Key points
- An advanced city is not where the poor have cars but where the rich use public transport.
- TransMilenio gave Bogotá the capacity of a metro on the surface at a fraction of the cost and in three years.
- Pavements, cycle paths and libraries in poor neighbourhoods turned public space into an instrument of equality.
Enrique Peñalosa is the mayor who made Bogotá a global reference for urban transformation during his first term, from 1998 to 2000, with an idea he has repeated ever since: an advanced city is not one where the poor have cars but one where the rich use public transport. In three years, in a city of more than six million people with serious problems of violence and poverty, Peñalosa launched the TransMilenio bus rapid transit system, built hundreds of kilometres of cycle paths, reclaimed pavements invaded by cars and raised libraries and parks in the poorest neighbourhoods. His experience, gathered in Equality and the City (2022), is a manual of urbanism as equality policy.
TransMilenio: a surface metro at a fraction of the cost
TransMilenio, opened in December 2000, is his best-known work. Inspired by Curitiba, it consists of articulated buses running on exclusive lanes in the centre of avenues, with enclosed stations, prepaid fares and level boarding, which gives it the capacity and speed of a metro at a fraction of the cost and construction time. Peñalosa defended it against the metro project for an economic reason and a political one: the money for a metro could cover the whole city with buses, and a fast surface system showed every day that collective transport had priority over the car. It now carries millions of passengers a day and has been copied in dozens of cities.
Pavements, cycle paths, parks and libraries: public space as equality
The second pillar was public space. Peñalosa removed cars from pavements, which in Bogotá were used as parking, by installing thousands of bollards, and widened and paved sidewalks across the city, arguing that the pavement is the space of equality par excellence: the citizen on foot and the one stepping out of a car are worth the same on it. He built more than 300 kilometres of cycle paths, when the bicycle was considered poor people's transport, expanded the Sunday Ciclovía and created parks such as Tercer Milenio on a former crime hotspot, and the El Tintal, Virgilio Barco and El Tunal libraries in peripheral neighbourhoods.
Peñalosa's philosophy: dignity in the use of the city
The philosophy uniting those works is equality in the use of space. Peñalosa holds that in an unequal city quality of life cannot depend on income, and that public space, transport and facilities are how the state gives everyone what only a few can buy: mobility, safety, access to culture and leisure. His speeches turned the bicycle, the pavement and the bus into symbols of dignity, and his influence is felt among mayors around the world, from New York to Jakarta, who have cited Bogotá as proof that a poor city can transform itself through political decisions.
Criticism: overcrowding, the second term and street vending
The record is not free of criticism. TransMilenio has suffered overcrowding and deteriorating service for years, and the metro Peñalosa postponed remains a citizen demand. His second term, from 2016 to 2019, was far more contested: the expansion of TransMilenio, the projects affecting the Van der Hammen reserve and the handling of informal transport generated protests and a recall attempt. His detractors accuse him of an authoritarian style and a vision of public space that privileges order over popular uses, such as street vending, which was cleared from several areas.
Even so, the legacy of his first term stands as one of the most influential urban experiments of the turn of the century. Peñalosa showed that quality public transport, pavements and bicycles are not luxuries of rich cities but instruments of equality within reach of any government with political will, and that the fight over street space is a fight over who counts in the city. That lesson, more than any particular work, is what Bogotá exported to the world.
Frequently asked questions
What did Enrique Peñalosa do in Bogotá?
In his first term, from 1998 to 2000, he launched the TransMilenio bus rapid transit system, built more than 300 kilometres of cycle paths, reclaimed pavements invaded by cars and raised parks and libraries in the poorest neighbourhoods.
What criticism has Peñalosa received?
The overcrowding of TransMilenio and the postponement of the metro, a second term from 2016 to 2019 marked by protests and a recall attempt, and a vision of public space that privileges order over popular uses such as street vending.
