) in the district of San Javier, Medellín. My research design draws inspiration from the critical design ethnography model defined by Barab et al. (2004) as a participatory design research method focusing on the empowerment of participants to create their own shared vision and knowledge through collective design thinking and action with the researcher. However, due to my limited prior exposure to the community of focus and relatively brief duration of field work, the study instead was classified as a mixed-methods research design leveraging quantitative and qualitative methods. These methods included site documentation and measurement, mapping, and spatial analysis, as well as ethnographic approaches including observations, field notes, informal and semi-formal interviews, and digital recordings of physical artifacts generated during or resulting from the research effort. In combination, these methods sought to mitigate the influence of the colonial, patriarchal, and positivist research paradigms traditionally associated with Western planning. 

As a foreign researcher embedded within a historically marginalized community, I continuously reflected upon and refined my research methods to prioritize situated knowledges, or the lived experiences, histories, and stories of local residents, over that of technical experts (i.e. architects, planners) to assemble a more deep-rooted context of the community (Haraway, 1988). As such, informal conversations, observations, and interactions with community members and leaders did not take place in spaces within the formal planning apparatus such as the town hall or community center, but rather in the invented spaces (Miraftab, 2004) of civic engagement and participation in the neighborhood, including the escalators, platforms, and back alleyways. Three continuous months of engagement within the modest communal spaces of the neighborhood between four to six days per week allowed me to compose a thick description (Geertz, 1973) of the community and to develop close relationships with the residents. 

Due to the lack of available digital geographic data for this informally settled sector of the city, my field research began with several weeks of preliminary site visits and documentation. Documentation consisted of physically measuring individual escalator segments, platforms, and connecting alleyways and taking photos and hand sketches of individual spaces and construction details. This data built the foundation on which to layer additional spatial information, observations, and notes onto maps of the public escalator system. Simultaneously, informal interviews based on casual, organic conversations with local residents on-site began occurring and continued throughout later phases of research including public space observations. Semi-structured interviews were scheduled and digitally recorded with government and private sector planners, architects, and urban designers early in the project, and as resident informants emerged from personal referrals and the site documentation and observation processes, additional interviews were conducted with neighborhood leaders, activists, and business owners. In total, 25 key informants contributed to the project through interviews. 

Additionally, local narratives and histories were documented through other artistic media reflecting the unique cultural practices and traditions of the residents of Las Independencias (I). These media included street art and graffiti murals, hip-hop dance performances, rap and song writing, as well as a cognitive map of the neighborhood provided by a local artist. These cultural artifacts complement the more formally-sourced documentation methods of this study, providing rich social and spatial commentary. Finally, I conducted public space observations over roughly two weeks towards the end of my fieldwork. Using a self-developed coding system comprised of letters, numbers, and symbols, I collected rapid spatial and demographic information reflecting the perceived gender, age range, ethnicity, and directional movement of individual users of a set of discrete public spaces. Between two to three times a day, I rotated sequentially between seven escalator platforms and two points along the adjacent viaduct over 15-minute time intervals, resulting in over 6,000 unique data entries upon completion of my observations. While this subjective coding system certainly introduced a degree of variance in the data, the large sample size and general alignment of findings with broader citywide demographics suggests the method demonstrates satisfactory reliability. Collectively, these methods produced a robust primary dataset which informed my assessment and research findings discussed later in the article. In the future, longitudinal research efforts would benefit this study to document the neighborhood’s evolution and to better inform planning in other neighborhoods in Medellín that are undergoing similar transitions. 

Colombian Cultural Paradigms

It is vital to first understand the cultural paradigms which shape historic and evolving planning values, beliefs, and practices in Colombia before critiquing social urbanism or emblematic projects like the public escalators. 

Convivencia and Cultura Ciudadana 
As a society marked by historic violence, convivencia, or coexistence, underpins the aspirations of contemporary Colombian urban life. Convivencia can be conceptualized as “the practice of [social] encounter” and the sense of safety that arises through community-building in urban common spaces (Graffiti Artist, personal communication, July 9, 2017). Complementary to this idea is cultura ciudadana, or civic culture. The concept emerged from the new Political Constitution of 1991 and the city plan of Bogotá, entitled Formar Ciudad, defined as “the set of shared customs, actions and minimum shared rules that generates a sense of belonging, facilitates urban coexistence, and leads to respect for common heritage and the recognition of citizens’ rights and duties” (Escobar, 2010). In Bogotá, mayors Antanas Mockus and Enrique Peñalosa first used public space as a key tool to promote cultura ciudadana. While Peñalosa focused on the physical construction and reclamation of public spaces (Peñalosa, 2005), Mockus viewed public space as “a privileged space to construct citizen culture… [and] to learn to self-regulate and mutually regulate one another” (2005) and, as such, developed a didactic system of signage and art within public spaces to re-socialize citizens under a shared moral code based on mutual respect, coexistence, and citizenship. Conversely, in Medellín, the prevailing cultural attitudes reflected a strong sense of self-determination, entrepreneurial spirit, and modernity that was best represented through the Cultura Metro, or Metro Culture, associated with the city’s rail line which opened in 1996 (Stienen, 2009). While the installation of the Metro line helped revive many of the city’s existing central public spaces, investment in new public spaces concentrated largely within self-built communities at the city’s peripheries to create and elevate civic culture and co-existence in areas classified as zones of violence (Echeverri & Orsini, 2011). 

Invasiones and Fronteras Invisibles 
The terms used to describe the settlement of informal hillside communities in Colombia vary by geographic region as well as the means of settlement, but often use language evoking notions of illeg-ality or violent action such as invasiones (invasions) or urbanizaciones piratas (pirate urbanizations). While the state’s historic absence and limited physical intervention in these gray spaces (Yiftachel, 2009) engendered and deepened socio-political marginalization, their topographic complexity and geographic isolation from the urban center eventually resulted in the co-optation of these communities by disparate armed factions who delineated fronteras invisibles, or invisible borders within the landscape to exert their territorial claims (Aricapa, 2005; López-López et al., 2014). These liminal spaces became sites of frequent encroachment, confrontation, and conflict leading residents to refer to these invisible borders as “the trenches” (Local Artist, personal communication, July 9, 2017; Samper, 2014). Under the auspices of social urbanism, public space recovery efforts in Medellín intentionally sought to disrupt fronteras invisibles and reclaim spatial control from armed groups, thereby enhancing the state’s ability to govern these remote regions (Duque Franco, 2014). This increasingly integral role of public space in Colombian planning policies, tools, and practices sets the stage for a critical assessment of the public escalators in subsequent sections. Next, this article explores the interrelationships and conflicts between historic views towards these ‘invasive’ settlements and fronteras invisibles and their perceived threats to popular notions of cultura ciudadana and convivencia. 

Evolution of Colombian Planning Practice 
The number and scale of self-built communities in Medellín surged during the rapid urbanization of the city beginning in the 1950s as accelerated rural-to-urban migration occurred due to the combined effects of land and economic reforms, territorial conflict, and political violence stemming from the country’s decade-long civil war, La Violencia (Giraldo and Martínez, 1997). In the 1970s, economic instability brought on by the global recession exacerbated the rate of rural displacement and heightened levels of violence between paramilitary and narcotrafficking operations vying for territorial control (Bellalta, 2020). Between the mid-1980s and the early 2000s, the Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement (CODHES) estimated that over 2.9 million persons were displaced across Colombia (Escobar, 2010). In Medellín, this “massive expansion of urban precarity, informality, and poverty” ran virtually unchecked during this period, with “very limited and weak local institutions and democratic control” to address the growing socio-economic challenges facing vast proportions of the city’s growing population (Private Architect, personal communication, July 31, 2017). 

In response to this national crisis, a new Political Constitution was ratified in 1991 and equipped the state with new tools to address the mounting challenges unfolding. The document fundamentally redefined Colombia’s geographical and institutional governance structures including territorial decentralization, substantial fiscal restructuring, increased municipal autonomy, and the adoption of local and participatory planning practice (Castillo and Ferro, 2001; Private Architect, personal communication, July 31, 2017). At the same time, the President’s Advisory Council for Medellín was specially appointed to convene new public forums, elevate public participation, and collectively develop strategies specifically aimed at addressing the high levels of urban violence and poverty in the city’s peripheries (Moncada, 2016). In 1993, the group conceived of the Program for the Integral Improvement of Subnormal Neighborhoods (PRIMED) which posited that violence and social decline in informal settlements could be reversed through new neighborhood infrastructure and strong state presence; however, the technical decision-making and implementation of these projects lacked the social investment of neighborhood residents necessary to sustain community progress (Velásquez-Castañeda, 2013). 

In 1997, the Law of Territorial Organization (Law 388) formalized democratic participation in the planning process, identified public space as an effective spatial framework for planning, and introduced the Territorial Organization Plan (POT) as a systems-based planning approach designed to establish a more rational and equitable built environment (Castillo and Ferro, 2001). The adoption of the first POT in Medellín in 1999 also formulated the Urban Regularization and Legalization Plan (PRLU), a mechanism aimed specifically at planning in self-built communities. Following a similar logic to the POT, plans were organized around natural or built systems; however, the planning focus on the legalization of land tenure failed to gain political traction and left most PRLUs in the diagnostics phase with limited implementation (Velásquez-Castañeda, 2013). As recent history demonstrates, shifting attitudes towards informal or self-built communities manifested in distinct planning policy approaches, but all of the strategies fell short of improving the quality of life for the city’s most marginalized residents. 

In 2004, the incoming mayoral administration of Sergio Fajardo acknowledged the state’s historic disinvestment in these communities and renewed a commitment to reconciling this deficit by working collaboratively with the Empresa de Desarrollo Urbano (EDU) to formulate the Integrated Urban Project (PUI) as a tool to directly impact marginalized communities through targeted physical planning interventions (Echeverri and Orsini, 2011). Each PUI is structured around three components: a physical intervention in the built (or natural) environment such as new mobility infrastructure or high-quality public spaces, a socially engaged process to promote community cohesion, and the establishment of an institutional (state) presence (Sotomayor, 2015). Once the PUI’s framing organizational feature has been identified, a series of community workshops first highlight existing neighborhood challenges and then allow residents to envision potential solutions while building cultura ciudadana and a sense of shared ownership of the project and its implementation. Analyzing the input gathered from community engagement efforts, technical planners then translate findings into a final recommended intervention. To date, the PUI has achieved more success than its planning predecessors due to the dedicated economic funds available for implementation as well as the continuity of project management under the direction of the EDU rather than a particular mayoral administration (EDU Planner, personal communication, July 4, 2017). 

Critics of social urbanism and the PUI process often cite the inadequate attention to environmental factors in the analysis and implementation of new projects, the limited provision of new and secure housing in projects, the tension between the global marketability of high-profile design interventions and the ability of said projects to meet basic socioeconomic needs, and the lack of sustained investment in social programming and maintenance and operations as the most troublesome procedural shortfalls. Furthermore, the structural co-optation of the PUI model forced residents to concede the re-territorialization of their communities through physical displacement and embedded institutional presence in perpetuity to purportedly reconcile the state’s historic disinvestment (Souza, 2006). Equal and oppositely, desirable social outcomes are almost exclusively attributed to the PUI process and its built projects, with little to no consideration of the residents’ own response to these interventions. Some planners seek to elevate the role of residents by arguing that the participatory planning process is as important or greater than the built project because it builds the social cohesion necessary to sustain future neighborhood improvement; however, the PUI planning process still relies on the planner as a technical expert to make final recommendations and implement built projects (Private Architect, personal communication, July 31, 2017). This arrangement limits the potential to establish shared power structures or to shift decision-making control to neighborhood residents to assert community autonomy. In response, this article examines PUI San Javier, specifically the implementation of public escalators in Las Independencias (I) as a case study that documents resident responses to the project by highlighting some of the key spatial practices and community organizing efforts employed to generate improved socioeconomic outcomes. 

De-territorialization by the State in San Javier

Historic Growth Trajectory 
The district of San Javier, situated along the western foothills of the Aburrá Valley, epitomizes Medellín’s urban transformation as a region that overcame its reputation as one of the most violent districts of the city to arrive as a vibrant social and cultural hub today. However, the state’s planning strategies in San Javier have shifted significantly leading up to the present day. Sotomayor identifies three distinct periods of official state policy in San Javier: state absence from the 1970s to early 2000s, strong-arm intervention and (para) militarization in the early 2000s, and beginning in the late 2000s, a renewed focus on community participation, local governance, and physical infrastructure and public space as embodied through social urbanism (2017).

Occupied for over a century by working class families in mining and farming, the rapid urbanization of San Javier began in the 1970s in geographic isolation across a complex and insular topography resulting in decades of growth marked by limited state visibility and planning intervention. Initial petitions by the local women’s group to the Medellín Public Enterprise (EPM) in the 1980s to extend public services to Las Independencias (I) and other hillside neighborhoods in San Javier were dismissed because the state did not yet formally recognize their legitimacy and legality (Aricapa, 2005). The first documented state investment in this area was the introduction of public infrastructure systems during Phase 1 PRIMED implementation between 1993 – 1997 (Velásquez-Castañeda, 2013). Soon thereafter, a PRLU was formulated for San Javier, but the plan was never actualized. As evidenced, the state’s minimal and sporadic investment in San Javier resulted in high socio-economic precarity that partially contributed to the proliferation of armed, non-state groups who leveraged the desperate urban conditions to assert territorial control. 

By the early 2000s, the rate of violence ran unchecked in San Javier and the state determined that strong-arm military intervention was the only means of reclaiming territorial control over the region. A series of smaller, targeted military interventions culminated in October 2002 with a large-scale, state-sponsored raid known as Operación Orión that detained over 350 individuals, injured 38 and killed 10 civilians, and left four others missing (Amnesty International, 2005). While the violent intervention disrupted paramilitary and narcotrafficking operations, invisible borders and underlying networks of territorial control persisted. Residents claim that state armed forces remained in place to enforce strict systems of surveillance, such as daily curfews, which continued to expose residents to a heightened incidence of violence throughout the early 2000s. Residents recall navigating public spaces during this period by avoiding the “war trenches,” particular streets or alleys frequently occupied by paramilitary or other armed groups to maintain their personal safety (Graffiti Artist, personal communication, July 9, 2017). Deteriorating social conditions elevated the formulation of the PUI San Javier as a priority in the 2004 – 2007 Medellin Development Plan, codifying a planning process that began in 2006 and culminated in a series of projects executed between 2008 and 2011 (Bellalta, 2020). 

Conceptual Planning Framework for PUI San Javier Projects
The PUI San Javier, similar to other completed PUIs, articulated a series of projects each consisting of a physical, social, and institutional component; however, the historic context and distinct geography of each region informed how these components would ultimately manifest. Given that San Javier was most notorious for the high incidence of violence present, the primary goal of the PUI San Javier was to formulate projects that collectively help the state to reclaim territorial control in the region and to cease violence between urban gangs and the military police (EDU Planner, personal communication, July 4, 2017). At a regional level, the organizational framework for the proposed projects under the PUI San Javier was to introduce new “centralities,” or neighborhood activity nodes, dispersed throughout the district to deliver diverse public services including legal counsel, economic development offices, a police substation, a library-park, and other recreation facilities. New “equalizing networks” of public spaces including parks, greenways, and streets, created and strengthened linear connections between these nodes and worked to disrupt fronteras invisibles by re-integrating disparate communities once in-conflict, providing more “dignified and appropriate conditions” for residents, and connecting households to major transit stations (Berney, 2010; EDU Planner, personal communication, July 4, 2017). Additionally, public spaces along these corridors became vital community gathering places, providing the state an opportunity to further promote cultura ciudadana, superimpose more formal spatial organization, and exert territorial control (Private Urban Designer, personal communication, August 4, 2017; Velásquez-Castañeda, 2013). 

PUI Engagement Process in Las Independencias (I)
The state’s historic neighborhood delegitimization and disinvestment and recent military intervention in Las Independencias (I) had collectively bred a great distrust of the state by residents. This palpable tension led construction crews to request military police escorts to accompany them in the community while executing the PUI in 2010 (EDU Planner, personal communication, July 4, 2017). The planning process for the project was viewed not only as an opportunity to identify a built intervention and strategy to embed state presence, but also a means of “changing the ways of inhabiting these territories” (EDU Planner, personal communication, July 4, 2017). As such, the EDU began by distributing t-shirts and memorabilia to neighborhood youth who were appointed as “local EDU representatives” to help planners gain access to the community, socialize the planning goals, and promote the visioning workshops used to inform the final recommended project (EDU Planner, personal communication, July 4, 2017). The re-socialization of youth representatives by the state subsequently facilitated the re-education of neighborhood participants during the engagement process, but still did not give residents greater decision-making or implementation authority. For example, engagement highlighted many social inequities, but planners settled on addressing mobility and safety as the guiding directive for the PUI. As the only way in and out of Las Independencias (I), the central stairway functioned as a frontera invisible where conflicts frequently erupted between armed factions vying for territorial control (Neighborhood Resident, personal communication, July 13, 2017). In addition, fragmented sets of lateral alleyways and staircases prohibited open movement and, as such, had been “heavily appropriated by delinquent gangs” characterized by “criminal activities borrowing those hidden spaces” and allowing them to “direct these territories to their liking” (EDU Planner, personal communication, July 4, 2017). The delimitation of violence within the physical confines of these dense urban spaces restricted the ability of stairways and alleys to foster convivencia and intensified the social precarity of the residents (Graffiti Artist, personal communication, July 9, 2017).   

PUI Planning Strategy for Public Escalators in Las Independencias (I) 
Using these findings, technical planners generated the idea for public escalators: a strategic, linear mobility project to simultaneously disrupt invisible borders and recover space to introduce new, quality public spaces for residents to co-exist. A planner describes the role of the escalators and the intended connections to other projects conceived under the PUI San Javier: 

That is what we wanted for this project, to break down these invisible borders… We did two projects, more than just concentrating them in a node or park, we did linear projects like the public escalators, and we broke down those borders between those above and below. And in the upper half, we did the viaduct to break down Independencias (I) and Independencias (II) (EDU Planner, personal communication, July 4, 2017). 

The public escalators of Las Independencias (I) replaced a steep, narrow stairway of over 300 steps rising from the more traditionally developed neighborhood of 20 de Julio (Departamento Administrativo de Planeación, 2015). Through the de-territorialization of the historic central stairway, modest landings between escalator segments became new public spaces that were conceived not only as “platforms of encounter” between residents, but also as a foundational link between residents and the state (Private Urban Designer, personal communication, August 4, 2017). Additionally, the prominent and imposing design of the physical intervention asserts symbolic state presence and power, flanking the escalators uphill with a state-operated community center and a local education center sited at the base below (Kapferer, 2007). 

The violent history of Las Independencias (I), as evidenced most recently through Operación Orión, biased the state’s objectives for the PUI San Javier in Las Independencias (I) by prioritizing security and territorial control over other social support and resources through a lens of dispositional spatial rationality (Huxley, 2006) whereby the perceived social disorder and unruliness of the population was intrinsically tied to the lack of physical neighborhood organization and structure. It follows that the public escalators sought to de-territorialize the central stairway by inserting new public spaces and embedding institutional presence within the community while simultaneously failing to address other critical social needs articulated in the engagement process such as lack of employment opportunities and access to adequate housing. Furthermore, the physical disruption wrought by the state actually increased violence initially as fragmented groups sought to re-territorialize the new spaces, ultimately failing to eradicate the criminality and violence present along the central stairway. In fact, turf battles and drug operations have now shifted to less visible spaces like back alleyways, behind seemingly formal shop fronts, as well as the domestic sphere (Local Shopkeeper, personal communication, July 18, 2017). Sotomayor’s (2017) work further substantiates this claim, noting how local business owners and residents continue to experience regular threats of extortion by organized criminal actors. In short, by pushing violence into hidden geographies such as the domestic sphere and other private spaces traditionally occupied by women, the state disproportionately impacted women and their livelihoods and further deepened the social injustices it allegedly sought to redress through their interventions (Buckingham and Kulcur, 2009). The following section will expand on these findings by focusing on the day-to-day experiences of residents living within Las Independencias (I) and how the individual and community responses to the escalators have maximized socioeconomic benefits rather than as a result of the state’s intervention. 

Re-territorialization of the Public Escalators Through Insurgent Spatial Practices

Symbolic Occupation and Materiality
The historic settlement and growth patterns observed in Las Independencias (I) and the other hillside communities of San Javier present similar formal and material characteristics and degrees of socio-economic marginality as other informal settlements across Latin America (Davids, 2016). However, the persistent threat of deadly violence throughout much the history of Las Independencias (I) led spaces like the central stairway to function as critical mobility infrastructure devoid of the social, recreational, and commercial activities typically observed within these dynamic spatial voids in dense informal settlements (Brillembourg and Klumpner, 2010). Following the replacement of the stairway with the public escalators, residents were slow to embrace the new public spaces given the painful neighborhood memories and lack of established public space culture resulting from the legacy of invisible borders within the community. As such, individual households began to re-territorialize these spaces by casually placing household artifacts such as patio chairs, children’s toys, or clothes lines in public spaces that gently began to blur the domestic and public spheres. This quiet encroachment (Bayat, 2000) of the domestic became more commonplace as women started permanently placing their gardens and plantings along the stairs and alleyways. As one woman explains: because many residents originate from the countryside, they bring traditions closely tied to the earth and planting and, as such, gardens still hold vital importance to their histories and identity (Women’s Organization Leader, personal communication, July 20, 2017). Though less tangible than the physical artifacts described above, the blurring of the domestic and public realms continued to evolve as residents began redefining their relationships to these spaces and to one another. 

When discussing community public spaces, one neighborhood resident reflected on what he considered was the historic heart of Las Independencias (I). He recalled a small home goods store operating in the living room of a neighbor’s home at the intersection of the central stairway and the main alley, a safe space to socialize with others in the neighborhood while simultaneously preventing the added burden of risk to go down the hill to access the more formal markets and stores to purchase basic goods (Neighborhood Resident, personal communication, July 13, 2017). The design of the public escalators today hosts a modest platform (platform 3) at this intersection, but integrates a larger plaza (platform 4) with permanent street furniture one segment above. While the public escalators sought to de-territorialize invisible borders along the stairway and reintroduce new public spaces for residents, they unintentionally dissolved one of the only community spaces in the neighborhood in the process and effectively shifted the neighborhood’s center of gravity uphill even farther from the goods and services below. However, social connections to place appear to transcend material space, as observations revealed that nearly 90% of users who paused on the third platform were residents, compared to less than half of those occupying the fourth platform. Furthermore, platform 3 also was one of the most gender-balanced spaces recorded during observations, with many women re-territorializing the platform as a meeting point or space for informal conversation in passing at this historic community intersection. 

Expressing Culture, Identity, and Community Healing through Street and Performance Art 
Simultaneously, youth have been building community in Las Independencias (I) through artistic expression. While residents historically rooted artistic practice in graffiti and street art, influences from Afro-Colombian migrants predominantly from the Atlantic Coast have accelerated the cultural renaissance underway, with performances ranging from hip-hop to breakdancing to rap and song (Women’s Organization Leader, personal communication, July 20, 2017). The state’s perceived threat of loud music and ‘messy’ graffiti undermining convivencia within public spaces led the state to require artists to seek formal approval prior to commissioning a ‘legitimate’ work. This City-mandated permitting and approval process for messaging, designs, and performances essentially controls the expression of public culture (Kapferer, 2007). However, young artists re-territorialized the state-approved messaging by re-signifying their work using coded symbols that help to explore their own cultural identities, promote community healing by reflecting on historic neighborhood memories and traumas, and imagine new futures for themselves and their community (Graffiti Artist, personal communication, July 9, 2017). Today, graffiti covers almost every wall framing the escalator system, with daily performances typically occurring on platform 7 or along the mid-hill viaduct adjacent to the escalators due to the space’s ability to host a large number of spectators. In this sense, residents of Las Independencias (I) were able to re-territorialize the public escalators through the novel re-envisioning of mobility infrastructure to better reflect their own identities, culture, and neighborhood histories. This resignification of place (Souza, 2015) forms the foundation on which residents were able to generate local economic opportunities like tourism and street vending. 

Direct Occupation: Spatial Restructuring, Repurposing, and Generating Alternative Economies 
As the arts matured in the community and began to generate alternative economic potential, the re-territorialization of the public escalators became more deliberate and assertive on behalf of the residents. This potential translates into upwards of 400 – 500 tourists visiting the escalators each day during peak tourism season in late spring, with observations revealing that the total volume of tourists occupying several platforms exceeded half of the total recorded users (Tour Guide, personal communication, July 16, 2017). Members of a local hip-hop and graffiti troupe were among the first to organize and facilitate these tours as a means of extending their message of healing and community transformation to a broader audience, with several additional tour companies led by local young adults materializing in recent years (Graffiti Artist, personal communication, July 9, 2017). Today, tourism does not solely function as a local economic engine that re-affirms community pride and history, but it has also fostered a global network of artists sharing their message of solidarity in the struggle to inspire other communities across Latin America and the world to exercise individual and community autonomy to become their own agents of change (Graffiti Artist, personal communication, July 9, 2017). 

Residents re-territorialized the public escalators by repurposing them as a marketplace as well as a space for social encounter and recreation, diluting the state’s original intent for the project. However, the explosion in national and international tourism in the neighborhood accompanied rapid growth in the number of vendors situated along the escalators. Women increasingly began pursuing their own entrepreneurial goals outside the domestic realm by starting to sell handmade artisanal goods and other traditional foods catering predominantly towards this large influx of tourists (Women’s Organization Leader, personal communication, July 20, 2017). The state initially responded by prohibiting all vending in the name of preserving public health, free mobility, and proper public space etiquette, mirroring many of the arguments often presented to justify street vendor clearing efforts in Colombia (Donovan, 2008). The vendors, led by representatives from the local women’s group, the Red de Apoyo para Las Mujeres, swiftly organized and asserted: (1) private landowners with storefronts along the escalators would unfairly enjoy disproportional economic benefits from the system and, therefore, (2) all residents should have the right to occupy and sell goods within these common spaces (Women’s Organization Leader, personal communication, July 20, 2017). 

While vendors can be found throughout the escalator platforms, the majority of women vendors typically concentrate their sales to platform 7 and the adjacent viaduct given the amount of space and the high levels of local and tourist foot traffic present. Therefore, it is not surprising that observation findings confirm more gender parity in these spaces compared to others in the neighborhood. Here and throughout the neighborhood, vendors have adapted material space along the escalators to best fit their needs by introducing self-built kiosks featuring seating, storage, and shading structures to display and sell their goods. The flexible designs employed by vendors resist the rigidity of the material spaces imposed by the state, allowing for temporary physical occupation without major restructuring of public spaces and preserving modularity to allow for incremental improvement and expansion as operations scale up or down. While all from the neighborhood are welcome to sell, an informal, community-based code of ethics stipulates that vendors may only sell non-competitive goods on the same platform, though no rules govern whether vendors must cater to tourists or residents with their business (Escalator Vendor, personal communication, July 13, 2017). These kinds of occupations in public spaces exemplify the notion of coexistence and contestation (Low, 1996), whereby these women are advancing community autonomy through alternative economic channels while simultaneously contesting the state for their right to occupy and sell in these spaces. 

Enduring Occupation and Resistance 
From the historically empty streets whereby violence forced the exchange of basic goods to occur in private spaces within the home through a covert neighborhood network, the physical occupation of public spaces by vendors in Las Independencias (I) today originates from a strong tradition of resistance and perseverance by the community residents (Tour Guide, personal communication, July 16, 2017). As the commodification of the neighborhood has intensified, new private businesses catering to tourists such as restaurants, coffee shops, and hostels have established themselves in the neighborhood and, as a result, the level of neighborhood regulation and scrutiny by the state has increased. Along the public escalators, this manifests not only through the presence of state-owned facilities, but also through Escalator Ambassadors who, in an effort to promote convivencia, monitor what they deem as undesirable behaviors such as walking on the escalators or running in public spaces. Whereas perhaps six of these Ambassadors were traditionally in charge of monitoring these spaces, over one dozen can be found patrolling the system today (Tour Guide, personal communication, July 16, 2017). Berney’s (2011) work highlights how this trend of increased security, policing, and enforcement in new, equitable public spaces in Colombia disproportionately impacts marginalized and lower-class populations. For a local woman contracted with the City to serve as an Ambassador, these tensions embody feelings of joy for the opportunity to work close to her family and pride for helping to keep the neighborhood safe, but also dismay that crime persists in the neighborhood, explaining how a nearby household along an adjacent alleyway had recently been confronted for holding a utility lineman for ransom (personal communication, July 27, 2017). These findings highlight that the re-territorialization of Las Independencias (I) not only concerns itself with the neighborhood scale as it relates to criminality and invisible borders and the blurring of domestic and public spheres, but also at the scale of the body, with residents simultaneously exercising individual autonomy while acting as a security agent of the state. 

Summary of the Findings

Documenting the Unintended Consequences of De- Territorialization 
Despite the prevalence of other pressing social challenges in the district, the main objective of the PUI San Javier was to de-territorialize existing geographies of violence by introducing new public spaces and permanent state occupation through institutional fixtures and mobility infrastructure. In the case of the public escalators in Las Independencias (I), the disruption of invisible borders along the central stairway did not eradicate criminality and violence, but, rather, shifted it into less visible and hidden geographies like the domestic sphere where women are disproportionately affected. Furthermore, this de-territorialization also eroded what minimal community networks existed by restructuring the public realm and relationships between private households and the new escalator platforms as well as to the larger markets and shops at the base of the hillside by assuming a sense of public space culture in the neighborhood which was not historically present due to violence. 

Documenting Residents’ Spatial acts of Re-Territorialization 
Residents of Las Independencias (I) initially, and perhaps unintentionally, approached the re-territorialization of the public escalators through subtle physical encroachments from the domestic realm. As residents continued to interpret the new public spaces, they re-attributed their histories and memory to the platforms first through casual socialization and later through the tradition of rich, visual storytelling through graffiti, street art, as well as dance, rap, and musical performances to promote a sense of pride, community identity, and collective healing which, in turn, generated opportunities for creating alternative local economic streams. This led to the rise of tourism and street vending along the escalators, effectively repurposing spaces originally intended exclusively for socialization and recreation into spaces of commerce and artistic expression as well. Street vendors, graffiti artists, and other performers restructured spatial relationships within these new public spaces through temporary and flexible physical artifacts including shade structures, storage and display carts, and other moveable furniture to facilitate commerce. Finally, the role of women throughout this process of re-territorialization cannot be understated. The legacy of advocacy and ingenuity by local women continues in spite of marginalization across dimensions of class, ethnicity, gender, and geography. These virtues manifest through entrepreneurial endeavors such as street vending and tour operations as well as the extension of subtle symbols of the domestic sphere into new public spaces such as plantings and seating to demonstrate implicit sense of pride, ownership, history, and memory of place. Ultimately, it was through the re-territorialization of the public escalators by residents rather than the state’s physical intervention that has driven community change and improvement, and while social issues and criminality persist, the collective and individual autonomy demonstrated through this process will be essential to maintaining the positive trajectory of Las Independencias (I) moving forward.

Research Conclusions 
This study centers around the stories, actions, and day-to-day lived experiences of residents, particularly women, in Las Independencias (I) in response to the creation of new common spaces along the public escalators. In particular, it demonstrates that residents’ acts of subtle physical occupation, graffiti, street and performance art, and street vending and tourism subverted state intentions for the public escalators and facilitated the community’s re-territorialization of these spaces to best meet their needs. Through personal narratives like that of the Escalator Ambassador, this research extends a gendered dimension to the paradoxical relationship articulated by Berney (2011) regarding new, equitable public spaces and the enforcement of desirable societal principles within these spaces. Additionally, by employing a ‘quasi’ design ethnography, my findings complement Sotomayor’s (2017) insights on the spatial conflicts and inequities perpetuated by the state in San Javier while redirecting the focus of this conflict to the re-territorialization of these spaces through insurgent spatial practices by the residents of Las Independencias (I). Future studies of interest could re-visit these practices as part of a broader longitudinal study, or could be contrasted with a similar study in the adjacent community of Las Independencias (II) which lacks the same degree of physical intervention and significantly higher Afro- Colombian population than their neighbors in Las Independencias (I). 

By shifting the focus of this research inquiry to the people rather than the state, new understandings begin to emerge regarding how and where planning occurs and who is ultimately responsible for leading planning efforts and upholding commitments to the community. Despite the participatory nature of the PUI engagement process, this ‘progressive’ model still presents procedural deficiencies that risk structural co-optation (Souza, 2006) of local community organizations and neighborhood leaders by gathering their input and ideas without providing decision-making authority or financial resources to implement or steward physical interventions in the neighborhood. Though disproportionately impacted by planning matters and under-represented in existing power and decision-making structures, the planning contributions of women in Las Independencias (I) span decades of persistent occupation and resistance. To reconcile these historic transgressions, planning practice must radically re-envision its process, beginning by intentionally centering the narratives and perspectives of women to understand their needs and aspirations, elevating their leadership and decision-making power, and continuing to allow these community ambassadors to create and steward emancipatory spaces where individual and community autonomy reside.

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