A walk into the future

Rafał Ostrowski, ‘Eurobuild Central & Eastern Europe’: You are sometimes described as a specialist on ‘mobility’. Why the word ‘mobility’ and not just transport?

Gil Peñalosa, founder and chair of 8 80 Cities: By transport we usually mean just moving people and goods from one point to another, whereas mobility has a much broader sense. We have to consider that some people move around on foot and some by bike – and we should look at how these patterns affect our well-being and the cities themselves. Let’s take, for example, pavements – we do not use them just for walking, but as a place where people build their communities, meet their neighbours, boyfriends and girlfriends, where people do their shopping, sit and rest and watch the world go by. So the factors we consider go way beyond what people consider as transport.

How can our cities be improved?

I think we need to decide how we want to live – then many other decisions will follow. For example, we need to decide if we want our children walk to school. If we do, then we need to have small schools with small catchment areas, so that kids can actually walk to school. I think that every child should have a park or a play area within 500m of where they live. So we need to build cities with lots of parks – and when there are no parks around, we need to build some. Because parks are not just fun and games, they are places where children learn and develop their muscles, where they develop their cognitive thinking, language, concentration skills, and so on. This is very practical. We should decide that in Warsaw, or in any city, by 2020 we will have a park within a short walking distance.

But most cities have already been built in one way or another. Some have parks and some don’t. How can you put a park in a city centre where the land is so exorbitantly expensive that only developers can afford it? How can you make this change happen?

In many ways. Firstly: whatever parks you have, improve them. Secondly: see if there is any land that the city owns or could be used for this purpose through negotiations with private land owners. For example, if a developer wants to build a high-rise but according to the zoning plan it can only be five storeys, you can maybe say: “Ok, you can build eight storeys, but you need to leave this much space around the building as public space.” Thirdly: make a list of all the public property – schools, libraries, city halls, streets, pavements... and then let’s see what can be done with it. We can create parks within school grounds. For instance, the school would use its grounds from seven in the morning until four in the afternoon. But after four and at weekends and on holidays it would be a public park. Yesterday, I went for a run around Warsaw and saw many schools that were fenced off and locked up. Well, if there are lots of parks in the area this is ok, but if you don’t have so many parks, why not open up the play areas around schools, so that after four they are accessible to the public?

You also mentioned streets. What ideas do you have for making greater use of them?

When we look at a city from the air, about 30 pct of it is streets. And streets make up the largest public space, which belongs to everybody: rich, poor, old or young. So we might say: “Ok. In this neighbourhood we don’t have a park, so we are going to create a play street.” We have to state that no one can drive onto this street – only those people who live within this area will be allowed to drive – at 5 km per hour – and no one else. And so we will be able to open a play area. We need to make this a top priority, since we won’t have healthy children if they are not able to play. So in the same way that the city has a requirement for having a lamp post every 15m, it should also have rules for the density of parks.

What do you think about central Warsaw?

I think it has potential, but I think the car is taking over. Many parts of the city are dominated by car traffic – even the pavements have become parking areas. The sidewalk, as the name suggests, is for walking on. So it is very, very important, absolutely crucial, not to have cars on the pavements.

But what would you do with the cars parking on them? You would probably have to take a lane off the road for them.

Well, whatever you need to do; but the top priority is that people can walk – more than whether they can use cars or bicycles. We were created as pedestrians. Everybody walks: children walk, the young, the old, the rich, the poor, women and men. I have read many constitutions, but not the Polish one. But I can guarantee that it says that all people are equal and I can guarantee that it does not say that the government has to provide car parks. The problem isn’t an unavoidable consequence of government. Say you buy a fridge. Then you go to the government and say: “Government, I’ve bought a fridge. Now you need to give me a house where I can put it.” You can’t do that. And you don’t go to the government and say: “I’ve bought a car, so now I need ten parking spaces, one in front of my home, one in front of the school, another in front of my business and the grocery store… No. It is not an obligation of the government to provide this. You should not expect this as a given.

So what is the responsibility of the government when it comes to traffic?

In a civilised society, you have to take care of those who are the most vulnerable. The most vulnerable people are children, the elderly and the poor. From the point of view of mobility, the most vulnerable person is the pedestrian, more than the cyclist, those who use public transport and then those who drive. So we cannot think that it is more important for society to have cars. Because if you have good pavements people will walk and they will chat and walking is good for your health. So it is not about where people can be fitted in. People will fit in 1 sqm of space, but this is not going to make them happy. So again, these issues are very important and very practical – we need to be happy. We know that in Poland one in four people are now obese. We know that part of the reason for this is food intake, but another reason is the lack of physical activity.

So we should give more space to pedestrians even if this makes things harder for cars?

Yes. For example, look at the crossing of ul. Marszałkowska and Al. Jerozolimskie, right in the centre of Warsaw – why have they built an underground pass for pedestrians? Only to give the right of way to cars. No! You shouldn’t do that. When there is a red light, cars will stop and pedestrians can cross.

But you end up with huge traffic jams if you make cars stop too often.

Exactly – but now you are thinking that the role of the city is to keep cars moving, and not to make people happy. Why do you want to cause such inconvenience for people by making them walk down 25 steps and up 25 steps again? Because cars can’t stop for a single minute? Of course cars can stop for one minute. If walking is good for public health and for the environment, then why punish those who walk? We should be rewarding them instead of punishing them. But instead they are told: climb that footbridge and go down under the road. No, this is not democratic.

You want to reduce the air pollution caused by cars. But if you cause traffic jams by giving priority to pedestrians, then you are only going to get more air pollution. Right?

The way to eliminate traffic jams is not to make cars go faster, because this will only encourage more people to have more cars. You need to start having fewer and fewer cars in cities.

How would you do that? People like travelling by car. Probably the majority of them have cars.

No, the majority don’t. In Warsaw only 30 pct of people commute by car. 70 pct do not. So the majority uses public transport or walks or cycles. However, all the decisions are made around the cars: we give 80 pct of our streets to cars. This is also a legacy from the communist era, that a car is a huge status symbol. In many countries, the people own fewer and fewer cars. In the US and Canada in the last few years young people between 16 and 24 have been purchasing fewer cars than at any time in the last forty years. And fewer driving licences are being issued. For those countries a car is not a status symbol anymore. It is more a status symbol to have an iPad or to go backpacking to India. It is like this in many other countries that are wealthy. In Copenhagen the weather is poor all year around: it’s cold in the winter, it’s hot in the summer, but 41 out of 100 trips are by bicycle. Not because they are poor. Not because they are not educated. They have a higher per capita income than any city in the US or in Poland. They have a higher level of education. They are doing it because it is faster, cheaper and more convenient. The people in Poland that have a car are spending about 25 pct of the income on mobility, so it is little wonder that they have no money for anything else. They have no money for holidays or for their retirement; they have no money to go out for dinner with their families, why? If people in Poland used public transport, walked or biked, it would cost them only five pct of their income. It would be like a 20 pct salary increase, like winning the lottery.

How can you change people’s attitudes towards walking?

One of the things that is required is a safe environment. If I’m walking and cars are speeding all around me and as time goes by they have more and more room, while I have only less, then I have become a second class citizen. So the message we are giving our citizens is that you can only have status if you have a car. Now many people have realised that this policy is a huge mistake. Cities like Seoul, Portland, Paris and Madrid are digging up their highways – they are not building even one centimetre of highway within cities. They are doing this to build parks and public places, to invest in public transport, because they have realised that it was a huge mistake.

In Germany, France and other countries the road infrastructure is incomparably more developed than in Poland...

And they are going back. In Germany and France fewer people use cars than here. They use their cars to go from one city to another or when they go abroad. But many people are leaving their cars at home and taking public transport. In Paris they are building more pedestrian walkways, even in the centre of the city. In London people prefer to go by taxi. All these cities are working to reduce their infrastructure for private cars. You cannot do exactly the same things as others have done without making the mistakes of the past. Why, with all the cars they had and all the highways, are they now narrowing the roads? They are doing away with highways, they are promoting cycling, they are promoting public transport. Do we have something to learn from them or are we going to repeat their mistakes? There is no city the size of Warsaw in the world that has gained in mobility thanks to private cars – none. If that was actually an option, there would be hundreds of examples. The only way to release mobility is through public transport, along with walking and cycling. So the car will always play a role, but not the gigantic role it is playing here.

So the main point is to reduce the use of cars?

No. That would be the means, but not the main point. The main point is to have a better city, with a healthy community, with people who live happier lives. The main point is sustainability, the main point is democracy. The car and the bicycle and public transport are the means to achieve all this, not the main point.

Now, we have this huge infrastructure programme to build motorways and express roads. Are you saying that we shouldn’t do that?

Well, I think to connect a country – yes. I insist the car has a role to play. To go from Warsaw to Kraków, or to go to the sea-side, or to use it at night. But not in the city for daily use.

And what about shopping? Do you want to forbid people driving to the shops?

If more and more people want to drive to the door of the store, then the traffic is going to get worse and worse. That is what they will have to realise – that this is impossible. Every city that has tried to solve the issue of mobility by building more highways has just seen worsening traffic congestion. You could invest all the resources Poland has and in twenty years you would not have the highways that Houston or Los Angeles has. And even in those cities the traffic is worse every year. So why do you want to be like Houston, if their traffic is getting worse all the time?

You said that giving more space to cars is not democratic? What do cars have to do with democracy?

You cannot have buses carrying sixty people stuck behind a car with one person. If democracy worked better, the sixty people would have priority over the individual in the car.

When you talk up bicycles so much, it makes me think of China forty years ago, when they had only bicycles on their streets and no cars at all. Is that the direction you want to follow?

No, we should go in the direction of Copenhagen. In economic terms Denmark has been one of the top countries of the last twenty years, and it is the same in terms of happiness – for which it has also been high in the rankings, and this is also related to the levels of health and so on. I think China forty years ago is a horrible example. I don’t think we should go back to where China was then and even less to how China is today – a place totally clogged up with cars. We should look at countries where the economy is good and where they score highly on the happiness index, such as Denmark or the Netherlands. I am not thinking of going back to the past, but into the future.