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A historical approach is used to examine schemes set up by Medellin city council to control the expansion of informal housing on the hillsides surrounding the city. Such expansion was long considered to be transitory, hence planning measures were restricted to establishing formal limits to city development, leaving the informal urban areas out of any planning initiative. The 1970s saw a change of approach, with the gradual integration of these areas into the formal city by distinct programmes rather than more integrated schemes. From the first measures introduced to acknowledge, take better account of these informal expansions into account and improve them, up to the construction of infrastructures of sufficient scope and the implementation of the Integral Urban Project, there were many such schemes. In spite of considerable efforts and notable advances in perceptions of these phenomena and in the modes of action taken up, news items often report evidence of lasting processes of social exclusion, and testify to a multiform urban reality the issues of which remain alive.