Enrique Peñalosa on Urban Happiness

Last Thursday, I attended a lecture by Enrique Peñalosa, former mayor of Bogotá, who was visiting Boston through Livable Streets, and Institute for Transportation and Development Policy last week. He also visited the WalkBoston offices for a couple of lively lunchtime conversations.

What I found most engaging about Peñalosa was not any particular design suggestion he made for cities. Most of us who are interested in urbanism are familiar with ideas like creating more open space, making bigger sidewalks, bike lanes, and the like, and most of us who are working in the field in Boston know better the streets that would most benefit from an overhaul. What Peñalosa offers, however, is a way of thinking that represents a true paradigm shift in how we approach the politics of urban design.

In essence, what he proposes is that the city be considered habitat for humans, and that people should be the primary focus for urban design. We have Environmental Impact Reviews, he pointed out, but not Human Impact Reviews. Cities planned for cars are cities that institutionalize class-based inequality, as they prioritize the transportation of people who can afford cars over the safety, enjoyment, and transportation of people who can't, or who choose not to. Therefore, reorienting the city towards pedestrians is a move toward equality.

To this end, we should see sidewalks not as relatives of streets, whose job is to get people from here to there, but instead as relatives of parks, which are all about people's pleasure of place. At intersections, the sidewalk should remain at a level, making cars come into pedestrians' space rather than make pedestrians step into the car zone to get across the street. Sidewalks should come first, then room for public transportation, which is a public good, and only if there's room should there be street space for private vehicles in the public way.

What would our cities look like if they put people first?