Good Times in Medellin; A city tainted by violence is experiencing a renaissance.

Byline: Malcolm Beith

Luis Fernando Betancur Merino gazes out of his eighth-floor office window, overlooking the Colombian city of Medellin, and smiles at the bustling panorama. Betancur is Medellin's administrator for urban development; every new license for construction must get his stamp of approval. He's been busy lately. Last year over 1.2 million square meters of property were developed in Colombia's second largest city, more than double the figure from five years ago. All around Medellin--which sits 1,500 meters above sea level in the Andes--new housing, hotels and office buildings are springing up, keeping Betancur happily buried in paperwork. "These are good times," he says. "We are experiencing a boom."

It's been a long time since Medellin was described with such upbeat words. Billionaire cocaine king Pablo Escobar, who headed the Medellin cocaine cartel from the early 1970s until his death in December 1993, had turned the so-called City of Eternal Spring into the City of Eternal Violence. During la epoca Escobar, car bombs, murder (a horrific homicide rate of about 450 per 100,000) and kidnappings paralyzed the city with fear. For investors, Medellin was untouchable. But Escobar was also a Robin Hood-like figure to the locals, building hospitals, schools and housing with his dirty money. Without his cash, officials feared, Medellin's economy would disintegrate.

In fact, just the opposite has occurred. Escobar's death lifted a shroud from Medellin, and it's now experiencing an urban and economic renaissance. Exports from the city--everything from textiles to cut flowers--topped $900 million last year, three times more than at the start of the 1990s. Paisas , as the roughly 2 million residents of Medellin are known, have never been more prosperous. The good news has fueled a resurgence of civic pride, and the signs plastered around town can actually claim to reflect the prevailing mood: SAY IT WITH PRIDE: I LOVE MEDELLIN.

Medellin always had considerable economic potential. The city has long been Colombia's primary textile manufacturer, and paisas are known for hard work and entrepreneurship. The city's transportation network--including the elevated Metro, built in 1995--is a model for the rest of the Andes, and its hospitals and universities are top tier. Meanwhile, privatization and financial deregulation at the national level have opened up the Colombian market. President Alvaro Uribe Velez's focus on security throughout the country has also helped. "The optimism surrounding ...