Abstract
The city of Medellín, Colombia has undergone drastic changes in recent decades. Known as “the most dangerous city in the world” in the 1990s, Medellín was nominated “the most innovative city in the world” in 2013. Due to this changed image, the city managed to attract foreign investors, international companies and tourists from all over the world. The city has even become a model for social progress. This positioning of the city image has been achieved thanks to the technological, social, cultural and educational projects and programs that have been proposed in the local development plans. All this change, of course, could only happen with public policies and social programs that have managed to affect the inhabitants of the city through a process of citizen participation. This chapter analyzes the development plans and management reports of Medellín between 2004 and 2019, using qualitative content analysis, to identify the city’s paradiplomacy and city branding strategies.
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Notes
- 1.
The Comisión Tripartita was created in 2004, and reaffirmed in September 2008, as an agreement of wills between the Government of Antioquia, the Mayor’s Office of Medellín and the Metropolitan Area of the Aburrá Valley, which seeks to combine efforts in the promotion of development, territorial ordering and regional competitiveness (Zapata and Vásquez 2012) cited by (Zapata-Cortés 2016).
- 2.
Medellín Digital is a program implemented in Medellín that seeks to bring technology to the daily life of people. It is seen as one way of making Medellín a city connected with the world. Medellín Digital was initiated and carried out by the Mayor’s Office of Medellín, the Ministry de Comunicaciones, the company UNE and the EPM Foundation (Mdigital 2019).
- 3.
In the most recent ranking of Ibero-American Hubs of FDI presented by FDI Intelligence, a division of Financial Times Ltd. (largest information center on foreign direct investment in the world), Medellín ranks first in Latin America due to its growth rate in the reception of projects of FDI between the periods 2005–2009 and 2010–2014. This development shows the increasing confidence of regional companies in the process of transforming the city (Management Report 2015, p. 124).
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Auschner, E., Lotero Álvarez, L., Álvarez Pérez, L. (2020). Paradiplomacy and City Branding: The Case of Medellín, Colombia (2004–2019). In: Amiri, S., Sevin, E. (eds) City Diplomacy. Palgrave Macmillan Series in Global Public Diplomacy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45615-3_13
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