Guatemala’s capital is a bleak and violent place, a city of dark, claustrophobic streets blighted by abandoned cars. The wealthy hide behind barbed wire and concrete walls, hiring rifle-toting guards to fend off armed robbers. Drivers are wary of bandits who grab cellphones at traffic lights.

Some guidebooks suggest international travelers skip the poorly policed capital of 2.5 million altogether.

But on a recent weekday in the center of Guatemala City, a lunchtime crowd of professionals and university students ordered tapas and baguettes with prosciutto and camembert cheese in the Eccentrico bistro, watching pedestrians stroll down tiled walkways lined with ficus trees. At a cafe two blocks away, staff set out tables for customers stopping for cappuccino before heading to a nearby movie theater.

An unlikely urban redevelopment project is thriving for dozens of businesses in a five-block section of the Zone One downtown neighborhood.

A nonprofit, city-run redevelopment corporation known as Urbanistica has spent more than $5 million since 2004 to close streets to traffic, light them brightly and monitor them with closed-circuit video cameras and extra police officers. Rundown storefronts have been repainted jungle-green, indigo or paprika.

Some 670 street vendors who used to sell handicrafts from oilcloth tents that congested more than a mile of the city center have been relocated to a covered market steps from a new bus terminal.

“In the 10 years I have lived here, I have personally seen the neighborhood turn around,’’ said Eluvia Morales, a 42-year-old grass-roots organizer and consultant for nonprofit organizations. “It’s a beautiful place and I love that more and more people are starting to come.’’