Activist Profile: Gil Penalosa

Gil Penalosa runs the not-for-profit Walk and Bike for Life in Port Credit, Ontario and is one of the world’s leading bicycle infrastructure consultants. He’s also an excellent public speaker and recently gave the keynote address to an active audience at the Carfree Portland conference, this summer. You can listen to it here.

He also gained his experience working as the Commission for Parks and Recreation in Bogota, Colombia, which with the help of his brother and mayor, Enrique, became a very bicycle-friendly city, and launched the the Cyclovia which has been copied in Ottawa, New York, Australia and many other cities.

When asked in an interview with BicyclingCulture.com if he thought part of what makes cities bikeable is bike culture he said:

Part of it is with culture, but it not the culture that was their 200 years ago. It’s part of the culture that has been created. In Copenhagen, the last 30 years. The first pedestrian street was closed in Copenhagen 35 years ago, it wasn’t 200 years ago. It was a very car-oriented city. Then, they took the cars out of one street and the retail were very upset. And then they created a pedestrian street and they were very successful. And then they did another and another and another. So they created a cultural change. So it is a change of cultures, but it’s not because it’s in their genes, or because they were born different, or because they eat something different for breakfast.

Places like Portland, have become very walkable, and 20 years ago it was a very car-oriented city. Vancouver is very good for pedestrians, but it’s not because people in Vancouver are different from people in Toronto. So I think it is about a cultural change, but it’s not because the Danish or the Dutch or the people in Portland, or the people in Vancouver are different.

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We have to have a lot of social marketing. There has to be a campaign, where in the short term we do what we call petunias, so things that are easy to do, low risk, low cost but high visibility and that will gain momentum to do things that are more difficult more risky. And then, we gotta get leaders, and communicate the ideas and engage politicians, and engage the communities and elect people that have guts. All of this.