21st Century (2000–present)

Medellín BIO 2030

2011 · Colombia · Latin America · Regional & polycentric planning · Planned by Área Metropolitana del Valle de Aburrá
Plano 10 'Modelo de ocupación' from BIO 2030: the river corridor as the metropolitan centre of activity, three centralities, and proactive containment of hillside growth in the Valle de Aburrá.
Plano 10 'Modelo de ocupación' from BIO 2030: the river corridor as the metropolitan centre of activity, three centralities, and proactive containment of hillside growth in the Valle de Aburrá. · © Área Metropolitana del Valle de Aburrá — used with credit · Área Metropolitana del Valle de Aburrá / Alcaldía de Medellín / Urbam-EAFIT, BIO 2030 Plan Director Medellín, Valle de Aburrá (2011)

Core idea

Green structure + integrated mobility

Why it matters

Regional ecological structure

Description

BIO 2030 is a metropolitan master plan agreed in 2011 for Medellín and the Aburrá Valley, prepared under the Área Metropolitana del Valle de Aburrá with academic partners including Urbam at EAFIT University. The plan proposes a shared regional framework organised around the river corridor, the valley's slopes and hillsides, and an integrated mobility system, seeking to direct growth and public investment across ten municipalities through a green structural skeleton.

Significance

BIO 2030 extended Medellín's celebrated 'social urbanism' from neighbourhood projects to the ecological and metropolitan scale, informing later projects such as Parques del Río and the city's greenbelt initiatives. It is cited in Latin American planning debates as an attempt to institutionalise regional coordination and landscape-based planning in a fragmented, rapidly urbanising valley.

What shaped it

Sources

Open it on the interactive timeline →
hub.toekom.st — History of Urbanism · an interactive timeline of 850 planned cities across 6,000 years.