The Guardian

Hip-hop schools and graffiti art saved Medellin. Can they do the same for Paris?

Urban planner Daniel Carvalho says embracing youth culture can transform France’s poorest suburbs
At the Paris Beaches, children learn circus skills with the STREB Extreme Action company for the Châtelet theatre reopening parade.

In the hilly streets of Medellín’s Comuna 13, once ranked the most dangerous district in one of the most dangerous cities in the world, Daniel Carvalho is a local hero.

The urban planner is credited with helping to transform the poor neighbourhood on the western slopes of Colombia’s one-time drug and crime capital from no-go badlands into a tourist attraction.

His weapons? Not the guns and knives of the notorious drug gangs who held Medellín in their clutches for decades, but art and culture.

Today Carvalho, now

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from The Guardian

The Guardian3 min readWorld
Historians Come Together To Wrest Ukraine’s Past Out Of Russia’s Shadow
The opening salvo in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February last year was not a rocket or a missile. Rather, it was an essay. Vladimir Putin’s On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians, published in summer 2021, ranged over 1,00
The Guardian4 min read
The Golden Bachelor’s Older Singletons Have Saved A Franchise
Strange as it may sound, one of the hottest shows on TV this fall has been … an old dating series now catering, for once, to senior citizens. That would be The Golden Bachelor, a new spin-off of America’s pre-eminent dating series in which a 72-year-
The Guardian4 min read
Whether In Song Or In Silence, Shane MacGowan Exuded The Very Essence Of Life
Shane MacGowan and I sat in near silence for two hours last year. We were at his home, just outside Dublin. I’d been warned by his wife, the writer Victoria Mary Clarke, that he was depressed and anxious, not really in the mood to talk. But nothing c

Related Books & Audiobooks