The Steep Repair: Medellín and the Liveable City Index

The slopes are crowded with buildings that seem to have climbed farther than they should. Below them, the flatter city spreads in a denser grammar of avenues, towers, commerce and heat. Somewhere down there, a station platform folds hillside life into the metropolitan core; somewhere else, a public library or escalator or plaza continues the long civic argument that made Medellín famous among urbanists. The city's image, by now, is almost canonical: mobility as repair, public space as dignity, design as social policy.

The question is what remains once the conference applause fades.

Medellín ranks 17th in the UrbanStories Liveable City Index 2026 with a composite score of 56, in the Mixed band. Its scorecard reads Shelter 44, Human Scale 58, Civic Voice 58, Nature & Climate Comfort 54, Everyday Mobility 58, Conviviality 72. The pattern is revealing. Medellín is not a miracle city, and our index refuses to grade it as one. But it is also not reducible to the macro weakness implied by its Resonance rank of 76 and Happy City rank of 233. Reform matters here. It simply does not matter enough to abolish inequality.

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1. The reform story, and the risk of myth

Medellín may be the world's most over-cited urban redemption narrative. The reasons are understandable. Few cities have become so emblematic of social urbanism: cable cars reaching steep informal settlements, libraries and schools used as civic anchors, public investment redirected toward communities long treated as peripheral in every sense.

The dataset gives this narrative real weight. It explicitly notes that UN-DESA names Medellín as a spatial-justice case study, and that recognition helps lift the city's score above what published rankings alone would imply. We honour that. Public intervention can change the moral geometry of a city, and Medellín offers evidence that design plus mobility plus civic attention can alter access in meaningful ways.

But reform stories are dangerous when they become export myths. They can freeze a city in the flattering moment when its innovations first shocked the profession, while residents continue living through the slower and messier realities of inequality, insecurity and uneven service. Our 56 is designed to hold both truths in place: something important was built here, and something incomplete remains.

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2. Shelter 44, Human Scale 58

The first limit of the reform narrative is housing. Medellín's Shelter score of 44 is not catastrophic, but it is clearly weak. The city has improved access and public connection in important ways, yet it still contains large burdens of inequality, precariousness and uneven residential security. Social urbanism can make a hillside more reachable; it cannot by itself resolve the full housing question.

That is why shelter remains below 50. We wanted to avoid two equal and opposite errors: treating the city as unchanged, and treating infrastructure reform as proof that basic urban residence is now broadly easy. Neither reading is honest.

The Human Scale score of 58 reflects Medellín's mixed physical reality. Many neighbourhoods work strongly at pedestrian level. Street life is real. Commerce is local. Social exchange remains visible in plazas, stairs, corner shops and neighbourhood parks. Unlike the detached suburban landscapes of some richer cities, Medellín often still presents life directly to the street.

Yet the topography complicates that human scale continuously. Steepness is beautiful from afar and burdensome up close. The valley form concentrates the city in ways that intensify both accessibility and constraint. Fifty-eight therefore signals partial success: the city often feels socially legible, but not consistently easy in bodily terms.

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3. Civic Voice 58, Nature & Climate Comfort 54

Civic voice is where Medellín receives its clearest reform credit. A Civic Voice score of 58 may not sound dramatic, but in the context of the city's broader rankings it matters. Resonance 76 and Happy City 233 might have pointed to a flatter, harsher result. The UN's recognition of Medellín as a spatial-justice case study justifies a more nuanced score. It suggests a city where public intervention has genuinely tried to reach excluded communities rather than merely beautify the centre.

Still, 58 is not a halo. Reform does not dissolve power imbalances, and a city can be internationally famous for participatory innovation while residents continue to experience unequal voice in practice. We held the score in the upper 50s because Medellín seems more civically serious than many cities at similar macro rank, without yet belonging to the truly robust participatory tier.

Its Nature & Climate Comfort score of 54 follows a similar pattern of moderated admiration. Medellín is often praised for its valley climate and visual greenness, and not without reason. But comfort is not only a matter of mild temperatures. Air quality, slope, storm exposure, landslide risk and unequal access to relief all complicate the picture.

Fifty-four says the city is not ecologically barren, nor is it deeply comfortable. Nature exists here as beauty, backdrop and occasionally relief, but also as terrain that can amplify urban inequality. Geography is never neutral in a hillside metropolis.

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4. Everyday Mobility 58, Conviviality 72

Mobility is the city's most famous virtue, which is why the score of 58 needs explanation. Medellín's metro, cable-car network and related public investments are justly celebrated. They have made the city more connected, more visible to itself and more serious about spatial inclusion. A lower score would ignore all of that.

But we stopped at Everyday Mobility 58 because symbolic innovation is not the same thing as universally easy daily movement. The topography remains hard. Journeys are still uneven. Access gains matter, but they do not cancel the burdens that geography and inequality continue to impose. The city has improved mobility; it has not made mobility effortless.

The Conviviality score of 72 acknowledges the public energy Medellín still produces. There is music, plaza life, neighbourhood sociability, visible exchange and a civic atmosphere richer than the macro rankings alone might predict. This is one of the virtues of the city's reform trajectory: public investment has not only connected places. It has also helped make public life more thinkable.

Yet here too, caution matters. Conviviality should not be confused with safety or universal ease. A lively square does not automatically signal an equitable city. Seventy-two is therefore a score of real respect, not romance.

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5. Why we rank Medellín above its prestige reputation

Our divergence here is less about glamour than about moral attention. Resonance's 76th place leaves Medellín deep in the table of world-city prestige. Happy City's 233rd places it even lower in a broad well-being field. We rank it 17th out of 23, still modest, but clearly higher in relative terms than either of those signals might lead one to expect.

The reason is simple. Our index gives serious credit to cities that have tried to repair spatial injustice in visible, resident-facing ways. Medellín's transport and public-space interventions matter because they alter access, and access is a liveability issue, not merely an architectural one.

At the same time, we refuse to let the reform narrative become a free pass. The city remains in the Mixed band because shelter, climate comfort and overall urban burden still hold it down. Medellín rises in our table because we think care should count. It does not rise further because care has not yet produced an easy city.

This is precisely the kind of distinction prestige rankings usually miss. They are good at counting international heat. They are less good at recognizing cities that matter morally before they matter globally.

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6. Where our own score may be unstable

If we are too generous anywhere, it is probably civic voice. The city's international reputation for social urbanism can seduce analysts into mistaking good projects for fully transformed governance. A Civic Voice score of 58 is meant to be careful, but it may still over-credit reform narrative relative to resident reality in the most unequal districts.

If we are too harsh anywhere, it may be on Nature & Climate Comfort 54. Medellín's climate is genuinely more temperate and physically agreeable than many Latin American peers. One could argue the score should sit a little higher. We kept it moderated because comfort in a valley city must include exposure, terrain and uneven infrastructure, not just the pleasantness of the air at a particular hour.

Mobility, too, sits in an uneasy place. The city's innovations are globally significant, and some readers will feel 58 understates that significance. Our defence is that the index measures the whole trip, not the brilliance of the intervention.

That is the conclusion Medellín deserves. It is not a miracle, and it is not a cautionary tale alone. It is a city that has worked hard to repair itself, and whose repair remains partial, visible and deeply worth studying.

Sources & further reading

• Resonance Consultancy — 2026 World's Best Cities Report
• Institute for Quality of Life / Happy City Hub — Happy City Index 2026
• UN-DESA — Sustainable Development Goals Report 2025 (SDG 11)
• Time Out — 50 Best Cities in the World 2026