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

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