by Paul Horner
On October 15th Enrique Peeñalosa, the enthusiastic ex-mayor of Bogota, Colombia, visited Philadelphia to describe the city transformations initiated under his governance, during the years 1998 to 2001. His talk and slide show presentation took place in Temple's Ritter Hall and was sponsored by the School of Archictecture, the Department of Geography and Urban Studies, and the mayor's City Planning Commission. The principle theme running through his talk was that of the importance of beautiful and accessible public spaces for a functioning democracy, especially parks, public transit, and streets where everyone can meet together as equals. The mayor opened up his presentation by stating that "the way we design cities can do much to create inclusion and equality."
One sure sign that a democracy is living up to its own standards and performing properly is that "public good prevails over private interests." A city that is designed for cars is at odds with a walkable city. Through numerous slides Mr. Pe–alosa showed that when the majority of a cities funds go into building more highways, parking, and wider roads, the public space suffers. This is because besides parks, streets are the only places in cities where all of its citizens can meet and be together as equals, regardless of anyone's ability to pay or not. Streets, when they are complete streets with sidewalks and places to sit and be, serve a major social function. When cars are allowed to drive anywhere, park anywhere, and recieve huge subsidies from local, state, and federal governments, the message is clear: car owners are first class and priviledged citizens, and those of us who don't own cars just better make do. This system of funding and designing cities creates artificial distinctions between "first and second class citizens," allowing public spaces to be manipulated and sacrificed for cars.
"Never ask a traffic engineer how to solve traffic...they will always and forever say more highways, bigger roads. Not one city in the world has solved any traffic problems by building more highways." Mr. Peeñalosa was explaining this as he showed a picture of a new elevated highway built through Mexico City to alleviate car traffic. Six months after opening and it was jammed, bumper-to- bumper, from sun-up to sun-down. This is because highways encourage those who can to drive more, which results in the city spreading further and further out, or sprawling. "There are two ways to destroy a city," Mr. Pe–alosa stated. "One, drop an atomic bomb on it. Or just build a highway through it." Ê
Another very keen point brought up by Mr. Peeñalosa is that "nowhere, in any state or city constitution, does it state anything about parking rights. Governments do not have any legal or moral obligations to provide parking. They must provide schools, hospitals, jobs, parks, and public transportation. But not parking. Just as highways increase traffic problems, so does providing parking opportunities increase car use and congestion in urban areas. The areas with less parking have- you guessed it- fewer cars taking up valuable public space...This is called common sense."
When a city government commits to limiting car use and providing networks of bicycle and walking paths throughout the city it shows that it cares about all of its citizens. It sends out a valuable message of equality. According to Mr. Peeñalosa, "it is the government telling its people, especially its poor, that your investment in a bicycle for yourself or your children will be honored as equally as that of an investment in a big expensive car." To honor these ends Mr. Penalosa created an 18 kilometer, 15 meter wide Ê tree-lined street for pedestrians and bicycles alone, as well as a 45 kilometer greenway for recreation and transportation, and a large bicycle path network throughout the entire city. Planning laws for future development now require that all new roads must have adjacent, well protected bicycle paths.
During his term as mayor Mr. Peeñalosa also initiated the closing of 120 kilometers of main arterial roads on Sunday from 7 am to 2 pm in the afternoon as well as a car- free day for the entire city of Bogota once a year. What's important for us in Philly to note is that these proposals Ê were first met with some resistance, especially by downtown shop and business owners who feared that restricting car use would hurt their business. The opposite turned out to be true. Once the city government committed to the pedestrianization of its city streets, and once bicyclists and pedestrians started taking advantage of the newly created pathways and car-free zones, local downtown businesses experienced more business activity. More people were able to freely move about and enjoy the city. The mayor's new initiatives were met with overwhelming success.
What is a good city? This was the guiding question of the mayors's term in office. He offered two definitions to this question. First, "a good city is a city where people want to be outside." A good city invites people to participate with each other in public spaces, to watch each other, to enjoy each others company, to meet. Mr. Peeñalosa also talked about the importance of play for the city and society. Play keeps us healthy and sociable. Parks provide the space where we can play creatively with each other, for free. In terms of crime reduction, stategically placing parks, soccer fields, and community centers in poor crime- ridden neighborhoods "work much better than police."
Secondly, a good city provides spaces and opportunities where people can best realize their potential. For this to be possible the city must provide a huge diversity of spaces and functions. Mr. Peeñalosa initiated many programs providing opportunities for communities throughout the city to collaborate with the government in designing their own green spaces. Community members and organizations designated spaces that they wanted "greened," usually for gardens or as play spaces, and the mayor provided funds, land, guidance, and contracting help to get these projects built. These programs encouraged huge community participation, created jobs throughout the city, and brought neighborhoods together in a common purpose and vision. A mutually-beneficial system was established between community organizations and the government.
"Tourism is pedestrian...pedestrian spaces are magical goods!" says Mr. Peeñalosa. When people come to visit your city, they want to walk through it. Tourism got a big boost in Bogota after his pedestrian initiatives, and he says this can happen in any city. He posed a challenge to the audience: "Take ten tourist brochures or magazines and find one picture of a car...You won't! Just the picture of a car raises tension. The photographers go out at five in the morning and take the picture of the street when all the cars are gone!" He was joking, but serious at the same time. Imagine the huge potential tourist attraction Philly could generate by becoming the first major bike/pedestrian city. Tourists would come just to stroll and relax, and they wouldn't ever want to leave.
The final innovation mentioned by the ex-mayor was the creation of the bus-rapid-transit system (BRT) "Transmilenio." The BRT model was copied from Curitiba, Brazil, which was awarded the prize for "the most ecological city in the world" by the United Nations in 1992. The BRT model uses dedicated bus lanes, pre-paid fares, low cost and frequent service to move thousands of people around the city at a fraction of the cost of building new highways or even trains. With so little an amount of money spent on revolutionizing the urban transit system the city had extra money. The mayor directed these funds into building numerous new schools, parks, libraries, and as mentionded earlier, huge pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure.
With the election of Mayor Nutter to the city government Philly faces a bright future. Nutter has said that he wants to make Philly the greenest city in the country. Nutter and his newly appointed Sustainability Board can learn many things from the urban transformations set in motion in Bogota by Enrique Pe–eñlosa. Mr. Peeñalosa reminds us that "sometimes it is necessary for the government to intervene and make tough political decisions in favor of pedestrians and the public sphere." Whether Nutter and his administration can truly transform Philly to the extent of Bogota remains to be seen. A bold, city-wide subsidized Green Job Creation and Training Program is definitely in the cards.
Mr. Peeñalosa suggested that Philadelphia experiment with the creation of ONE purely pedestrian and cycle street, stretching from one end of Center City to the other. This would become a living, breathing demonstration model for future city development. As we go foward in creating the greenest city in the nation let us not forget the vision and ideal in the words of Seeñor Enrique Peeñalosa: "In a truly functioning democracy, public good prevails over private interest. The way we design cities can do much to create inclusion and equality for her citizens."