Keeping man and his best
friend in shape: Bogotá leads
the region in bike trails.
Below: President Álvaro
Uribe inaugurates a new
TransMilenio line.
efficient models. While increasing the proportion
of low-gas-mileage cars on the road will surely have
positive effects on the environment, the exponential
increase in cars on the road (the U.S. program does
nothing about absolute numbers) can only reinforce
the destructive urban pattern that so vexes us. Indeed,
the “shovel-ready” imperative of the U.S. stimulus
package, which is oriented toward the reconstruction
or repair of existing transportation infrastructure,
reinforces existing patterns rather than striking out
in new directions.
MIGUEL ANGEL SOLANO/EFE
Transportation is crucial to rethinking our urban
infrastructure. It is not simply a major source of pollution and resource depletion (virtually no part of
the system is renewable), but our chosen forms of
movement are also decisive shapers of our patterns
of settlement. New York City’s status as one of the
most energy-efficient U.S. cities is due primarily to
high use of public transit. The example of New York
certainly suggests that we should invest heavily in
urban mass transit rather than in simply expanding the automotive system. But it also requires us to
think about the forms of urban growth that are conducive to such mass transit systems. For mass transport to be effective, it must be ubiquitous and based
on ease of access, preferably by walking or biking.
This demands urban density.
Fat City Michael Sorkin
Creating such conditions requires that attention
be paid to the structure of neighborhoods. Accessible
public transportation systems are key to the design,
or redesign, of urban centers; but the need for all
forms of mechanical movement will be dramatically reduced if we can walk to our jobs, schools, shops,
and centers of recreation. Neighborhood-based cities
must move beyond old ideas about zoning that currently establish strict separations based on land-use
to a more tolerant mixed-zoning approach. In many
ways, this represents a reversion to preindustrial
patterns in which there is no radical segregation by
economic class and land use, cities which mix production, commerce and living in close proximity.
A number of cities in the hemisphere have made
remarkable and rapid progress toward implementing such reforms. Curitiba, in Brazil, is perhaps the
world’s poster city for twenty-first century urban
redesign. Curitiba authorities take seriously the goal
of creating sustainable patterns of development,
and have developed a powerful sense of the ways in
which sustainability can be a tool for the equitable
distribution of resources. More recently, Bogotá has,
in remarkably rapid order, undertaken a triple transportation policy that is also a global model. This
includes the TransMilenio, a bus rapid-transit system
that offers nearly the capacity of rail systems at a fraction of the cost; an extensive network of bikeways
and pedestrian paths; and a set of policies meant to
curb the use of cars, including periodic street closures, rigid enforcement of parking regulations and
a rebalancing of the use of streets (in most cities the
largest area of land in public hands) to favor people
on foot. No North American city can boast a system
that comes close to this achievement, although great
strides have been made in places like Portland, Oregon, and Toronto, Canada.
How to Put Our Cities on a Diet
Other kinds of urban infrastructure must also
change dramatically if we are to produce the just
and humane new cities we need. Given exponential
rates of urbanization, new cities—lots of them—are
utterly crucial. ( The growth of the urban population
requires the addition of a city the size of Tegucigalpa, Dublin or Memphis every week!) Infrastructure
