Helping People with Parks and Bike Trails
"Income equality is impossible, so what other equality is?” asked Enrique Peñalosa during recent New York stopover. “Access to green areas, a waterfront, to sports and music facilities. What we do with our cities will determine quality of life for hundreds of years.”
While serving as mayor of Bogotá, Colombia from 1998 to 2000, he instigated the transformation of this city of 6.7 million from a traffic-snarled, crime-ridden metropolis into an inclusive and clean urban area with buses, parks, bike paths and libraries. One of his first moves was to prevent cars from parking on city sidewalks, reclaiming them for pedestrians and cyclists.
While he was in office, a city bus system was built at a mere a fraction of the cost of modern subways, and a bike path 211 miles long (the longest outside of China) was created. A derelict downtown avenue became a grand pedestrian boulevard, and a slum near the presidential palace was turned into a 39.5-acre park. Crime fell 35% during this time.
His ideas are especially important as uncontrolled growth in the cities of India and China presents a grave threat to the environment. Interestingly, though, environmental concerns aren’t his motivation. His main focus has always been to improve the quality of life for large numbers of people.
Not building roads or rail services the city saved money for other uses. During his term the city built or improved 1,200 parks and added 100 nurseries, 51 schools and 14 libraries. School enrollment rose 31%. His achievements won the Stockholm Challenge prize for Bogotá and a $1 million award from the Gates Foundation for Peñalosa himself.
From 2001 to 2004 he was a visiting scholar at New York University and a fellow at the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, a nonprofit agency. During that time, he provided advice on urban planning to such diverse cities as Hanoi, New Delhi, Jakarta, Dakar, Senegal, Guangzhou, China, and even Los Angeles.
Returning to Bogotá in 2004, he continues to work with cities where goals of sustainability, equality, quality of life and competitiveness are acknowledged. “Future competition between societies will be for quality of life,” he says. “Talented people will go to cities that are socially inclusive, pleasant and move. The 80% of Asian cities to be built by 2100 could be much better than New York or London. My mouth waters at what could be done.”