Bogotá – ‘a healthier and happier city’

Two items about Bogotá have excited me, both about the policies of Enrique Peñalosa, former mayor of Bogotá, and both passed on by friend and keen cyclist here at Oxford Brookes, Tim Jones. Colombia on the whole does not enjoy good press in the UK, and South America generally (and generalisations are always false, of course!) is said to combine wealth and influence for the few side by side with much poverty, so it’s especially good to hear of policies being introduced which are designed for general good, and which, in the short time appear unlikely to be popular for the wealthy.

The city’s vision

The first item is an article by Peñalosa describing their policies, which appeared in Environment Matters (in 2005) a World Bank publication, freely available by email, though this paricular copy is hosted by a Netherlands cycling organisation. Here are a few items from the article: “We want dynamic organised communities, with a sense of belonging. We want a city that will not increase road space in response to traffic jams, but rather will further restrict private car use. We want a city that clearly devotes more space and resources to children than to motor vehicles”.

In the UK, European Car Free Day, called I believe “In Town without My Car” (sounds like the title of a children’s story) is barely noticeable. In Brussels, no private cars are allowed an the streets on certain Sundays, and the streets are alive with people strolling, cycling, roller-blading etc. But in Bogotá every Sunday, “120 km of main arteries are closed to motor vehicles for a period of seven hours … more than 1.5 million people, from upper- to lower- income classes come out to bicycle, jog, walk and socialise”.

Bus-based transit system

“The single project that most contributed to improved quality of life was a bus-based transit system called TransMilenio … inspired by the Curitiba system in Brazil.” From a project management point of view the speed with which this project was completed “We were able to design, build the infrastructure, create the private partners that would operate it, get out the thousands of buses that previously operated there, and put the system into operation in three years.” In 2005 with then “only 66 km the system moves more than 1 million people every day, with a public investment of $270 million.”

Promoting cycling

I’m also inspired by the efforts to develop cycling as a means of transport. “While carse tend to be means of social differentiation, bicycles integrate. In dutch and danish cites, more than 35 percent of the population uses the bicycle for transport, while the percentages are insignificant in cities in the developing world …. The main reason is that developing -world cities are designed and built for the wealthier minorities. Costly elevated highways are built for the benefit of a few, while bikewayas and even sidewalks are frequently absent. In Bogotá, we built more than 300 kilometers of physically isolated bicycle paths in less than three years. From nearly none, more than 4.5 percent of the population now use a bicycle for daily transport needs. And many more use it sporadically.”

A message for other large cities around the world – cycling can work

It’s been depressing to see that large cities in China, often with a history of mass cycle use have been rapidly developing car use and associated infrastructure, and sometimes closing certain routes to cycle use. All the problems of noise, severance – both physical and social, and very noticeably pollution have been the result. I had become concerned that the European model of the city which is pedestrian and cycle friendly might not be appropriate in the massive new cities of the developing world, but Bogotá, with a population of some 7 million, provides an encouraging message.

The video

Much of this can be seen on a short video about Bogotá, also featuring Enrique Peñalosa, which can be downloaded, or played, from http://www.nycsr.org/nyc/video-view.php?id=20
The video needs the Quicktime plug-in (free download) to play.
The only thing I have reservations about, in the European context, is having segregated cycle routes. If they’re not busy, and are kept away from car routes there’s danger that they can be quite threatening – like those in Milton Keynes. One of Peñalosa’s comments I particularly like is that if a cycleway isn’t safe for an 8-year-old, it’s not a cycleway, spoken as a New York taxi’s door opens into a cycleway and a cyclist is forced out into fast traffic.

Climate ‘tipping points’, carbon offsets and emergency shelter

I’m relieved that climate change seems to be moving higher up the agenda, although bearing in mind the magnitude of the risks we’ve hardly started tackling the problem.  Last Thursday, 14^th September 2006, I attended an evening organised by COIN (Climate Outreach Information Network) at Ruskin College, Oxford.  The subject of the evening was ‘Carbon offsets – salvation or distraction?’  Mike Mason, the founder and managing director of Climate Care, one of the fastest growing offset companies, gave an excellent talk on the theory of offsets and the problems of selecting projects which reduce emission of greenhouse gases (primarily carbon dioxide and methane) which would not otherwise have taken place.  I intend to give a flavour of the meeting in another posting, but I want to mention a few of the statistics which emerged from the evening.  In 2005, according to their annual report, Climate Care sold of 99 000 tonnes of carbon offsets and Mike claimed that their offsets achieved were running ahead of the offsets sold.  On the other hand the UK’s emissions have increased in the last two years and are now more than in 1995.  The government has the rhetoric but has not achieved reductions and certainly nothing like those needed to achieve climate stability, given IPCC forecasting consensus figures.

Whatever reductions the UK might expect be planning (20% by 2020) this is swamped by increasing emissions from a power hungry China, which is apparently opening new coal-fired power stations at the rate of one every five days, and putting 22 000 thousand new cars on the road every day (I must check that – it seems so incredible).  Incidentally, a programme on BBC Radio 4, ‘Driven by Oil’ considered the effect of China’s aggressive search to secure sources of oil on political stability and on attempts by countries of the West to aim for an ‘ethical foreign policy’ – a phrase marketed by the late Robin Cook as UK Foreign Secretary but long since dropped.

 Last Friday’s Financial Times (15^th September 2006) demonstrated how the urgency of tackling potentially disastrous climate is becoming better known.  An article by Fiona Harvey “The heat is on: how global warming could suddenly tip over and ignite calamity” reviewed some of the arguments and areas where feedback effects can reinforce the impact of a rise in greenhouse gases, namely melting of artic ice, melting of the Greenland ice sheet and  accelerating glacier movement towards the sea, melting of glaciers elsewhere as likely to lead to floods followed by water shortages, melting of the permafrost leading to methane emissions, faster decomposition of organic matter in the soil, Amazon rain forest die-back and acidification of the oceans and lowered agricultural productivity.

This reminded me of an editorial in New Scientist (24 December 2005) Review 2005: Climate going crazy “The ominous phrase “tipping point” entered the vocabulary of climate science – a stark warning that global warming may soon spiral out of control”.  The article reviewed the worrying events, and research published, during 2005 suggesting climate change acceleration.

Meanwhile, I’ve been browsing through Architecture for Humanity’s 2006 book “Design Like you Give a Damn”, some of which deals with ideas for emergency housing, shelter and water supply.  Some of the demand for these arises out of climate change related events such as drought, flood and storms including Hurricane Katrina, the one which hit New Orleans in 2005; even now some of those displaced are living in emergency accommodation.  Let’s hope that we manage to contain our impact on climate change and that we won’t have enormously increased crisis needs to respond to – we’ve got quite enough unmet need as it is.