Sustainable Living introduced in the city of Bogota
How could a modern way of life that threatens our planet to have become our way of life?
Opportunities to reinvent and redesign
Could poverty be connected by hope through way of design?
America has huge inequalities. People migrating from rural areas to the cities has increased considerably.
In 100 years, Bogota grew from 100,000 persons to 7 million. It has grown in an illegal way.
There is lack of infrastructure, quality, security and safety. No good leaders. They had no direction. They had no money for the progress of the city. The quality of life in Bogota was the worst in Columbia and Latin America. People hated Bogota for what it was. It was a city without hope and self esteem.
City Design
They wanted to make a city for the people and not for cars. Changing the way of life was the focus of the designers in Bogota. It was believed that Sustainable Urban design will lay the foundation for social justice. The way we design cities would have an impact on our lifestyles which would determine our happiness and well being.
For example: Amsterdam
As it is said, fish needs to swim, we need to walk not in order to survive but be happy. For 5000 years, we had pedestrian streets only. So when cars appeared, the street should have been divided into two halves; half for cars and the other half for pedestrians to keep the balance.
Designers thought that correcting this enormous error was a necessity and could only be achieved by putting some restriction to car use.
Every Sunday, in Bogota 120km of main arteries are closed from 7 am to 2.00pm in the afternoon. All people are brought together and all the vehicles are blocked. This helps people to interact with each other. This has been going on every Sunday since 1982 and has been growing since then. This is a way in which they are trying to reduce car use in Bogota by getting people to cycle on the main streets on Sundays.
