Meet Enrique Peñalosa, the mayor who pioneered equitable cities

Parks & Trails New York spoke with Enrique Peñalosa, 2-time Mayor of Bogota about his book “Equality and the City: Urban Innovations for All Citizens” which discusses how prioritizing pedestrian access is at the core of creating livable and truly equitable cities.

During his time as Mayor from 1998-2001 and later 2016-2019, Peñalosa pioneered a pedestrian-first mindset, which included:

• Turning the Country Club of Bogotá into a public park
• Launching the TransMileno Rapid Bus Transit, which transports 2.3 million people a day
• Building over 300km of protected bike lanes
• Widening sidewalks across the city
• Improving 1200 public parks

Can you tell us about your book equality in the city? What can readers expect?

Well, my thesis is that we all want equality. We don't like feeling inferior or excluded. Millions and hundreds of millions of people have died for equality. So I say, well, one thing that can be done is other kinds of equality that are not income equality–and one of those equalities that we can have is our equality that the cities can create. Cities can create several kinds of equality different from income equality, such as quality of life, equality that everybody should have access to green spaces or to music lessons or to sports facilities. Rich and poor should meet as equals in public pedestrian spaces. They meet in public space, in a park or on a sidewalk. They meet as equals.

There are many other things that cities can do to construct equality. I would say that there is a general principle of democracy. Democracy, not just the fact that people vote. Democracy means that all citizens are equal before the law, and if all citizens are equal before the law, there is a powerful consequence–and that is that public good prevails over private interests.

Where did this all begin for you? What inspired you to take on this mission?

I have always been interested in cities and in equity. I was mayor of Bogota on two occasions, and we were the first to do many things. For example, we created a network of bikeways when I was mayor in 1998, several years before any bikeway in New York or in London or in Paris. Now we have more than 1000 kilometers of protected bikeways. We have nearly a million daily trips by bicycle. Maybe this is by far the highest, I would say, of any city in America. An important thing I like to link this to is equality. We want the bikeway to, of course, protect the cyclists. But beyond that, it is a symbol that shows that a citizen on a $100 bicycle is equally important to one in a $500,000 car.

If all people are equal, everybody has a right to the same amount of road space. A pedestrian has the same amount of right to the same amount of road space as somebody in a car. Or a bus with 100 passengers has a right to 100 times more road space than a car with one passenger.

We didn't have enough money to make it to make subways everywhere, but we created a bus based mass transit system. Now it's moving more passengers per hour than almost anywhere in the world. It’s a very low cost mass transit system.

One of the criteria, not the only one, of course, but to judge how a good city is, is how much it constructs equality, how much it gets people not to feel inferior or excluded because of its parks or transport facilities. When the luxury car is in a traffic jam and the bus zooms by very fast next to the expensive car it’s a symbol almost–democracy in action.

How do public greenspaces improve quality of life?

Income inequality is mostly felt in your leisure time. Because when you're sleeping, you are not going to feel it. The difference is really felt when people go into their leisure time. For everybody, a park is good, but for the low income it’s crucial.

There are two archetypal models– the downtown Manhattan type or the suburb, the low density suburb. Why not a relatively high density city, but with 1000s of miles of greenways criss-crossing the city in all directions? So that people could ride bicycles across the city for tens or hundreds miles in many directions without cars. This is very easy to design, if you design it from scratch. In Bogota, we made several, and we have 120 kilometers of greenways.

All of these things are crucial. You can do something much better if we are able to save land from the start. For example, in New York it’s amazing. They saved the land for Central Park in 1860.

What are some of the solutions to building greenways within existing cities?

Well, in our case, we built along creeks. As our city was growing so fast, we did it mainly in three ways. One, in areas where the city is growing. Our cities are growing. So we do it along the border, the edge where the city is growing. So that you build it now and in 10 years it will be in the middle of the city.

Another one is alongside drainage canals, things like these, drainage canals or creeks. That's another way that we did it, we even demolished parts of the buildings to make way for parks.

As a pioneer, did this seem achievable the time?

We did some things that were very obvious and things that were very difficult, such as fighting for sidewalks. There were not decent sideways, and where they should be sideways, there were cars–and it was a war to get cars off the road. There were very few people with cars, but they were the wealthiest people in society. So it was a big battle, and it was very difficult to imagine these things and to think about bikeways at that time.

At that time, there were no bikeways anywhere, except in the Netherlands and Denmark, where they had always been. But not in Paris or Barcelona or New York so it was a little crazy. Of course, in the Netherlands, you might think it’s because it has this flat level land, and so it's good for bicycling. But you would say that you could have better weather for bicycling because in the Netherlands it is cool and rainy, and you in theory, you should have better weather in France or in England or in Spain or Italy. I believe one of the reasons why the Netherlands has been pioneering these things is because they have a more egalitarian society, and so a wealthy person or high level government official tends to use a bicycle.

Inequality is an obstacle to making better cities–or at least a better city constructs equality.

Purchase “Equality and the City: Urban Innovations for all Citizens” to read more about Peñalosa’s perspective on the issues facing developing cities, especially sustainable transportation and equal access to public space.