Social Innovation, Violence Prevention and Social Inclusion in Public Spaces: an analysis of Latin American cities

Latin American is the region in the world with the most violent cities outside of war zones, measured by per capita homicide rate. Violence affects how citizens live and interact with public spaces and the city in general. It also affects social inclusion, particularly those of disadvantaged populations. In this context, social innovation could emerge to solve existing social problems in new ways, promote social inclusion, and create new, inclusive governance models. This work explores the role of social innovation to help reduce violence and promote social inclusion by exploring approaches to violence prevention in public spaces in Latin America, focusing on two cities: Guatemala City and Medellin. A comparison across time of the violence rate of several Latin American cities was performed to contextualize violence trends in the region. Both Guatemala City and Medellin have had high homicide rates and have used public interventions and urban design to help reduce violence, with different results. Surveys and interviews with stakeholders of public spaces in both cities were conducted to understand their perceptions of violence, its links to urban interventions in public spaces, and its results for violence prevention and social inclusion. An analysis of the different social innovation approaches taken in both cities was done to understand their results.