Metropolitan expansion and rural change in the peri-urban edge Medellín - Rionegro (Colombia)

Abstract

This paper addresses the way in which the expansion zones of the metropolitan areas of Medellín and Rionegro are currently moving from the communal relations that marked their rural life to anonymous relations in which notions of neighborliness are gradually disappearing. Understanding the urban as a social condition and not only as a physical expression of the territory, but the urban is also no longer the opposite of the rural, nor is it synonymous with the city. The urban constitutes a phenomenon where anonymity and individuality are privileged in a space. This process takes place in a rural space where part of its heritage is the landscape and unneighborly relations. We assume the notion of the peri-urban limit as a space of undefinition that extends from the periphery of the Aburrá Valley to some of the rural hamlets of the Territorial Subsystem: Alto Grande - La Ramada, in the San Nicolas Valley; places where the communal is disappearing to give way to new urban dynamics. The article constitutes a theoretical contribution to the interpretation of the new realities observed in the peri-urban fringes of many contemporary metropolises, not only because of the debate it opens on the ways of understanding current urban-rural problems, but also because it suggests other perspectives for territorial planning based on the readings of the new social realities that are established there.