Enrique Peñalosa

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Enrique Peñalosa (2012)

Enrique Peñalosa Londoño (born September 30, 1954 in Washington, DC , USA ) is a Colombian economist and politician . Peñalosa was Lord Mayor of Bogotá between 1998 and 2000 and was re-elected in 2015.

Life

He got his name from his father of the same name, who was also a politician. Peñalosa went to primary school in the Gimnasio Campestre and attended the Colegio Refous , both in Bogotá. He then moved to Durham , North Carolina , USA, where he studied economics at Duke University .

As Lord Mayor of Bogotá, Enrique Peñalosa was responsible for numerous radical improvements to the city and its citizens. Even if these improvements did not benefit all of Bogotá's citizens. The inhabitants of the slums have hardly noticed anything of the developments. He promoted a city model that gave priority to children and public spaces and restricted private use of cars. Hundreds of kilometers of sidewalks, bike paths, pedestrian zones, green spaces and parks were built during his tenure. After organizing a car-free day in 2000, he won the Stockholm Challenge Award and was rewarded with a referendum advocating an annual car-free day and the elimination of all cars from the roads during peak hours from 2015 onwards.

Peñalosa also introduced efforts to encourage the marginal boroughs of Bogotá through better citizen participation and planting more than 100,000 trees. In his last term, however, Peñalosa ordered the felling of thousands of trees, as construction projects seemed to have been the focus of this term. This also applies to his plans for the "Reserva Van Der Hammen" nature reserve. This nature reserve is a large green area in the Bogotá district that Peñalosa wants to convert into a building area. There is, however, great resistance from the public, who achieved that some of his projects had to be stopped for the time being, e.g. B. the plan to build twelve streets had to be reduced to three due to the work of the Veeduría ciudadana (public control by citizens). He created a new, very successful bus-based transport system, the TransMilenio - Busway system. However, over the years the transmilenio has become a major problem for Bogotá. The original Transmilenio model comes from Curitiba, a Brazilian city with around one million inhabitants. Bogotá, on the other hand, has more than eight million inhabitants. There are also major construction defects at the stations, which caused considerable financial damage to the city of Bogotá. His intention to transform the image of the city from a mostly negative hopelessness to an overall picture of pride and hope and to develop a model for the improvement of the city was only partially realized at the beginning. In recent years, however, Bogotá's residents are faced with overcrowded, unpunctual, environmentally harmful (the buses run on diesel and do not meet the latest environmental standards) and expensive service on a daily basis.

In 1997 he tried to become mayor of Bogotá for the third time and managed to assert himself against Carlos Moreno de Caro . He had previously suffered electoral defeats against Antanas Mockus in 1992 and against Jaima Castro in 1994 . He took over the city from Antanas Mockus in good financial condition.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Former Bogotá mayor re-elected after 14 years, defeating Colombia's left. In: The Guardian . October 26, 2015, accessed June 30, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Peñalosa aclaró que no desistirán de intervención en reserva Thomas Van Der Hammen. In: BLU Radio. September 19, 2019, accessed June 30, 2020 (Spanish).
  3. ↑ "Distrito desistiría de ALO norte y otros 8 proyectos en Van Der Hammen": Veeduría. In: BLU Radio. September 19, 2019, accessed June 30, 2020 (Spanish).
  4. ↑ Losas de Transmilenio: ¿y los otros qué? In: El Espectador. June 24, 2016, accessed June 30, 2020 .

Web links

Commons : Enrique Peñalosa  - collection of images, videos and audio files
predecessor Office successor
Gustavo Petro Mayor (Bogotá)
2016 to 2019 		Claudia López Hernández
predecessor Office successor
Paul Bromberg Mayor (Bogotá)
1998 to 2000 		Antanas Mockus
personal data
SURNAME Peñalosa, Enrique
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Colombian economist, politician, former mayor of Bogotá
DATE OF BIRTH September 30, 1954
PLACE OF BIRTH Washington, DC