Spatial Reconfiguration in the Aburrá Sur: Concentrated Deconcentration and Tensions in the City Model

The Aburrá Sur region has experienced accelerated real estate development and a growing relocation of services and population activities in its territory in the last two decades, which contrasts with a loss of economic and political management functions in favor of Medellín. This has resulted in tension between the metropolitan urban model promoting re-development and the expansive dynamics of the financial-real estate circuit. This high-lights the importance of Aburrá Sur in the socio-spatial reconfiguration of the metropoli-tan region and the uneven impacts of urban expansion processes throughout the valley. The contradiction between the ‘compact city’ model promoted by urban authorities and the reality of a growing urban diffusion is a symptom of the re-scaling of the metropolitan urbanization process in which global, regional, and local powers are articulated, combin-ing normative, economic, and ideological instruments of urban planning.