Jeg har lavet et interview med Gil Penalosa – en særdeles spændende foregangsmand i den disciplin det er at aktivere byernes indbyggere i det offentlige rum. Samtalen fandt sted i forbindelse med MOVE2009 – World Congress on Active Cities: Sport, Health and Citizenship. Konferencen var arrangeret af et større konsortium med ISCA i spidsen. Med Gil Penelosas budskaber får I muligheden for at blive inspireret til gå fra “talk the walk” til “walk the talk”.

1. Who is Gil Penelosa?
I’m the Executive Director of a Canadian non-profit organisation called Walk and Bike for Life. Basically what we do is we promote walking and biking as activities and parks and public spaces as great places for people, where people can meet and joy. This is not as much about how to take someone from point A to point B. It is more about how to create cities that are more vibrant and have healthy communities where people live happier and enjoy their public places.

Before in Columbia I was a minister of sports, parks and recreation – appointed by the mayor. We did hundred and hundred of parks and many interesting activities as ”car free Sundays”. In Bogota with 7 million citizens we every single week of the year got 1,3 million to participate in walking, biking or aerobics.

But I left and I went to Canada and initially I was working for the government but then I felt that there were more interesting things to do outside.,. so I lead the creation of the non-profit organisation called Walk and Bike for Life.

(The organisation is partly funded by the work of Gil Penelosa – he travels all over the world and do presentations and workshops. And I donate 70 % to the foundation. The other way is that sometimes we get grants for example from The Ministry of Health of Ontario).

2. Please share your most important recommendations related to active cities
Somehow we have to find a way to make walking and biking a normal part of the everyday life. Like in Copenhagen where people don’t dress up specially to go biking or walking cause it’s a just normal part of everyday life. I think the most important is to show that the benefits are not only about transportation. Transportation is a part of it but it is also good for the environment, for personal and public health, good for recreation for all – and good for economic development.

We live in an ever more globalised world and the best people can live anywhere they want – eg the best medical doctor, engineer, carpenter, artist. So each city has to realise why would someone that is really good want to live in our city and not somewhere else. It is one of the reasons why Copenhagen is such a great city that so many people want to live here. Where Atlanta or Houston in the US or many other cities around the world – anybody that has the possibility leaves and goes away! These are cities that don’t have a lot of future! That is why I believe that the most important tool of economic competitiveness of a city is the quality of life. The cities that have the best quality of life are the cities where the best people will want to stay and other good people will want to come. If people don’t have enough quality of life – eventually they will leave.

There is no doubt that walking and biking – not only because people can walk and bike but it is because that creates a different environment. When people walk they see other people eye to eye and peoples face – and start a different relationship. We are human beings – and the human beings are used to walking at 5 km/h and enjoy different settings and the very different relationships they develop. The kind of relationship you develop by waking with 5 km/h is different than when you drive 60 km/h in a car and only see billboards and big bumps. By walking they see much more and develop a totally different sense of belonging and differentiation.

3. How do you see the role of nature in your ideas?
People need more nature – The American writer, Robert Louv has shown that when people are sick they recover better by being in contact with nature. But although I think it is very important with nature the reality today is that most of the population live in the city so we have to worry about how cities are being built and that is what takes place now and that I take part in.

4. Does a minor city have the same opportunities as a big city?
Some people like to live in large cities and some people like to live in small cities in the same way that some people like to work in a big company with 50.000 employees and other people like to work in a small company with 5 employees, but nevertheless the issue of quality of life have to prevail in both cause some people might live in a small city with bad quality of life or in a big cities with good quality of life. So in both – small and big – you can have bad quality of life and in both – small and big – you can have good quality of life. So I think you should try to have really good quality of life in both places.

People always have an excuse why they don’t go to the community. They say “the weather is too cold or too hot”, “we’re too big or too small”. I think that in a smaller community more people would participate and more people would go to meetings and provide input and provide ideas.

I think the community is the expert! I think that if we are to do anything in the public space WE HAVE TO ask people what it is that they want – from the beginning. And then – once we know what it is that they want – we can take it and send to an architect to do the drawings and construction design, but the initial step is to have community input.

5. How do you see the relationship between design and management) and who should manage?
Professional managers!!

First I think about design, that the architects are very important but not for the initial fase. First of all we have to go to the community and ask what they want. What should we do? Remember that community is the expert. This is the people that live and work and go by there. But it is not one we have to listen to. You know some people talk too loud. No we have to listen to everybody. So go to the schools, go to the businesses and go to people that visits the parks and ask what they want to do.

Then we come to the how. For example the community realise that they want to walk or run in the park, but they don’t if the track should be 2, 4 or 6 meters, if it should be in synthetic materiel. People don’t know the details of how to design, and that is why architects should come in and learn about that.

And from the point of view of management – I think management is critical because they… that’s how the park really gets a lot of activity. I think the park should get used to the activities and learn that there are a lot of things to do. If you go to the park and there are ten things to do – you do three or four and don’t come back because you don’t think there’s so much to do – until they become a routine. So I do think that park management is critical. And by management I think of events but also programming that is ongoing every week or so.

Sometimes people confuse management with picking up the garbage and handling security. That’s part of the management, but that might be 20 %. 80 % is doing events and programming of the park.

6. Is it possible to create equal opportunities for everybody?

When we talk about “sport for all” – part of it is having a more democratic process where everybody can participate and where there are equal opportunities for everybody. Not only the elite like the people that have access to the national team.

7. Can we move the least active as well?

Yes! There are many many cases where it has been shown.

It’s about people working parallel – the government, the public sector, and the private sector because you need a lot of alliances to go forward and we ought to manage all these people from the secretary of health and the secretary of commercial bidders. It is very hard but you could success with good management and focuses on how are the events and how are the programming and so on.

8. What is keeping us back?

I say that it’s not rocket science to know about this because sometimes when you show this image people say “ohh – I know I know about that” – but the rocket science is to get it done – to actually do it!!

I think there are five steps to get it done:

1. We need leadership – We need many many leaders everywhere (of a park, in the school, in the community centre and so on).
2. We need political will – I mean that the mayor has to go out and communicate clearly that he believes in public engagement and he believes in the process and so on.
3. We need doers in the public sector – People that do, people that are reminded that every other week the citizens are paying them a salary to get things done – not to have 12 reasons why things could not be done. Doers are often managers – and if you have a manager that is not a doer then replace him because you have to have a doer as manager! In Central Park, New York the manager of operation – he should be a doer.
4. We need community (public) engagement – The public has to participate. We need the old and the young and everybody participating.
5. We need a sense of urgency – This is for now! Denmark has the luxury that many things have been done for over 40 years but I mean that now we need to change things very fast.

When you compare all the indicators in the US with the indicators in the industrial. Copenhagen is way way ahead of the US. So I think that most of the cities has much to learn.

9. How do you prioritise in the relation between structural and actor-based changes?

I think you need to do both. You need the general and that should be your guiding principle if you do what is in the general interest because the general interest must prevail, but at the same time you also have to listen to what people do and track it and count and be in permanent contact with them as clients.