Recent urban transformation and globalized tourism in Medellin’s downtown

Abstract

This work seeks to show how the urban transformation processes that Medellin’s downtown has had from 1998 to 2020, correspond to the institutional planning on the decisive change that the city has taken by overcoming and “turning the page” of its violent past. With this, a change in the image of Medellín at an international level has been achieved, thanks to the city's systematic marketing efforts: going from being a hyper-violent city to being considered a city open to the world, innovative and, especially, attractive for global tourism. Thus, it will be shown how the tours and narratives promoted by local tourist actors have been in charge of constituting and reiterating a narrative about the center, closely linked to said institutional discourse, which tends to homogenize memories, complexities and the diversity of urban life in this sector of the city.