Choosing People over Cars to Build a Better City

Parque Simon Bolivar, Bogota, Colombia

In my country, we are just learning that sidewalks are relatives of parks – not passing lanes for cars.

Over the past 80 years we have been building cities for cars much more than for people. If only children had as much public space as cars, most cities in the world would become marvelous.

          Enrique Peñalosa, Mayor of Bogotá, 1998-2000

On my second day in Bogotá, I was seated in a sidewalk café with two friends, and, as I was about to take a sip of aromatica, which was the local version of herbal tea, in this case containing stalks of fresh lemongrass and peppermint, I sneezed three times in rapid succession. “Welcome to Bogotá,” one of my friends responded in an almost sardonic voice. A few days later, when I was walking with another friend along the Carrera Septima, one of Bogotá’s main avenues, I gestured at the clouds of thick and dark-grey diesel exhaust in which we were surrounded, and noted that Bogotá had the most terribly polluted air of any city that I had ever lived in. “Oh,” she replied in a conciliatory tone, “but it’s not half as bad as it used to be.” And the truth is that Bogotá’s air was once much worse than it is today.

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Bogotá’s Plume of Pollutants

Guest Post by John Michael

When I think about the air that our ancestors must have breathed during the Paleolithic, I imagine that it was relatively pristine and healthy, with the exception of those times when natural disasters like volcanoes or wildfires filled the atmosphere with noxious fumes; but events like these were not the rule, I imagine, and our ancestors no doubt regularly partook of an air that left them feeling healthier with each breath, and from which they had little to fear.

Such is not the case for me these days. I currently find myself living in Bogotá, the densely populated urban metropolis that serves as the capital of Colombia, and which, with over eight million inhabitants, contains a whopping seventeen percent of the country’s population. A large number of Bogotá’s inhabitants moved to the city as refugees, being displaced from their homes by Colombia’s seemingly interminable civil war, which has been fought for the past forty-seven years. This rapid and disorderly exodus from the countryside has caused unregulated housing to sprout up throughout the city. Locals know these provisional neighborhoods as casas o barrios de invasion, or, “invasive homes or neighborhoods,” in which basic amenities like running water and sewers are absent, and in which the inhabitants live in frightening poverty. This sudden and haphazard increase in size has led to multiple problems for the city, with the most ever-present and irritating of these being for myself the horrible quality of its air.

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Paleo Fast Food in the Developing World

Guest Post by John Michael

Tired and stressed from work, low on money, and pressed for time, the other day I walked into a fast-food restaurant in Bogotá called Carnitas, which in English might best be translated as either “Little Meats” or “Meaties.” Expecting to find within the standard selection of American fast-food items, like hamburgers, pizzas, and hot dogs, all made from unknown ingredients of a dubious origin, I was surprised to find, alongside these items, a variety of steaks.

Both intrigued and enticed by this discovery, I ordered a churrasco combo, which consisted of a rump-steak filet atop a cornmeal tortilla, a side salad, a bowl of steamed Andean potatoes, and a bottle of water. I sat looking at the food arrayed before me, and realized that if I’d held the tortilla and the potatoes, and perhaps requested a bit more salad in exchange, then this meal would actually have been quite Paleo.

If you’re like me, then you know that fast food is generally bad for you. Whenever I walk into a fast-food restaurant, I have to make an effort not to be driven back out of the restaurant’s front doors by the horror stories that I’ve heard. Whether it’s the story of the factories in New Jersey where the scents for hamburger meat and French fries are manufactured, or the story of the meat that’s not really meat, but instead an amalgam of non-meat ingredients concocted by some mad food scientist, American fast-food restaurants have gained a notoriety of mythical proportions in recent years.

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