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Bogota, Colombia

Dancing in the streets—and biking, walking, skating and people watching, too.

"It is like a gigantic park that is open 7 hours a week, and people of all ages and backgrounds take over the otherwise car dominated space and have fun." This is how Guillermo (Gil) Peñalosa, former parks directors, describes Ciclovia, a unique event pioneered in Bogota and now emulated around the world.

Each Sunday and holiday in Bogata, people stream into city streets for everything but driving. Since its creation in 1976, Ciclovia (which means bike path in Spanish) has grown from 8 miles of “reclaimed” road space and 140,000 weekly bike riders to 70 miles and an average of 1.5 million weekly riders, a huge turn out in a city of seven million. A key reason for the event’s success is topnotch management, featuring official volunteers in special uniforms, strong marketing and clear signage, along with an abundance of food vendors, and bike repair stands.

On Sundays, 70 miles of Bogota streets are closed to cars and open to people on foot, bikes, and skates.

You will see people in $5,000 bikes and others in $50 bikes, and all having the same fun!” Penalsoa enthuses. “Rich and poor, young and old, men and woman, tall or short... ALL!" The event is also credited with encouraging many people to become daily bike commuters along the extensive network of bicycle lanes the city has developed. Before Ciclovia, Bogota sported very few bicyclists.

Surveys show that 4 million people regularly attend the event, spending on average 4 hours and 15 minutes. Penalosa points out that participants “go to walk or bike, skate or do aerobics and to watch people, a preferred activity by human beings."

Penalosa, who now lives in Canada and is a Senior Associate with Project for Public Spaces and director of Walk and Bike for Life, is currently working with leaders in The Bronx, Chicago, Cleveland, Baltimore, and Vancouver to develop similar programs. He helped set up a successful Ciclovia program in Guadalajara, Mexico that began with eight miles and 75,000 participants three years ago, and now covers 14 miles and attracts 140,000 every week. Several other cities in South America, like Quito, Ecuador and Santiago, Chile have also successfully implemented similar programs.

This Ciclovia event, allows all ages and social classes to share the streets, which helps address the great class, race and ideological divides in Colombia.

This is a bold idea that can be applied relatively easily in many different forms in a wide range of urban contexts. Penalosa explains, "The infrastructure is there, there are no major needs of capital investments, no sports complex to build. It takes political will, public sector staff that are ‘doers’ (looking for solutions to problems and not problems to solutions), and community engagement."

A video on Bogota’s Ciclovia that PPS helped produce: http://www.streetfilms.org/archives/ciclovia/