Bogota Shows How to Reinvent Cities
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto 
on 08. 2.07
A protected bicycle path is a symbol that a citizen on a $30 bicycle is equally important as one in a $30,000 car.
That is the money shot from Enrique Peñalosa, former mayor of Bogota. Robert Oullette of Reading Toronto notes:
The former mayor of Bogota, Colombia explains how the once crime-ridden city is now a model for effective transit and urban design. How'd they do it? City planners recognized that the great battle over public space in cities is between two main forces: the needs of people and the needs of cars. In Bogota people are winning that fight."
Watch the video and read the rest in ::Reading Toronto
An image of Bogota's protected bicycle lanes.
Robert Oullette on Europe versus Toronto (and most American cities)
My recent trip to Sweden, Denmark, France, and England revealed how much European cities are doing to promote efficient transit policies. In Gothenberg and in Copenhagen, for example, road designers seem to pay as much attention to building cycle roadways as they do building roads for cars. They are integrated and to some degree symbiotic. These are northern cities remember, they get snow just like Toronto does, yet people there cycle all year round. Still, we expect first-world, high-tech countries to embrace urban design best practices. However, when a problem plagued city like Bogota - I visited and worked there in the mid-eighties - can reinvent itself in less than fifteen years we have to ask why Toronto continues to lag so far behind.
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thanks for showing this clip. (this may sound funny) I was a little girl when this whole change in bogota started. I saw the change in people's lifes and on my own. Thanks to this change, I decided to study architecture and now im going to london to study urban design. Penalosa along with mokus where THE BEST thing that could have happen to Bogota. Now I only hope that bogota citzens make a concious descision and elect penalosa again as a major. We need to start thinking about the future of our planet and i think penalosa has already taken us "cachacos" into a whole new level
Neat!
I'm from bogota.
when i left they had just started the transmilenio [bus system] and the cycle ways!
im soooooooooooooo proud!
i wish the us could no WOULD do the same thing!
I really liked that. I believe that is the future...
I don't mean to offend any Colombians, but how is it that the mayor and people of Bogota become beacons of progressive urban design, and more than that, of modern human experience? Frankly, I'm sometimes ashamed to live in the US, to be an American, considering how much we have, and how poorly we use it. BRAVO BOGOTA!!
To build on Paola's comment: I too am going to London to study urbanization and development. I think this entry is crucial to understanding the benefits of human interaction in which the city is meant to facilitate not dictate the goings on of daily life. Pedestrian right-of-ways, for example, are crucial not simply to place the value of living beings above material objects like cars (gas guzzlers), but also because of the bottom-up learning that transpires as people literally bump into one another and converse or ask directions. The collective knowledge-base grows and commerce thrives in contrast to the isolated experience of going from A-to-B in a vehicle, which is the modus operandi in the city I'm from (Los Angeles).
Very interesting I really enjoyed what you wrote
I had no idea Bogota was such a progressive city. After reading about Penalosa in this past week's NYT Magazine (6-8-08), and then finding your post here, I wrote about him and Bogota on the I'On Group's blog: http://iongroup.com/blog/world-class-planning-in-bogota/
Thanks!
I had this exact same idea recently. I would totally bike to work if I had a dedicated bike path. I think a network of such paths throughout a city, connecting not only the downtown and parks but major shopping, working, and residential areas would make a car unnecessary except on really bad weather days. Then again, some sort of covered 3 wheel bike would be ideal, and could carry groceries. Does anybody make such a thing?