Enrique Peñalosa: Creating a city friendly to people

The essence of the conflict today really is cars and people. That is the essence of the whole discussion. We can have a city that is very friendly to cars or a city that is very friendly to people. We cannot have both.

So begins this interview with Enrique Peñalosa, former mayor Bogota, Columbia--a city that Peñalosa and his allies transformed, in just a few years, into a city far less dependent on single auto travel. Walking, bicycling, and transit were emphasized and single-auto vehicle transportation de-emphasized.

When we started, bicycling was almost insignificant. Zero or 0.2% of the people in Bogota used to bicycle. And now, nearly 5% of the people only after six years or so. We get almost 400,000 people bicycling every day.

In the interview, Peñalosa talks about how he did it and why:

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