Every Sunday in Bogot\u00e1, streets across the city are closed to cars and transformed into urban parks. Shirtless rollerbladers with boomboxes drift leisurely in figures of eight, Lycra-clad cyclists zoom downhill and young children wobble nervously as they pedal on bikes for the first time.<\/p>\n
This is perhaps the most visible component of a multipronged plan to clean up the Colombian capital\u2019s air. At the turn of the century, Bogot\u00e1 was one of Latin America\u2019s most polluted cities, with concentrations of harmful particulates at seven times the World Health Organization\u2019s limits. In the last decade the city of 8 million has started to turn that around, cutting air pollution by 24% between 2018 and 2024.<\/p>\n
Part of the shift has been the city\u2019s embrace of the bicycle and other forms of clean transport. There are now 350 miles of cycle lanes snaking across the city, the largest cycle lane network in Latin America. Bogot\u00e1 has also quietly rolled out 1,400 electric buses, one of the world\u2019s largest sustainable bus fleets, and there are three new cable car lines (two under construction) to take people to and from the mountains.<\/p>\n
Organisations working with the administration say Bogot\u00e1 is a model for developing economies to follow not just in cleaning up the air and fighting climate change but in rethinking their cities. \u201cBogot\u00e1 is living proof of how cities can cut air pollution, fight climate change and give their residents healthier futures,\u201d says Jaime Rueda, the Bogot\u00e1 lead at Breathe Cities, a global initiative helping cities tackle air pollution.<\/p>\n
Rueda says that while cities usually start by tackling air pollution in the most affluent areas, Bogot\u00e1 started rolling out clean air zones \u2013 zonas urbanas por un mejor aire (Zumas), or urban zones for better air \u2013 in the most polluted, such as Bosa in the south of the city, one of Bogot\u00e1\u2019s poorest neighbourhoods and home to more than 700,000 socially vulnerable residents and, critically, one of the main routes into the centre.<\/p>\n
At one junction, a man dressed as Father Christmas asks drivers for change but there is no one at eye level. Drivers in all three lanes sit high up in lorries that pump out dense trails of black smoke from their shiny, curved exhausts. PM 2.5 particulates cause about 1,500 deaths a year in Bogot\u00e1 and here in the south the levels are more than three times the WHO\u2019s limit. Here, 8.7 to 17.3 out of every 100,000 people die from respiratory illnesses, compared with 7.47 per 100,000 citywide.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is where air pollution has the most serious impacts on people\u2019s health, largely due to unpaved roads, a lack of green space and highly polluting freight transport,\u201d says Adriana Soto, Bogot\u00e1\u2019s secretary for the environment. \u201cThis is where it is really killing people.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is where the first Zuma was rolled out, in the parts of Bosa with the deadliest air. Houses line potholed or unpaved roads that funnel streams of heavy freight into the city and residents say they keep their windows closed to keep out the dust.<\/p>\n
Carolina Roches D\u00edaz, 28, says they long for rain to wash away the red-greyish soot that blankets everything from houses and shops to the school and the playground. Children at the local childcare centre are constantly coughing and sneezing and she worries for the long-term health of her three-year-old son who was hospitalised at birth and needed oxygen. \u201cI constantly tell him to cover up his little eyes,\u201d she says, clutching his hand.<\/p>\n
Transport accounts for 17% of PM2.5 in Bogot\u00e1 and trucks generate nearly half of that. The city has started a pilot scheme to subsidise new trucks, to phase out the most polluting vehicles, but the engines themselves are not the main cause. A lack of urban planning means residents have made their own makeshift roads. \u201cAbout 40% of PM2.5 emissions come from dust churned up by traffic on these unpaved roads,\u201d Soto explains.<\/p>\n
As in London\u2019s low-emission zones, the local administration will limit which vehicles can come into the area to cut toxic emissions. And the Zuma is part of a wider urban planning project centred on the local schools. Among the 39 planned changes are repaving roads, rerouting lorries and creating parks and urban forests. Trees will be planted to line the adjacent motorway to protect residents from dust and fumes.<\/p>\n
With just 5 square metres of green space for each resident, Bosa is one of the least green parts of Bogot\u00e1\u2019s concrete jungle, and the plans show how cleaning up the air can kickstart other positive changes, says Jane Burston, the chief executive of the Clean Air Fund. \u201cImproving the green spaces and public transport as well means there is a lot of excitement about the clean air zone, and other neighbourhoods are already asking for one,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
The mayor\u2019s office says it now wants to turn its bridges and the metro currently under construction into walled gardens\u2014 part of more ambitious plans to plant 1,500 trees, more than 2,700 gardens, 362 urban gardens and three urban forests by 2027.<\/p>\n
\u201cClean air should not be a privilege,\u201d says the mayor, Carlos Fernando Gal\u00e1n. \u201cWith the Zumas we are bringing environmental action to neighbourhoods that have carried the heaviest burden for too long, showing that cities can protect public health by bringing greener, healthier streets to the communities that need them most.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Every Sunday in Bogot\u00e1, streets across the city are closed to cars and transformed into urban parks. Shirtless…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":442438,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-442437","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=442437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/442438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}