Colombian collaboration with Japanese experts on urban development has played a key role in the rebirth of Medellin, a poverty-stricken and drug-infested city that was considered the most dangerous in the world.

Medellin, Colombia’s second-largest city, was home to an internationally feared drug cartel and gained notoriety for its high murder rates.

But by 2023, the homicide rate in Medellin had plummeted to less than 10 percent of the figure 20 years earlier.

Under the city’s revitalization program, parts of Medellin were remade by building public facilities and spaces in areas that were hotbeds for crime.

“Land readjustment can make a society better,” Augusto Pinto, former chief of the urban development division of Colombia’s National Planning Department, said of the Medellin project.

Pinto, 59, was among several Latin American government officials who underwent a three-month training program in Obihiro, Hokkaido, to learn about land readjustment technology.

The government-affiliated Japan International Cooperation Agency offered the annual program from 1998 to 2007 in Obihiro, whose officials were working on their own land readjustment at the time.

Pinto decided to embark on land readjustment after exchanging views on how to reinvent Medellin with Hidetsugu Kobayashi, professor emeritus of city planning at Hokkaido University who gave lectures during the course, and Yoji Kinoshita, an expert on city planning with JICA.

A total of 68 civil servants from Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela attended the training program in Japan.

Medellin was globally infamous for violence in the 1970s and 1980s mainly because of the Medellin Cartel led by Pablo Escobar and other drug lords.

At its height, the drug-trafficking syndicate controlled 80 percent of the world’s cocaine market. Escobar was killed and the cartel was disbanded in the 1990s.

But Medellin’s streets were still not safe. Feuds between smaller drug trafficking gangs continued into the 2000s.

Medellin is nestled in a valley in the Andes mountain range.

The city’s steep hillsides were covered with sprawling slums while maze-like alleys were littered with waste. The widespread poverty made the city vulnerable to criminal activity.

Murders, robberies and sex crimes were rampant, along with the narcotics trade.

Then came the land readjustment initiative.

Under the concept, each landowner contributed part of their property to create a public area with roads and buildings.

Some locals opposed the plan. But Pinto and other officials persuaded them to cooperate by explaining that shacks would be dismantled for the construction of collective housing, and the installation of street lights would make residents feel safer to walk at night.

In addition, industrial complexes on the outskirts of the city, which were deserted at night, were relocated, and the vacated areas were filled with housing, parks and museums.

Similar programs have been implemented in more than 150 districts in Medellin and Bogota, the Colombian capital, since 2005.

Some of the projects are still under way.

One of the most encouraging results of the project is that murder cases dropped significantly in Medellin.

The homicide rate was 177 per 100,000 people in 2002 when the city had a population of 2.9 million, according to local media and other sources.

In 2023, the rate had plunged to 13 per 100,000 when the city’s population rose to 4.1 million.

After the land readjustment project started, Medellin was named Innovative City of the Year in 2013 in a competition held by the Wall Street Journal and the international nonprofit Urban Land Institute.

The city is even witnessing a booming tourism industry.

Naomichi Murooka, a senior official with JICA’s Infrastructure Management Department who visited Medellin last year, said the cityscape reminded him of Nagasaki, with its many neatly readjusted hilly plots and potted flowers that grace street corners.

JICA moved its center for the land readjustment training program to Colombia in 2010, making it easier for civil servants to join from across South America.

About 200 trainees have participated in the program to date.

Legislation was established in Ecuador, Peru and elsewhere to allow for land readjustment programs, according to Pinto.

Former participants of the JICA training program have taken further steps to spread the concept of land readjustment in Latin America.

In February, about 50 of them from 14 Central and South American countries formed the Latin American Association of Urban and Territorial Planners (ALPU).

Jessica Martinez, vice president of the ALPU, said government officials in her home country, Costa Rica, are considering a city planning project that incorporates the idea of land readjustment.

“We are hoping that the number of successful cases will increase in countries struggling with security problems and export the idea of land readjustment to Africa and other continents in the future,” she said.