Ciclovía: Shaping Bogotá for 50 Years
As Bogotá’s Ciclovía celebrates its 50-year anniversary, every weekend, the open streets program attracts millions of participants, creating unique public space opportunities for active mobility and urban interactions. GGCI student fellow, Francesca Hales, sat down with Paola Castañeda, Assistant Professor at the Universidad de los Andes’ Department of History and Geography, cycling activist, and organizer of the international forum “Ciclovía 50 años: pasado, presente y futuro de las ciudades” to discuss the program, its legacy, and its global impact.
First off, let’s talk about your research forum. What did you take away from the convening?
My takeaway was the recognition that you need institutional support for a program like this to endure and for it to expand in space and time. We hosted scholars from Los Angeles, New York, Cape Town, and Lagos. In different parts of the world, similar programs have only succeeded and been maintained where they have been adopted as a government policy, with government backing and financing. In the places where it remained a community-driven event, it has fizzled out or has only been possible to be conducted a couple of times a year. The fact that Bogotá has taken this on as a city project is a primary reason for its success.
On the point about institutionalization, has the success of Ciclovía led to changes in urban governance in Bogotá?
Bogotá is exciting among cities in that in many places you have citizens pushing for bicycle inclusion and for active mobility. In contrast, in Bogotá, for a couple of decades now, it has been the government that has aggressively pushed this agenda. At the same time, there is an activist movement for safer cycling conditions.
There have been several highly successful initiatives that have grown out of the mix of Ciclovia and ongoing citizen activism. The program “Al Colegio en Bici” (On the Way to School on Bikes) picks up public school children to cycle together to school, and promotes cycling and road education from a very early age.
What's interesting here is that, unlike other aspects of urban planning and urban governance, cycling has a low barrier to entry. Most of us learn how to cycle from a very young age, and when you cycle in the city you pick up this knowledge based on inhabiting the city by bicycle, so you're able to say something about it and contest it and in some way participate in the governance of mobility in the city from this point of view.
A couple of years ago, we had a government administration that was very keen on listening to cycling activists and hiring cycling activists into government, and I think that has also been a positive move towards planning for mobility in Bogota. There are still places where I’m critical because while this government has heavily celebrated cycling, its infrastructure, many bike paths are in deplorable conditions, poorly illuminated, or actually retrofitted onto sidewalks, generating conflicts with pedestrians. Overall, I would say that we are lucky amongst cities in that we have a government that has pushed for cycle inclusion.
What are the benefits and co-benefits that have emerged from Ciclovía?
The benefit that is most often highlighted is that it promotes leisure time and physical activity, a considerable concern in many cities amid the obesity epidemic and epidemics of non-communicable diseases. Ciclovía redefines streets beyond commuting, encouraging exercise and community engagement.
Many people speak about the democratizing nature of Ciclovía. Like a lot of cities, in Bogotá the opportunities for leisure and for exercise are unevenly distributed, and Ciclovía is able to bring the park to the people rather than asking people to go to a park.
The Ciclovía corridor connects the most northern part of Bogotá with the southernmost part, which is hugely significant in that you have people from different social and class backgrounds coming together in one space and visiting spaces that they wouldn't typically see during the week or on their free time if that opportunity did not exist. Yet, there's an opportunity for that to expand, decentralize Ciclovía in many ways, and connect the corridors further into other communities.
Another benefit of Ciclovia is that it’s a particularly safe space in a city that's typically unsafe, especially for women. Ciclovía is a time and space in the city with the highest perception of safety because people are just there having fun.
There is also the economic impact. Ciclovía has been a space where families have been able to generate new income and make ends meet. You have at least two generations of people who have been working at Ciclovía selling juice, fruit, and sandwiches. We still need to do more research into how Ciclovía has impacted family and community economies, especially with both official and informal work.
How has Ciclovía become a model for other cities around the world?
Going back to the context and the history of Ciclovía, the 1970s, when it emerged, was one of the decades in which Bogotá's population grew the fastest. People migrated into the city due to internal armed conflict, and there was natural population growth. I think this largely accounts for the transport, mobility, and public space problems that the city had in the 1970s when the great “pedal demonstration” came into being. In that way, Ciclovía directly speaks to these problems of rapid urbanization from the very beginning.
Today, the relationship and the dialogue with these problems has faded into the background because the office that officially supports the program has a focus on the recreational and sporting aspects of Ciclovía. This leaves the conversations about Ciclovía and its relationship to broader aspects of urbanism out of the current administration's scope. But many new residents to Bogotá come to know the city and learn to traverse it thanks to Ciclovía. They can get to see the city in ways that would not be possible on any other day of the week. This is a strategy of immediate social inclusion.
Your research focuses on de-centering Europe in the advancement of urban cycling. How does Ciclovía push back against Eurocentrism?
Ciclovía is Bogotá’s export product to the world. I think it's beautiful that Bogotá has become known to many in this regard. As a case study, it is a key example which speaks to Southern urbanism and the potential for not just South-South sharing of urban knowledge and best practice, but also South-North. I believe it is significant that people from USA, India, South Africa, and many international cities have all come to Bogotá to study Ciclovía.
What is important here is that many solutions crafted in the global south are cost-effective. While there is an investment in hiring people, you’re not building permanent infrastructure, only human infrastructure. Because it is low-cost, it can be adopted in most cities around the world.
Ciclovía responds to a city’s' problems in different ways. For example, in Cape Town, Ciclovía made a lot of sense in the context of the legacy of apartheid. With the long period of racial segregation, the reintegration of society is a long project. Ciclovía provided a space that brings people into the street to come together after having been apart for so long. In Los Angeles, Ciclovía makes sense because it is a source of resistance to car-centered urban planning. In New York, it makes sense because people already walk, so they need better, higher-quality spaces to walk.
Everywhere where Ciclovía is adopted, you find a specific context and challenges. I am hesitant to say that Ciclovía is universally applicable; every city and place is different, but in many cases, Ciclovía is flexible enough that it can conform to those differences.
Thank you for sharing your insights with us!