A City Rises, Along with Its Hopes

一座哥伦比亚城市的崛起

Medellín, Colombia

麦德林，哥伦比亚

For some time now, if you asked architects and urban planners for proof of the power of public architecture and public space to remake the fortunes of a city, they’d point here.

如果你去问建筑师和城市规划师，有什么实例可以证明公共建筑和公共空间具备让一座城市重新焕发生机的力量，他们的回答在相当一段时间内都会是这里。

Twenty-odd years ago, this was Pablo Escobar’s town, with an annual homicide rate that peaked at 381 per 100,000. In New York City that would add up to an almost inconceivable 32,000 murders a year.

二十多年前，这里是帕布罗·埃斯科巴（Pablo Escobar）的城市，最糟的时候全年杀人案发率每十万人为381起。这个比率要是放在纽约市，相当于一年内有将近32,000人被杀害，一个完全不可想象的数字。

But Colombia’s second city has lately become a medical and business center with a population of 3.5 million and a budding tourist industry, its civic pride buoyed by the new public buildings and squares, and exemplified by an efficient and improbably immaculate metro and cable car system. Linking rich with poor neighborhoods, spurring private development, the metro, notwithstanding shrieks elsewhere in Colombia over its questionable construction cost, is for residents of Medellín a shared symbol of democratic renewal. Even on the rush-hour train I took the other morning, crowds stepped aside to let a cleaning woman with a mop and bucket scrub the floor.

然而这座有350万人口的哥伦比亚第二大城市，近年却摇身一变，成了医疗和商业中心，旅游业蒸蒸日上，公民自豪感通过公共建筑和广场的建设得到增强，并在高效、整洁的地铁和电车系统中得到突出体现。地铁将富人区和穷人区串联起来，刺激了民营经济发展，尽管它的造价引起了哥伦比亚国内其他地方的质疑，但在麦德林市民的眼里，地铁是大家共有的一个民主新生的象征。有一次我在早上的高峰时间搭地铁，看到人群给拿着拖把和水桶的清洁女工让路，让她擦地板。

That evening I headed high up into a steep hillside slum where rival gangs still shoot unsuspecting trespassers who cross invisible borders. The city has recently installed an escalator ascending 1,300 feet, much debated at $7 million and disconnected from the rest of the city’s transit network but shortening to a five-minute ride what had been a brutal 30-story climb for some 12,000 residents. I trudged by foot, past armed soldiers, past mothers taking breathers on the decrepit steps that meandered up the mountain, past toddlers on plastic tricycles plunging down vertical streets, to a brightly painted cinderblock hut, a ramshackle aerie overlooking a sprawl of tin houses and open sewers.

那天晚上我的目的地是座落在陡峭山腰上的一个贫民窟，那里的敌对帮派至今还会向越过无形边境线的无辜闯入者开枪。市政府最近安装了高度约400米的自动扶梯，高达700万美元的造价引发了许多争议，还不能和市内其他交通网络连通，但这里的1.2万居民原先要面对的相当于30层楼高的恐怖山路，现在被缩短为5分钟的电梯传送。我喘着大气徒步往上爬，一路上看到荷枪实弹的士兵从我身边经过，遛达着上山的妈妈在破旧的台阶上歇脚，骑着三轮脚踏车的小孩儿顺着陡坡往下冲。我来到一座颜色鲜艳的煤渣砖房，样子破破烂烂的，趴在山巅俯瞰着脚下大片大片的铁皮房子和露天排水沟。

The shack is home to Son Batá, a cultural initiative founded by young black migrants from the Chocó region of Colombia. Son Batá promotes Chocano music and dance, and it benefits from yet another Medellín initiative: participatory budgeting. Residents here have voted to direct a share of government financing to new schools, clinics and college scholarships. Son Batá got to hire music teachers and bought instruments and is adding a new recording studio to its headquarters. A group of players showed me the studio under construction. From another room, music drifted over the barrio and into the warm night air.

这里就是松巴塔（Son Batá）——一群从哥伦比亚乔科地区移民到这里的黑人青年创办的文化组织——的大本营。推广乔科音乐和舞蹈的松巴塔，是麦德林的另一个公共项目的受益者，即“共享预算”。这里的居民投票决定将一笔政府拨款用于增设学校、诊所和大学奖学金。松巴塔就是靠这笔拨款聘请了音乐老师，添置乐器，还在它的总部新建了一个录音棚。几位乐手带我去施工中的录音棚看看。从另一个房间传来音乐声，悠扬的音符在市区的上空飘荡，融化在夜晚温暖的空气里。

I arrived in Medellín to see the ambitious and photogenic buildings that have gone up, but also to find what remains undone. The murder rate, while hardly low, is now under 60 per 100,000. Architecture alone obviously doesn’t account for the drop in homicides, but the two aren’t unrelated, either. Around the world, followers of architecture with a capital A have focused so much of their attention on formal experiments, as if aesthetics and social activism, twin Modernist concerns, were mutually exclusive. But Medellín is proof that they’re not, and shouldn’t be. Architecture, here and elsewhere, acts as part of a larger social and economic ecology, or else it elects to be a luxury, meaningless except to itself.

此行本想看看麦德林的那些高屋建瓴、美轮美奂的新建筑，结果同时也看到了有待完善的那部分。虽说还是不算低，但杀人案发率现在每十万人已经不到60起了。建筑显然不是案发率下降的唯一原因，但这两个因素之间是存在关联的。放眼全球，那些趾高气昂的建筑人一门心思钻研着形式的实验，就好像美学和社会行动这两大现代主义命题彼此是毫不相干的。麦德林证明它们有关，而且理应有关。无论是在这里还是别的什么地方，建筑都是社会和经济生态大环境的一部分，不这样想，就等于将自己置于奢华、空洞的象牙塔里。

The story of Medellín’s evolution turns out to be neither as rosy nor as straightforward as fans of new architecture have tended to portray it. It’s generally told as a triumph for Sergio Fajardo, the son of an architect who is the governor of the region and who was the city’s visionary mayor from 2004 to 2007. He pushed an agenda that linked education and community development with infrastructure and glamorous architecture.

麦德林的变革其实不像新建筑的吹鼓手们描绘的那般美好，它既不顺利，也不简单。人们一般会把功绩归在塞尔西奥·法哈多（Sergio Fajardo）身上，这位建筑师的儿子是该地区的地方长官，2004年到2007年任市长期间做了许多有远见的工作。他力主推进了一项议案，利用基础设施和引人注目的建筑来促进教育和社区的联动发展。

But the city’s transformation established roots before Mr. Fajardo took office, in thoughtful planning guidelines, amnesties and antiterrorism programs, community-based initiatives by Germany and the United Nations and a Colombian national policy mandating architectural interventions as a means to attack poverty and crime.

不过早在法哈多先生秉政前，城市的转变就已经埋下伏笔，有精心指定的规划原则，有特赦组织和反恐计划，有德国人和联合国发起的社区活动，而哥伦比亚政府也为了解决贫困和犯罪问题制定了建筑干预方面的政策。

What sets Medellín apart is the particular strength of its culture of urbanism, which acts now almost like a civic calling card. The city’s new mayor, Aníbal Gaviria, spent an hour describing to me his dreams for burying a congested highway that runs through the middle of town, building an electric tram along the hillsides to stem the sprawl of the slums, adding a green belt of public buildings along the tram, rehabilitating the Medellín River and densifying the city center – smart, public-spirited, improvements. It’s as if, in this country whose relatively robust economy has underwritten many forward-thinking projects, every mayor here has to have enormous architectural and infrastructural plans, or risk coming across as small-minded or an outsider.

麦德林之所以显得突出，跟它在都市文化方面的强势有关，现在这一点几乎已经成了城市名片。新任市长阿尼拔·加维里亚（Aníbal Gaviria）花了一个小时向我描绘他的梦想，要把穿过市区的那条拥堵不堪的主干道填平；沿着山腰建一条电车轨道，抑制贫民窟的扩张，轨道沿途用公共建筑来形成绿化带；对麦德林河进行治理；加大市中心密度——都是些聪明的、有公共意识的改进举措。在这个国家里，相对良好的经济形势给许多前瞻性的规划项目提供了支持，好像每一任市长都得拿出一大堆的建筑和基建计划来似的，否则就有可能被人扣上短视或没前途的帽子。

Mr. Gaviria, local designers, businessmen and community leaders sketched for me a picture of a city in which violence, much of it today by small drug traffickers, remains a big problem and victories are fragile. People in Medellín were cautious about the future, about easy solutions and seeing architecture as an end in itself. At the same time, they stressed the social and economic benefits that public architecture and new public spaces can create, and the wisdom of long-term, community-based policies of urban renewal.

通过加维里亚、当地设计师、商人以及社群领袖们的描述，我对这座城市的印象是，暴力问题——目前看来，其中相当一部分是由小规模贩毒活动引发的——依然严峻，革新的成果尚显脆弱。麦德林人对未来、对轻松的解决方案是心存疑虑的，在他们看来，建筑就是建筑，只是其中一面而已。与此同时，他们也看重公共建筑和新的公共空间对社会和经济带来的好处，认为在城市改造策略要有做长远打算、立足于社区的智慧。

“A holistic approach,” is how Alejandro Echeverri, one of the principal architects of the city’s transformation under Mr. Fajardo, described the philosophy.

“一种整体推进。”亚历山大·埃切维里（Alejandro Echeverri），当年法哈多麾下负责城市改造的其中一位高级建筑师，是这样阐述这种哲学的。

 

I came here from Bogotá, whose renewal programs starting in the late 1990s – like earlier ones in Barcelona before the Olympics in 1992 – set the stage for Medellín’s revival. But now Bogotá is suffering, as strains multiply on its famed rapid bus system and residents’ faith in the city’s future plummets.

我是从波哥大出发到这里来的，那里的改造项目开始于1990年代末——和1992年奥运会前开始改造的巴塞罗那差不多——为麦德林的复兴创造了条件。但是现在的波哥大日子不好过，那个著名的快速公交系统承受了几倍于先前的压力，居民对未来的信心一落千丈。

Medellín, by contrast, still counts on an almost fierce parochial pride, a legacy of decent Modernist architecture dating back to the 1930s, a cadre of young architects being aggressively nurtured and promoted, and a commitment by local businesses to improve social welfare that begins with the city’s biggest business: its state-owned utilities company, E.P.M.

相比之下，麦德林还有堪称死忠的地域归属感可以倚仗，还有自1930年代发端的一种优良的现代主义建筑传统，有一群得到了超常规的培养和提拔的年轻建筑师，本地产业界也有志于促进社会繁荣——其中为首的是全市头号企业：国有公共事业公司E.P.M.。

You can’t begin to grasp Medellín’s architectural renaissance without understanding the role of E.P.M., the Empresas Públicas de Medellín, which supplies water, gas, sanitation, telecommunications and electricity. It’s constitutionally mandated to provide clean water and electricity even to houses in the city’s illegal slums, so that unlike in Bogotá, where the worst barrios lack basic amenities, in Medellín there’s a safety net.

要想理解麦德林的建筑复兴，不弄清E.P.M.——麦德林公共公司——在中间起到的作用是不行的，这家公司承担了全市的水、燃气、环卫、通讯和电力供应。依照法律规定，它必须向所有房屋提供清洁的水和电力，即便是那些非法的棚屋，这点和波哥大不一样，那里条件最差的居住区连最起码的便利设施都没有，而麦德林是有一张安全网的。

More than that, E.P.M.’s profits (some $450 million a year) go directly to building new schools, public plazas, the metro and parks. One of the most beautiful public squares in the middle of Medellín was donated by E.P.M. And atop the slums of the city’s Northeast district, E.P.M. paid for a park in the mountaintop jungle, linked to the district by its own cable car.

不仅如此，E.P.M.的经营收益（每年约4.5亿美元）会直接用于建造学校、公共广场、地铁和公园。麦德林市中心最漂亮的广场中有一个就是E.P.M.捐助建造的。在东北区的贫民窟，E.P.M.出资在山顶丛林里建了一座公园，并安排他们自己的电车来承担到市区之间的交通。

Federico Restrepo used to run E.P.M., before he became the city planner under Mr. Fajardo. “We took a view that everything is interconnected – education, culture, libraries, safety, public spaces,” he told me, pointing out that while fewer than 20 percent of public school students here used to test at the national average in 2002, by 2009 the number exceeded 80 percent.

费德里柯·雷斯特雷普（Federico Restrepo）曾在E.P.M.主事，后来成为法哈多先生手下的一名城市规划师。“在我们的设想里，一切都是关联的——教育、文化、图书馆、安全、公共空间。”他还告诉我，2002年这里只有不到20%的学生考试成绩达到全国平均水平，到2009年这个比例已经超过80%。

“Obviously it’s not just that we built and renovated schools,” he said. “You have to work on the quality of teaching and nutrition in conjunction with architecture. But the larger point is that the goal of government should be providing rich and poor with the same quality education, transportation and public architecture. In that way you increase the sense of ownership.”

“显然这不只是因为我们建设和改造了学校，”他说，“你必须提高教学和营养的品质，和建筑结合。而从大局看，政府的目标应该是让富人和穷人在教育、交通和公共建筑上得到同等待遇。这样你才能增强归属感。”

But of course ownership can’t just be bestowed on poor neighborhoods; it must also be declared, in small, critical ways. In the troubled Comuna 13, two members of Revolución Sin Muertos (Revolution Without Deaths) – started not long ago by a group of neighborhood hip-hoppers rejecting the gang culture – took me on a graffiti tour. At a crowded street corner, Daniel Felipe Quiceno, known as Dog, and Luis Fernando Álvarez, who is called AKA, pointed to a mural of four of their own, murdered by local gangs. Revolución Sin Muertos paints murals around Comuna 13; sometimes residents put their own tags on them, as if to signal support. Murals, Mr. Álvarez said, have helped people here vent frustration and proclaim ownership of the neighborhood.

当然，归属感不是随随便便往老百姓头上一放就行了的；还要通过一些细微而关键的方式来重申。在麻烦不断的13区，“非暴力革命”（Revolución Sin Muertos）——不久前由当地一些反感黑帮文化的嘻哈青年创建的组织——的两名成员领着我做了一次涂鸦之旅。在一个人头攒动的街角，人称“狗子”的基赛诺（Daniel Felipe Quiceno）和AKA阿尔瓦莱兹（Luis Ferando Álvarez）指着一幅壁画告诉我，上面的四个人是他们的成员，被当地黑帮杀害了。“非暴力革命”在13区的很多地方都画了壁画；有时候当地居民会附上他们自己的标语以示支持。阿尔瓦莱兹先生说，壁画能帮助人们抒发心里的苦闷，宣告他们对此地的所有权。

Progress is hard. Venture a few yards from the heralded new squares, library and cable car stations in the Santo Domingo barrio, across town in the hills of the Northeast district, and it’s clear just how dramatic but also tenuous change is here. Mr. Echeverri met me at the cable car terminal one morning for the ride into the Northeast slums.

前进是艰难的。离开圣多明戈区那些先进的新广场、图书馆和电车站，翻越东北区的一座座小山坡，很明显可以看到变化是剧烈而又细微的。埃切维里先生和我约好早上在一个电车站碰头，带我乘车去东北区贫民窟看看。

“We were already working before Fajardo on how to use cable cars to transform the surrounding area, to have the cable car stations as the neighborhood nervous system,” he recalled. “The barrios always had lots of energy but the energy was disconnected from the city.”

“在法哈多来之前，我们就已经在考虑用电车改造周边地区了，把电车站当作这些地方的神经枢纽，”他回忆道，“这些地方一向都是很有活力的，但跟城市没有建立联系。”

Our car rose high above a sea of illegal houses, the cable car stations creating a spine of commercial development up the mountainside. In what used to be a district too risky even for the police to patrol, we got off and wandered through a souk of restaurants, schools and clothing stores, leading onto busy squares and then to the España library, the most conspicuous emblem of the new Medellín.

我们的车经过大片的非法房屋一直往上开，各电车站沿着山腰上构成了一根商业开发的中轴线。我们在这个一度连警察巡逻都要小心翼翼的地方下了车，经过一些餐馆、学校和服装店，徒步走到了热闹的广场，而后又来到西班牙图书馆——新麦德林最显眼的标志。

“A seed to plant trust,” is how Mr. Echeverri described the neighborhood after its makeover. “The main physical transformation is to public space, but it’s only the beginning,” he cautioned, gesturing toward the sprawl of poverty just beyond the new development. Mr. Echeverri said all the headlines about the recovery of this much-photographed barrio have been great, but they’ve also had the unintended effect of inclining some officials to look elsewhere, for less politically complex projects.

“这是播下了一棵信任的种子，”埃切维里这样形容这个经过改造后的居住区，“实体的改造主要是在公共空间上，但这只是个开头。”他提醒我，言下之意是目前的发展还赶不上贫困的扩散。埃切维里先生说，经常会有人到这个日新月异的地方来拍照，报纸上那些头版报道都是好事，但无意中也导致一些官员更倾向于把注意力放到别处去，做一些政治上没那么复杂的项目。

He showed me the $4 million España library: three linked black boulders perched 1,500 feet over the valley, designed by the gifted Bogotán architect Giancarlo Mazzanti, which has become a community center and civic symbol. It’s impressive from the outside.

他带我参观了投资400万美元建造的西班牙图书馆：这三幢彼此相连的巨型石头房子座落在450多米高的峡谷顶端，由天赋过人的波哥大建筑师马赞蒂（Giancarlo Mazzanti）设计，已经成为一个社区中心和城市象征。它的外表给人留下极好的印象。

But there are serious problems on the inside. The buildings are steel-frame boxes clad in dark stone tiles, with floating concrete cores – in effect, boxes within the boxes with reading rooms, a child-care center, an auditorium and other facilities. Construction is shoddy, navigation confusing, the interior claustrophobic; acoustics are awful, windows scarce.

但里面的问题很严重。整座建筑是一个悬浮在外层的混凝土心墙包裹的钢架结构方块，外立面贴覆了黑色石砖——方块里面是更多的方块，分别是阅览室、一个儿童保育中心、一个礼堂，还有其他一些设施。整个工程粗制滥造，内部导向混乱，空间让人感到压抑；传音效果糟糕，窗户数量不足。

More impressive but less flashy is another library in Medellín by Mr. Mazzanti: the León de Greiff library in La Ladera also a trio of buildings, in this case well-connected cantilevered pods on slate pedestals, splayed like a fan across the brow of a hill. The shared roof is linked to a park next door. Views are spectacular. The reading rooms and children’s play areas look out through panoramic windows.

马赞蒂设计的另一个图书馆要更出彩，但没那么吸引眼球，那就是位于拉德拉的莱昂·德格利佛图书馆，它也由三个建筑组成，不过是三个建在石板基座上的悬仓，彼此之间有很好的连通，像一把扇子贴在山顶。屋顶相连的部分是和隔壁的一个公园联系在一起的。观景视野非常棒。阅览室和儿童游乐区有一览无余的大窗户。

Mr. Echeverri took me down the hillside to Andalucía, another part of the Northeast slums. Formerly ruled by gangs who held opposite sides of a garbage-clotted creek, it’s now remade with a sports complex and school, new sidewalks, new mid-rise housing blocks and a bridge over the creek. Dozens of shops have opened. Men were tinkering beneath cars in the hot sun, chatting over beers, when I visited; children dawdled on the way home from school, eating ice cream on the bridge. A thousand eyes were on the streets.

埃切维里带我下山，来到东北区的另一座贫民窟安达卢西亚。以前这个地方盘踞着相互敌对的帮派，中间隔着一条被垃圾堵死的小河，如今这里建起了一个综合体育中心和一所学校，还有新的人行道，中高层的住宅楼，河上新架了一座桥。新开了几十家商铺。我去的时候看到男人有的在烈日下钻到车底修车，有的喝着啤酒闲聊；放学回家的孩子懒洋洋地走着，站在桥上吃冰激凌。马路上熙熙攘攘。

There I found Mateo Gómez, a 20-year-old on his way to work at a local beer company in the city center. The cable car had cut his commute in half, from two hours to one, he told me.

我在这里遇到了正赶去上班的戈麦兹（Mateo Gómez），这个20岁小伙子在市中心一家本地啤酒厂工作。他告诉我，电车把他的通勤时间缩短了一半，从两个小时变成一个小时。

“The España library changed our conception of ourselves,” he added. “Before, we felt a stigma. But we’re still missing cultural spaces, the library closes too early, the situation is still very uncertain.”

“西班牙图书馆改变了我们对自己的认识，”他还说。“不像以前那么抬不起头来的。不过我们还是缺文化空间，图书馆太早关门，局势还不是很稳定。”

From the hills of the Northeast, I made the circuit of some of the other new architecture in Medellín, much of it in and around the Botanical Garden, which had been the city’s Central Park before it became too dangerous to visit, and was shut down. For a while, the garden was intended for demolition. Then, a decade or so ago, thanks to Pilar Velilla, the garden’s director at the time, and with the support of Mr. Fajardo, the area was turned around.

从东北的山区出发，我一路上又看了麦德林的一些新建筑，其中多数在植物园的里面或周围。植物园曾经是麦德林的中央公园，后来因为太过危险而被关闭。有一阵子是打算废弃这个园的。十来年前，多亏了当时的园长维里拉（Pilar Velilla），再加上法哈多先生的支持，这个地方被挽救了回来。

Mr. Echeverri has designed a dramatic new science museum and public plaza across the street from the garden, and the garden has been lovingly renovated, its walls taken down, a gem of a circular pavilion, by Lorenzo Castro and Ana Elvira Vélez, added at the entrance.

埃切维里在植物园的街对面设计了一座极富动感的科技博物馆和一个公共广场，植物园也经过了精心的整修，拆除了墙壁，入口处增建了一座精美的环形展馆，由洛伦佐·卡斯特罗（Lorenzo Castro）和维雷兹（Ana Elvira Vélez）设计。

After an initial scheme to hire Norman Foster to devise another pavilion was rejected, a local competition was held, with the idea of advertising Medellín’s own young architectural talent. The winner, JPRCR Architects (Camilo Restrepo runs it), and Plan B Architects (Felipe Mesa and Alejandro Bernal), came up with the Orquideorama, a towering wood meshwork canopy rising 65 feet above a latticed patio. Its 10 hexagonal flower-tree structures, collecting fresh rainwater and woven together like honeycombs, shelter an orchid collection and butterfly reserves. The canopy is at once formally economical and spectacular.

在最初聘请诺曼·福斯特（Norman Foster）设计另一座展馆的提案被否决后，当地举办了一个竞赛，旨在提携麦德林自己孕育的建筑设计青年才俊。最终获胜的JPRCR建筑师事务所（负责人是雷斯特雷普）和Plan B建筑师事务所（梅萨[Felipe Mesa]和贝尔纳尔[Alejandro Bernal]）提出了“兰景园”（Orquideorama）的方案，这是一个高20米的木质网状罩蓬，悬在一片格状庭院上空。它包含10个六边形的花–树构造，会收集新鲜雨水，像蜂巢一样把它们汇聚到一起，形成了兰花和蝴蝶保护区的安全屏障。这个罩蓬起到了立竿见影的经济效益，同时也是一道美丽风景。

But the most remarkable building of all is a few blocks away, a cultural center in the neighborhood called Moravia, next to a vast garbage dump. The center is one of the last works by the Colombian master Rogelio Salmona, a quasi-Moorish design of refined simplicity, all transparency, modesty and openness. Carlos Uribe, an artist, who runs the center, showed off the beehive of below-ground practice rooms, the dance studio and theater opening onto the outdoors, the library and courtyard, flanked by low ramps, providing a desperately needed safe and attractive public space, where small children romped before watchful teachers among burbling fountains that recalled the Alhambra.

然而最令人赞叹的建筑还是要属几个街区开外一个大垃圾场旁的文化中心，名叫“摩拉维亚”。这个中心是哥伦比亚建筑大师萨尔莫纳（Rogelio Salmona）生前最后几件作品之一，一个类摩尔式的设计，有着精炼的简约、通透、低调和开放性。这里的负责人、艺术家乌里韦（Carlos Uribe）带我参观了蜂窝式的地下排练厅、舞蹈工作室和露天剧场，两侧有低矮坡道的图书馆和庭院提供了人们迫切需要的安全感，是一处迷人的公共空间，在老师的看护下，孩子们在一个让人想起阿尔罕布拉宫的喷泉里嬉戏玩耍。

The authorities have lately been moving residents from the unsafe landfill next door to new housing on the city’s periphery, which is understandable but a striking case of thoughtless urban planning, because the move isolates the residents from their jobs and what had become their neighborhood, with Salmona’s building as its anchor.

出于安全考虑，当局最近开始把垃圾填埋场一带的居民转移到城市边缘的新居住区里去，这个做法可以理解，但从城市规划的角度是极其欠考虑的，因为迁徙会导致居民离开他们的工作，割断以萨尔莫纳的建筑为核心建立起来的邻里关系。

“Of course we will continue to improve schools and neighborhoods,” Mr. Gaviria, the mayor, had told me. “But we also need to care for the mountains and the river, which to us are like the rivers and Central Park in New York.”

“当然，我们会继续改善学校和街道的条件，”麦德林市长加维里亚先生对我说，“但同时我们也要照顾好山和河流，这些地方在我们眼里就像纽约的那些河流和中央公园一样。”

My impression from that conversation was that it’s politically easier to propose new plans for burying highways and building trams in the hills than to untangle old problems, and that the city still had to be vigilant when it comes to housing policies. I met just before I left with eight young architects at the Museum of Modern Art, a steel mill from the 1930s, handsomely converted. “We’re still not thoughtful in terms of social housing, mixed neighborhoods,” agreed Verónica Ortiz Murcia, a partner at Arquitecturay Espacio Urbano.

这段对话给我留下的印象是，提出填平主干道、在山上建有轨电车这样的规划议案，从政治上讲要比去治理一些痼疾更容易一些，市政府在房地产政策上还是要保持警惕。离开之前我在现代艺术博物馆——一座由1930年代的钢铁厂改建而成的漂亮建筑——和8位年轻的建筑师见了面。“我们在社会性住房、混合居住区的问题上还是考虑得不周详。”建筑和城市空间事务所合伙人穆尔西亚（Verónica Ortiz Murcia）对我的看法表示赞同。

“There’s a general feeling among young architects of a missed opportunity here,” said another architect, Catalina Ortiz. That view was echoed by Camilo Restrepo and Alejandro González.

“年轻一代的建筑师普遍认为自己在这里不容易找到机会。”另一位建筑师奥尔梯兹（Catalina Ortiz）说。卡米罗·雷斯特雷普（Camilo Restrepo）和冈萨雷斯（Alejandro González）也表达了类似的观点。

Their skepticism seemed almost the most encouraging sign I had encountered in Medellín. The city has made big strides, after all, using cutting-edge architecture as a catalyst. But here young architects press for yet more creative solutions. They take for granted as their jobs both formal innovation and also the humanitarian role of architectural activism, leapfrogging an older generation of architects and others who have remained fixated on eye-catching buildings to grace the covers of glossy magazines.

他们的怀疑态度大概是我在麦德林见到的最令人振奋的一面了。毕竟这座城市在大踏步前进，用锐意新潮的建筑充当催化剂。然而这里的青年建筑师提出的方案还要更有创造性。他们理所应当地认为他们的工作既是对形式的创新，也要担负起建筑行动的人道主义使命，这是一个巨大的进步，相比之下包括老一辈建筑师在内的一些人关心的只是做出引人注目的建筑，用来放在时髦杂志的封面上。

It’s this restless energy among an up-and-coming generation, in a city where people already take seriously the goal of greater equality, that seems to promise change will continue.

在这座已经为更广泛的平等做出过艰辛努力的城市里，年轻一代身上散发着的不知疲倦的能量，让我们有理由相信变革仍会继续。

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