A City For All – not just for cars

I’ll never forget the day in November when I opened my Facebook page and discovered that the trees that had shaded the boulevard a few blocks from my friends’ home in Guadalajara were being marked for the chainsaw.

Ciudad Para Todos (City For All) had issued a call to arms – or, more precisely, a call to tents. Within 24 hours this group of young professionals – architects, computer technicians, journalists, and others – had mobilized an encampment at one of the city’s biggest intersections, drawing attention to a project they considered emblematic of a city transportation policy gone mad.

(Photo courtesy of Ciudad Para Todos)

Regular Esperanza Project readers may remember the chain of events that followed from the series of posts I republished from their blog, “Pasalo Aún Mejor.”

It didn’t take me long to find myself at the forlorn site of this encampment. Once there were yoga workshops under the trees, children’s painting parties, nighttime showings of classic films. Now the place is overrun with bulldozers, noise and dust and enclosed in about a half-mile of chain link fence. Any sign of trees has been proficiently eradicated. And prominently located on both ends of the construction project are banners proclaiming: “Obra en proceso: Trabaja por tu beneficio” (Work in progress: Working for your benefit.) I take my life in my hands every time I have to traverse this stretch, since there are no sidewalks and the traffic flies by, but the alternative is to add 20 minutes to my walk.

The group first captured my attention in October when I was in Guadalajara for the Society of American Travel Writers conference. They were opposing a $76 million dollar overpass, the “Puente Atirantado,” which was planned to ease traffic congestion along one of the city’s main thoroughfares. Spending so much of the overtaxed treasury on a single bridge, when the city lacked a cohesive public transit system, bikeways, crosswalks and sidewalk maintenance just didn’t make sense, they argued. Ciudad Para Todos and other groups like Com:Plot called instead for a comprehensive transportation plan.

Ultimately the monthlong encampment failed to stop the bridge, but it did achieve something else: It raised awareness throughout the city for the dire need of a more multifaceted, organized approach to transportation (or, as they call it here, mobility). Now the members are regrouping after a much-needed rest to decide their next strategy.

Jesus Carlos 'El Negro' Soto, Felipeno Reyes, and Karla Preciado of Ciudad Para Todos

Recently I sat down with three of the most active leaders, Jesus Carlos “El Negro,” Karla Preciado and Felipeno Reyes. They shared their thoughts about the encampment, social change, mobility and more.

Jesús Carlos “El Negro” Soto

The first thing one notices about “El Negro,” as his friends call him, is his engaging smile – not the bronze skin that earned him the common nickname. Soto first became interested in the environment from his passion for social justice. Now a computer specialist, he studied philosophy at ITESO, a Jesuit university in Guadalajara, and he always identified with the downtrodden.

“I always loved nature, of course,” he said. “But what really called my attention were the social questions: poverty, exclusion.” He joined with the Jesuits to work with at risk families in the outskirts of the city, families where sometimes 19 people – grandparents, aunts, uncles, parents, children – would all live in a single room. Eventually he left the Jesuits, but he kept working in the communities on his own, and at one point he had the idea to start a bicycle workshop. He managed to pull together a collection of 15 used bicycles and repaired them, lending them out to the neighborhood children.

It was around that time, in 2007, that the city decided to turn Avenida Lopez Mateos into a citywide viaduct, eliminating the red lights and making it virtually impossible for pedestrians to cross without risking their lives.

On Sept. 22 of that year, several local citizen groups decided to join the international Day Without Automobiles, promoting a day of alternative transportation. Various groups launched a protest along Lopez Mateos, and that’s when Soto began to see the connection between the environment and the social justice issues he’d always pursued.

That group went on to form Ciudad Para Todos. Despite the group’s origins at a protest, its strategy quickly evolved beyond placard-holding picket lines. Instead, they began organizing festivals to present sustainability issues in a fun, family-friendly context. In Guadalajara’s conservative, family-oriented environment, the movement quickly gained ground where others did not.

“We know that tapatíos (Guadalajarans) are a people who are basically apathetic,” he said. “They don’t like to involve themselves in political matters, in community issues. They’re more a conservative type of people, who like to be at home and at work, with their families and friends, and maintain themselves in a world that’s very private, very personal.”

It challenged the activists to think about a way to present issues that would be proactive, instead of reactive. “We had to think about what we really wanted, and not just what we didn’t want.”

Many of the original members are gone now, and others have come to take their place, but the group has retained its original mission: to promote a more people-centered form of city planning, in a way that’s fun, creative and enticing.

But when the trees started coming down in the camellon of Lopez Mateos, the strategy quickly changed. The camellones are broad, tree-lined medians between the traffic lanes, and in huge expanses of the city, they are the only public green space. Some have walkways and are the most convenient place to walk the dog or go jogging. So few open green spaces are left that people feel the loss of every tree. So Ciudad Para Todos decided to take a stand.

The encampment, with its lineup of entertainment and educational activities for the community, always attracted a crowd, and gave the activists an opening to talk about the need for public space, and for a cohesive city transportation plan, one that provided options for everyone, not just those who own cars.

Karla “La Sub” Preciado Robles

Karla, for her part, grew up in a conservative family focused on work, family and neighborhood, but she got a completely different view as a communications major in the liberal environment of ITESO. She started working with human rights groups and environmental groups on campus, but when it came time to graduate, she ended up working in the construction industry.

“It was then that I really started getting interested in how communities are formed,” she says. “How the city grows, how the air becomes contaminated, how areas that were once green and only had trees are now full of people – how a highway that was just constructed two months ago to ease the traffic is already full.”

The company took over a tract in Barranca de Huentitán, an ecologically sensitive canyon that was supposedly protected, “and they just started selling it like pieces of bread,” she said.

“So from those roots, I ended up leaving my job, because it was depressing me.”

She drifted for a few months, trying to find her place, then began working on the campaign of a man who was running for public office and part of his platform was developing a system of bike lanes. This put her in touch with Felipeno Reyes, a local architect who is the author of a popular biking blog and one of the founders of Ciudad Para Todos. He and Jesús recruited Karla to be their communications person.

“That’s how I started out, but it didn’t take long before I was doing everything – I started out as the nice face of Ciudad Para Todos and ended up being the rude face,” she laughed. Soon her background in communications took hold, and she became an eloquent spokesperson for the encampment and for a more sustainable city. She discovered a new, more assertive side that some called bossy – but she didn’t mind. She adopted the nickname “La Sub” after Subcommandante Marcos, as a joke, and it stuck.

“One of the big lessons of Ciudad Para Todos that we want to share with the people is that this is your city – and you can live well or you can live poorly, and it’s really up to you.”

“We want to show that another city is possible,” Soto added. “That even though we have all this traffic, even though we have a city that’s disorganized and polluted and badly planned, it’s still possible to fix it, because they’ve done so in other places.”

Upcoming: Forgive me, folks, but I’ve run out of space, time and steam. On the agenda: A thought-provoking interview with architect Felipeno Reyes, author of the biking blog Felipeno and one of the founders of Ciudad Para Todos.