Enrique Betancourt is no stranger to working in violent urban contexts.
When the murder rate in Ciudad Juarez, a Mexican city bordering the Unites State, was skyrocketing, and with the drug war in full force, President Felipe Calderón sent a team in to help stop the violence. Betancourt, an official in the Mexican government’s Ministry of Urban Development, was one of them.
Trained in architecture and urban design, he learned that peacebuilding in cities requires understanding their “ecology” and targeting places, behaviors, demographics as well as times of the year and times of the week.
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About the author
Jeff Tyson@jtyson21
Jeff is a former global development reporter for Devex. Based in Washington, D.C., he covers multilateral affairs, U.S. aid, and international development trends. He has worked with human rights organizations in both Senegal and the U.S., and prior to joining Devex worked as a production assistant at National Public Radio. He holds a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University and a bachelor’s degree in international relations and French from the University of Rochester.