The neighborhoods of Bogotá that want to steal space from cars

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To think that Bogotá can become a walkable city sounds like a distant scenario.

Almost science fiction.

By 2020, more than 2,490,000 vehicles were on the streets of the Colombian capital, with almost 8 million inhabitants, and 34,984 traffic accidents had been generated.

Currently, the effective public space per inhabitant is barely 4.6 square meters and it is no secret to anyone that there is a public transport deficit.

Bogotá is a city of cars.

However, a group of officials from the Ministry of Mobility gave themselves the license to think otherwise: through some projects called Barrios Vitales, they are experimenting with how to steal space from vehicles to return it to pedestrians.

Investigating how to achieve that the public space is not one of passage, but of permanence.

“We are creating strategies to create neighborhoods that are more walkable, where people can move sustainably, walking or cycling.

And that, in the event that the cars have to pass through the neighborhood, they should do so at a low speed," says Daniela Castaño, manager of the Vital El Porvenir neighborhood, in Bosa, to the southwest of the city, and one of the five drivers. that are already being intervened.

In this polygon, which covers 45.6 hectares, it is already known what they will do in almost each of the blocks and intersections.

On South 52nd Street, which is, Castaño says, the “heart of the neighborhood”, only one lane will be left for cars, to give more space to bicycles and pedestrians.

The 52 South, remember, is a road that connects with the care blocks, a facility that offers education, washing machines and space to the women caregivers of the neighborhood, in addition to being the street where there are several schools and a headquarters of the District University.

It is even just a few blocks from where the first metro line of Bogotá will pass.

“It is a space with a vocation for cycling with a lot of boys and girls, so the idea is that the space is designed for them,” she adds.

In other areas of the area that will intervene, they also seek to create community orchards and exclusive regions so that the trucks of the shops can unload their products.

The idea of ​​creating walkable neighborhoods is not exclusive to Bogotá.

The project is inspired by the superblocks of Barcelona and the traffic-calmed neighborhoods of London, also known as Low Traffic Neighborhoods.

“These models are urban cells within a perimeter where pedestrians are the priority,” explains the Barcelona architect Salvador Rueda, who was behind the superblocks and now advises Bogotá, through the World Bank.

“Then, once you change the speed of the traffic, you replace the asphalt with green and a new city appears.

A wonderful place.

But the first thing is a tactical intervention”.

In the San Felipe neighborhood, towards the center of Bogotá and where the first pilot of Barrios Vitales in the city is, with 38.2 hectares, several intersections of Carrera 22 have already been intervened, which was previously a way of passing cars.

They put flower pots so that only pedestrians and cyclists can enter, and they painted the streets with colors so that that mark, that of the paint, makes it clear that it is a space to be, to rest, for pedestrians, and even to sit.

"With the Department of the Public Space Defender of Bogotá (Dadep), an agreement was reached with the merchants so that they can set up tables for 17,000 Colombian pesos (four dollars) per square meter per month," says Javier Guerra, an official from the Ministry of Mobility and known as the "father" of the Barrio Vital San Felipe.

And it is that if the vocation of the Porvenir neighborhood were children and bicycles, that of San Felipe is art.

In this space there are galleries and studios, as well as restaurants.

The pots that form the border between the pedestrian and the vehicles were painted with various designs by local artists, and each one of the 223 there was adopted by someone.

In other words, people who live or work in San Felipe signed a document committing to water each of the plants and take care of the mesas in their day to day.

The terrace of a restaurant in the San Felipe neighborhood.VANNESSA JIMENEZ

These are small interventions, the officials accept, since that is how far the Ministry of Mobility has reach.

It is, as they call it, tactical urbanism, precise and small interventions, like acupuncture, in which a single pressure point can generate a great change in the environment.

In San Felipe, whose planning began in 2020, there is already a first balance of these changes.

Road accidents, which averaged between 20 and 27 per semester before the project, dropped to 17 after the interventions.

Thefts, which were an average of 50 per semester, dropped to 40, 20% less than in the previous five years.

Urbanism against insecurity

“One of the most complex issues that prevents people from moving in sustainable ways in Bogotá is insecurity,” says the architect Rueda.

"And urban planning can help in some way —although not in everything— by favoring the mix of income in the same territory and making the public space fill up with people, who occupy it."

In addition, as Vanessa Velasco, a World Bank Urban Development specialist, comments, the first results have also shown "a reduction in CO2 emissions, improvements in security and economic reactivation, which results in a greater sense of belonging and appropriation on the part of of citizenship”.

Despite the benefits of the first pilot, in some Vital Neighborhoods having the support of the community has not been easy.

In San Carlos, a neighborhood that has an improvement plan for 68 hectares in the town of Tunjuelito, south of Bogotá, people are skeptical of the project.

On October 28 and 29, the Ministry of Mobility carried out an experiment.

They removed a lane for vehicles on the long diagonal 54 Sur, which joins the Villavicencio highway with Caracas, and gave up the space of an illegal parking lot that was created in front of a series of businesses so that it would become a zone of permanence.

They even painted golosas (hopscotch) for the children.

A small plaza in the Barrio Vital of San Carlos.

VANNESSA JIMENEZ

But the neighborhood's Community Action Board did not like the idea.

When the mobility officials pass through the area, the neighborhood merchants still yell at them “we want our parking lot”, alleging that most of their clients come by car and such an intervention will affect their business.

"We are responding to these requests," says Juan Carlos Tovar, from the Ministry of Mobility.

"For this reason, in the design plan they will be assigned a parking space, but on another block, so that the cargo trucks can be there."

In a city like Bogotá, dominated by cars, the Barrios Vitales are a disruptor, but also an “urban laboratory”, as Guerra puts it.

It is about finding answers through trial and error.

In fact, in the Land Management Plan, the instrument with which Bogotá is planned, it says that a total of 33 Vital Neighborhoods should be created.

And those behind the project like to imagine even more ambitious things in the more distant future.

Roads lined with trees, people who only have to walk 15 minutes to go to school or a hospital.

Platforms without gaps and wider.

Imagine a city where the car is no longer the protagonist.