Urban Happiness with Enrique Peñalosa
sponsored by LivableStreets Alliance
Boston Public Library, 6:30pm, free
Tonight's the big night. The former mayor of Bogotá, Colombia (whom we wrote about last week) is coming to the BPL to tell us how he took back his streets—and, hopefully, how we can do it, too.
His name is Enrique Peñalosa, and, while he was Bogotá's mayor, he was responsible for numerous radical improvements to the city. He promoted a city model giving priority to children and public spaces and restricting private car use, building hundreds of kilometers of sidewalks, bicycle paths, pedestrian streets, greenways, and parks. He even instituted an annual car-free day. Peñalosa also led efforts to improve Bogotá's marginal neighborhoods through citizen involvement, planted more than 100,000 trees, created a new, highly successful bus-based transit system, and turned a deteriorated downtown avenue into a dynamic pedestrian public space.
Post contributed by Alex of UrbanBoston.
We have to say, we're impressed by everything he's done, but we'd especially love some pointers on dealing with a deteriorated downtown (we're looking at you, Downtown Crossing), and making a bus-based transit system "highly successful" (wouldn't you, Silver Line?).
The event is part of a 4-day series of events (PDF) sponsored by LivableStreets Alliance and the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, in collaboration with WalkBoston, Institute for Human Centered Design, Bikes Not Bombs, Charles River Conservancy, and MassBike.
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