Bogota | Challenges of the Green Corridor of the seventh race | Mayor’s Office – Bogotá

This week, more details of the new proposal were known to consider the future of Carrera Séptima. It is called the Green Corridor and it has seven commandments: promote trees, guarantee lighting, operate a bicycle system, pacify traffic, improve air quality, be part of the urban project on the eastern edge and guarantee good platforms. But, this proposal faces two challenges as great as its ambition: achieve co-creation with citizen participation and arrange the redistribution of road space among all means of transport. Bogotá is waiting. With this, there are seven projects that have been put on the table in 15 years.

(It may interest you: Another attempt to transform the 7th career)

The long history of promises to Race 7.ª

›Mayor of Lucho Garzón (2004-2007)
Proposes a TransMilenio trunk between streets 34 and 100. Cost of studies: 10,000 million pesos.

›Mayor of Samuel Moreno (2008-2011)
He does not use the studios, he says that part of the subway line will go there. But then he proposes a light TransMilenio for the 7th. For that, a contract is signed for more than 80,000 million pesos. The contract is terminated early.

›Mayor of Clara López (2011, commissioned)
In her fleeting passage as mayor in charge of Bogotá, she proposed a Green Corridor between 34th and 170th streets that would work with electric mobility. They estimate a cost of 600,000 million pesos for the project. Everything remains an idea.

›Mayor of Gustavo Petro (2012-2015)
He proposes a tram. For that, he asks the Council for a debt quota for 800,000 million pesos. After several setbacks, the project never goes ahead.

›Mayor of Enrique Peñalosa (2016-2019)
It proposes a TransMilenio trunk. Studies and designs are made and a bidding process for 2.3 billion pesos begins. At that point there are four legal proceedings against.

›Mayor of Claudia López (2020-2023)
Suspends the TransMilenio tender and proposes the Green Corridor. It ensures that part of the inputs of that project and the properties already acquired will be used.

The first challenge comes from the same mayor, Claudia López, who, with the support of the Participation Institute and the Urban Development Institute, launched a participation system that can be explored on the web www.septimaverde.gov.co and that will be open for proposals until November 1st. “We are not going to invite people to throw balloons”, warned the mayor and recalled that this process will include training and a prominent digital component.

It must be said that this is not the first participation process in the history of the 7th projects. There were before, and one of them was Construjando Nuestra Séptima, in which Bogotá Como Vamos, Corposptima and other actors participated to contribute ideas to Enrique Peñalosa’s TransMilenio backbone. It was so important that, in fact, EL TIEMPO learned that the Green Corridor’s agenda is scheduled to review the document for that exercise.

Now, in this participation process, experts warn that it is necessary to avoid falling into ‘NIMBYism’ (not in my back yard or not in my backyard). This concept, mentioned by Shafaq Choudry, urban planner and senior manager of global strategy policy at Numo Alliance, refers to a mentality of a group that rejects changes in their community. The ‘NIMBYism’ is not an isolated case, but a common practice and studied by Choudry in a document.

“What gives these people the most power is that they start talking about the project in a very negative way. In the examples that I showed in California it is extreme: a group of 5 people formed a network of information and videos that gained a lot of attention. And with that they could change what was happening in their own neighborhood and they reached high levels. This should not be thought of only as a small group that is there and cannot change things ”, Choudry mentions and warns that, due to the influence of this group, which usually has a better social position, it can lead to less favored sectors never achieving See projects that could change your quality of life.

“They (the hinders) have the time and can make it to events during the day.
But most of the people, who are the low-income ones, who depend on those projects to have more equitable access to the city, they have no way of going: they work, they are busy all day. That is why it is necessary to think in a more creative way about how to put your opinion, something more digital and faster ”, adds the expert.

But so that this process does not become a huge mass of opinions, Choudry indicates that very precise guiding questions should be left. And, so that citizens are encouraged to continue participating, remember that communication between the Government and communities cannot be lost: “That is to say to them ‘we listened to them, we are doing this and that came out of participation. There can be problems when only the information is collected and the government is never heard from again ”.

He also notes that pilot projects are key to testing certain measures: “If you have pilots you can demonstrate the value of what is coming”

(Also: The pros and cons of the new bet on the 7th race).

Redistribute the space

The second great challenge for the Green Corridor is to no longer arrange a transportation system (metro, tram, TM, as happened in the past), but the redistribution of the road network. López has highlighted the inequity of occupation, indicating that although only 15% of trips are made by car, they occupy 85% of the road network (see graph). The rest of the means (public transport, bike and pedestrian) share what is left.

“The redistribution of the road on the Seventh is urgent. I am sure that the citizens’ proposals will always include more things that are not just lanes for cars, they will expand the platforms, put bicycle paths on both sides of the Seventh and propose mass transport, “says Carlos Felipe Pardo, senior manager of Numo pilots and one of the digital participation advisors.

To this challenge of redistribution of space, Erik Vergel, Ph. D. in Urban and Regional Planning and professor at the Universidad de los Andes, he calls it the challenge of the political economy of urban space. “It’s that power play through space. And we have already seen it in Bogotá when buses were given an exclusive lane, giving priority to the vulnerable population that uses mass transit ”, says Vergel, adding another factor to the challenge: avoiding intervention from front to front. That is, limit yourself to fixing only the seventh, its lane and its platforms. “Conceiving a mass transportation project as an urban development project broadens the scope of intervention. It is to think that if with active and inclusive mobility I can improve accessibility to the sector, I can impact land prices and look for tools to capture value to get resources to finance other city projects, ”says Vergel and notes that you cannot miss out on view the surroundings.

“What is done in Seventh is going to have an effect on races 13 and 11, for example. And you have to see that on the seventh is the expanded center that attracts many trips. You have the financial center on 26th Street, which has moved to 72nd; and we see that the one from 100 with Seventh has moved to 116. There are many development nodes ”, warns the expert.

And, citing a successful case of urban development around mobility axes, Vergel cites the case of Curitiba (Brazil). “They speak of a trinary system: they imagined three parallel axes separated by blocks where there is a development in height. That is like a great urban structure. The new version is the Green Line that applies instruments to capture value and what it does is generate a large urban corridor with a green space that achieves development in height “

Certainly, the Green Corridor will have it difficult: Not only will it be necessary to deal with the citizen exhaustion of not seeing changes, but with a complex co-creative process that will have to turn the urban pyramid around to put the citizen before the car. And that is going to cost a lot.

Digital participation: Streetmix arrives for the city

The process of participation and co-creation of the Green Corridor of the 7th began this week and will run until October 31. Until that day, citizens will be able to make their proposals through the different channels offered by the website www.septimaverde.gov.co.

One of the channels will be Streetmix. “It is a free and open source platform where anyone with an internet connection can propose changes to a road profile, or create their own, and see what performance in terms of mobility. In the exercise that we agree with the District, we want anyone to be able to make proposals for how they would like to redesign different places throughout the 7th. In addition, the platform saves the data of each street that is designed and then analyzes can be made to see who proposed what and thus the feedback of the citizens is reported in a more systematic way, ”explains Carlos Felipe Pardo, senior manager of Pilot Projects of Numo. This tool has already been used in other projects around the world.

Now, with the results of this and other exercises, between November 1 and 15 the IDU, supported by the international firm Gehl Architects, will begin to integrate it into a first conceptual design. Parallel to this, there will be an oversight to ensure that the results of citizen participation are taken into account. On the 15th, the idea is delivered to the city and, from that day until December 18, the conceptual design will be refined to deliver the version with which studies will be hired at the end of the year. It is expected to tender in 2021, build between 2021 and 2024 and deliver in 2025.

(Further: So you can participate in the creation of the Green Corridor of the Seventh)

To continue reading:

– Cars vs. Bicycles: a new pulse in Bogotá

– What is missing in Bogotá to be a 15-minute city

– The Bogota brick, synonymous with identity and aesthetics

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