An Urban Planners Dream/Nightmare

I just read this article about congestion in La Paz and immediately started daydreaming about a mass transit system involving hoverboard lanes and telefericos (cable cars - like the new magic bullet to OHSU in Portland, OR).

La Paz could be the city of the future!

If only they were serious about mass transit, could negotiate with the transport/taxi unions and had bajillions of dollars to spend.


This is the Plaza San Francisco during a tiny protest. The article mentions that they want to expand the square, but I don't know where it will go. The main street runs by the plaza and is only 2 lanes, though lanes don't really exist here and I've seen up to 4 vehicles side-by-side on this road.

At the protest, people 'crucified' themselves on the church. Why? Read this.



This is La Paz as seen from El Alto, the city above it. Yes, the houses go all the way back into the canyon.






And this is the center.











The article:

BOLIVIA: La Paz Struggles Against Suffocation
By Franz Chávez


LA PAZ, Jul 16 (IPS) - The noise of traffic, dissonant car horns, people marching and shouting slogans, and firework and dynamite explosions is beginning to suffocate the urban centre of La Paz, Bolivia's seat of government, and is forcing consideration of medium term solutions.

La Paz, founded on Oct. 20, 1548, is a unique city. Seen from above, its geographical setting is a great canyon dotted with small houses that seem to flow down from the mountain heights, plunge into the narrow valleys, cross a basin from north to south and disappear into the hills.

At an altitude of 3,850 metres above sea level at its highest point and 3,400 metres at its lowest, about one million people live in this city, most of whom are indigenous Aymara people, or mestizos, descended from indigenous and Spanish colonial ancestors.


Dark skinned and black haired, these people are combative at times of political turmoil and hardworking in peace time.

Migration from rural areas has created the adjacent city of El Alto, a sprawling outlying area with an estimated 800,000 people, on the Altiplano, at an altitude of 4,000 metres.

Thousands of people commute from El Alto to the centre of La Paz to deal with paperwork in the huge state apparatus, or to work in the private sector and in the shops and informal street markets, overwhelming a city designed according to the accidents of geography.

Narrow streets paved with stone, only wide enough for one vehicle at a time, with pavements where people must walk in single file, rise and fall with gradients of up to 45 degrees, leaving little room for innovative town planning, and creating an atmosphere that is extremely intimate, but unsuited to a 21st century city.

The presence in La Paz of the Executive and Legislative branches of government make it the logical place to demonstrate in support of social and labour demands aimed at changing government decisions. The concentration of institutions with power over the people's future has led to a feeling of asphyxiation among residents.

"The city is on the verge of collapse," Waldo Yanaguaya, expert at the Institute of Transport and Highways at the state Universidad Mayor de San Andrés, told IPS.

He quoted a study carried out at midday on a day when traffic was slow and congested around the central Plaza del Estudiante, which found that 680 litres of gasoline were consumed by 2,000 vehicles in one hour.

The cars moved at an average speed of seven kilometres per hour, while pedestrians can walk at an estimated five km per hour.

It is quite usual for traffic to be stopped by demonstrators on the central Mariscal Santa Cruz avenue. Depending on the number of protesters, vehicles can take up to an hour to crawl three km across the centre of La Paz -- or longer if the avenue is cut off with roadblocks, a frequent method of exerting pressure among organised social sectors.

Losses to shopkeepers because of the demonstrations, to transport companies because of the traffic jams, and others, have not been quantified but are a cause of concern to the business community.

Víctor, a young shoe-shiner who works in front of the main building of the municipal government of La Paz, says that on days when there are protests he only shines 15 pairs of shoes, whereas on normal days he has up to 30 customers and earns approximately two dollars.

Yanaguaya says that the city has to make a political decision to solve the street congestion problem, on behalf of the 86 percent of the population who use public transport services, as against a unionised minority of owners of transport vehicles.

"The municipal government has not taken the poor into account" when planning urban development, he says, and calls for a modern mass transit system based on a consultancy study financed by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

Public transport unions are capable of exerting a lot of pressure and are strongly supported by rightwing parties, so they have expanded their activities to the point where now 17,000 vehicles, including buses, minibuses, taxis and "trufis" (fixed-route taxis) are in circulation daily, Yanaguaya says.

But the booming numbers of pedestrians, traders and transport vehicles in the centre of La Paz has a socioeconomic root cause, according to the head of the municipal government's Urban Revitalisation Programme (PRU), Marco Camacho.

He has reviewed the history of large Latin American cities in the 1980s and 1990s, and concludes that structural reforms during that period encouraged informal traders to "invade" zones where large numbers of people are concentrated.

"In La Paz alone, 270,000 people congregate in the central area," he told IPS. This crowd of people are potential customers for the trinkets, used clothes and food that thousand of street traders sell from improvised stalls on the sidewalks of the narrow streets.

Between 1985 and 1989, the government downsized the administrative echelons of the state apparatus by 30,000 employees, many of whom took up street trading, an activity that pays no taxes and avoids the costs of services like water and electricity which regular shopkeepers have to pay, Camacho says.

Private buildings which previously housed companies importing textiles, domestic appliances and so on, have been transformed into shops selling a range of artisanal craftwork, organised somewhat like mini-malls. The real estate value of these buildings has tumbled, the head of the PRU says.

In addition to this social context, Camacho said the rainwater drainage system is deficient. He referred to the fateful day of Feb. 19, 2001, when a storm caused a rise in water levels, and water swept through the central avenue of the city with waves up to three metres high, causing 42 fatalities in half an hour.

From his office above El Prado, Camacho directs a 34 million dollar programme that started out as a risk prevention plan, and removed tons of earth from old channel systems. It temporarily blocks the roads, but it is trying to restore citizens' safety during the stormy months of January to March, the rainy season.

In the historic centre of the city, surrounded by buildings dating from Spanish colonial times and the early days of the republic, Camacho has drawn up an ambitious plan to create modern covered markets, where he would like to relocate hundreds of informal traders in order to free up the streets and ease the passage of people and cars.

In spite of discrepancies with architects' organisations, the plan is beginning with the construction of a pedestrian walkway in the conflictive Lucio Pérez Velasco square, a virtually obligatory route for cars, and will continue with the widening of the historic San Francisco square, to provide more space for social demonstrations without neglecting the architectural heritage, he said.

The planned building works are to conclude with the construction of a Central Urban Park on 40 hectares located between the central zone and the Miraflores neighbourhood, on the Laikakota hill, which commands an impressive panoramic view of the south of the city.

These urban renewal works will contribute to economic and social development and bring some order to street trading in La Paz, Camacho says.

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38551