Beißen Gedanken: Giant escalator

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Giant escalator

Slums are painted in vivid colors to make them prettier
Source: CN Traveller

Ok, this one is actually very, very cool. The city of Medellin in Colombia has built a giant outdoor escalator in order to make it easier for residents to reach the neighborhood of Comuna Trece. This neighborhood, located very high up compared to the base of the city, forced residents who wanted to reach it to climb the equivalent of a 28-story building. Now they can take the escalator and complete the whole journey in 6 minutes.

Imagine hundreds of people going past your window every day
Source: Blogspot

This is just one of the efforts made to shed Medellin’s unfortunate past and reinvent it as a city of the future. Headquarters of notorious cartel leader Pablo Escobar during the 80s and 90s, it wasn’t that long ago when Medellin was proclaimed to be the murder capital of the world (the city had a shocking murder rate of 380 per 100,000 people). Even though things are a lot better now, the guards armed with machine guns at each end of the escalator are a stark reminder of those dark times.