However, when Gil Penalosa voices his concepts about Complete Streets (designed for pedestrians, cyclists, public transit, and automobiles, in that order), Quality Of Life and Economic Competitiveness, Public Bicycles, Car-Free Sundays, and Walk/Bike Friendly Environments, it’s not coming from some left-wing militant nor wide-eyed treehugger, but an internationally respected guru on such subjects.
This native of Bogota, Colombia is a multicultural executive, with an MBA from the prestigious Anderson School of Management at UCLA, and more than 20 years of public sector senior managerial experience.
Penalosa was Colombia’s Commissioner of Parks and Recreation for several years (his brother Enrique is a former Mayor), during which time he oversaw a major transformation in the parks system, making it one of the most reknowned systems in the world.
As a senior consultant with both the Danish firm Gehl Architects, and the New York-based group People For Public Spaces, he has applied his theories on creating active public spaces in many cities including Baltimore, Chicago, New York, Paris, Calgary, Guatemala, and Mexico City. He’s also a member of the Board of Directors of the American Trails and City Parks Alliance.
And this 51-year-old father of three carries a local profile, having spent five years as a Strategic Leader with the City of Mississauga.
More recently, Penalosa left his position at the City and founded the non-profit group Walk & Bike For Life out of a Port Credit office. In March, they initiated the Community-Led Action Plan entitled “Walking & Bicycling: Creating A Great South Mississauga Community”.
He jokes about not being quite as politically correct as most Mississaugans, and is hard to stop when he gets started on his favourite topics. We caught up with him at a Lakeshore Rd. coffee shop.
Q: When did you come to Canada?
I came to Canada eight years ago, and decided to stay. I was trade commissioner for Colombia (at the time). I realized I needed Canadian experience, and there was an opportunity to work for the City of Mississauga in areas of planning. My last activity was working with the 'A Conversation About Building A Better City For The 21st Century' team.
Q: How do you look back on that initiative. It was a pretty open process?
I think it was good. But I think Mississauga has had such a missed opportunity. Mississauga could have been one of the nicest cities in the world. Thirty years ago, which is nothing, Mississauga had 200,000 people distributed in seven very nice villages. It had a beautiful river and many beautiful creeks crossing, and woodlots. It had all the elements to have been built as good as possible -- a world-class city, with a network of greenways going east and west, with linear parks along every single creek along the borders from Brampton to Lake Ontario. It would have been fantastic, taking advantage of all the creeks and rivers, and building the roads much smaller, instead of 60 metres wide. The City wants to improve the city centre, and yet you have Burnhamthorpe Rd. 60 metres wide. You would never see a nice city in the world with a 60 metre road, and that’s something that would characterize the way Mississauga has developed over the last 30 years. The focus has been on doing things right, not doing the right things. It’s all about efficiency, how can we save money. For example, in the last 10 years the City has been using a lot of development charges from northwest Mississauga to build facilities at the Hershey Centre. And that’s not Smart Growth. In the northwest we don’t have a community centre.
Q: Hershey Centre is a great facility, but you could never get up there on a bus, and there’s no highway access to it?
How could they eat up all of the development charges and use them to build up the Hershey Centre? You cannot corner so many soccer fields and arenas in one place. That’s not Smart Growth. That’s how things were done in the 1980s, but that’s not 21st Century growth – it’s about kids, and walking and biking to these places.
Over the last four years, in the City’s household survey, the No. 1 thing the community wants is more trails and bikeways and open spaces in parks – way ahead of arenas and gymnasiums. But nevertheless the City has not invested in that. Why? Unfortunately it’s because the cyclists and pedestrians are not organized.
I was manager of the Master Plan of Parks and Rec. We did 11 public meetings, not once did anyone talk about the Hershey Sports Complex. Nevertheless the City invested in it. It cost over $40 million. Some people say we can’t do bikeways because we don’t have enough money. With that $40 million you have completed the network of biking and the Master Plan. It’s not an issue of money, it’s an issue of priorities. It’s a political issue.
Along Port Credit, it would be so different if it had only three lanes. Take away one lane and you could widen sidewalks, and build a fantastic biking lane from (right out to) Oakville so people could ride their bikes safely along Lakeshore.
Q: How receptive were people to your Creating A Great South Mississauga Community initiative?
I think within the community they were very receptive, and loved all of the ideas.
But there are many people who have a myth of excellence, and I think that’s the major barrier to making changes in Mississauga. Sometimes it’s easier to go from bad to great, than from bad to good. All too often you need an attitude of “Ready, aim fire”. We do a Master Plan, 15 years later we update the Master Plan. You don’t need these studies.
We need to be able to send 7 year olds on a bike ride with their 70 year old grandparents, and be safe. It’s not just about painting lines. You need to physically separate the pedestrians, the cyclists, and the cars.
Q: On the global scale, a lot of people paint a pretty bad picture of how humans abuse the environment, and burn up so much fuel?
From the public health standpoint, there’s a huge crisis of obesity. From the point of view of the environment, there’s global warming. I think to move in (the right) direction we have to realize that creating walking and biking trails is not just fun and games. It is fun and games, but it’s much more than that. We have to reposition ourselves. Traditionally, it’s something we would do if we have money left over. But we could do it. We have to make decisions. Instead of saying how great we are, we have to do it. Some of these things are visionary and bold decisions.
For example, Portland is changing – 15 years ago it was very car-oriented. Copenhagen has the same weather as Mississauga, nevertheless 4 out of 10 residents use their bikes as their mode of transport.
Q: But the distances are greater here. If I’m living in Lorne Park and working in Markham, I’m not going to be able to take a bus there every day?
We have to change. I think what the provincial government has done is fantastic with the Places To Grow program. And they also created the GTA Metro Links program, that’s a very good step because this is not a municipal issue, this has to be regional. It has to cross boundaries. Mississauga needs a good transit system. We need to develop a fantastic public transit system (across the GTA), so it’s as good an option, or better – because, otherwise people will not get out of their cars.
