There is a silent disaster in our country that deepens and extends: the urban disaster. In recent years built a political context in which the rulers assume the proactive role it should have on their cities, must be the creation unimaginative of road works.
In Monterrey the government tries to build a tunnel to cross the mountains of Cerro de la Silla, in Cuernavaca a second floor in Plan de Ayala Avenue, in Guadalajara, the second floor of 23 kilometers, in the State of Mexico over the second floor of peripheral, in the Federal District 40 miles of freeways and high in the aptly named "urban motorway" (Who wants to live in a city with a highway that runs through the middle?), in Morelia a mega tunnel that penetrates the Loma de Santa Maria, and overpasses in Saltillo have reached the point of being a high-speed orgy whose goal is to eliminate any light. Against this
barrage of public expenditure on road works, any city dweller can take a moment to ask: What are building the city where I live? No road work
not bring more cars. Economist Anthony Downs calls the principle of triple convergence, in which the calculations made by users of cars and other transportation change from the perception that a path runs faster than another. The problem is that all think alike and try to avoid traffic, we became the new traffic. Once we have a city expanded horizontally with a permanent problem of transportation and quality of life, we turn to ask: what was first the car or the pavement? The answer is not easy to capture. But the most studied arguments why more roads, more cars generated can be read in the article by the now Environment Secretary in the Federal District, Martha Delgado ("Who benefits from the peripheral double-decker?" Reform 26 / 12/04)
excessive construction of road works, is mounted in a clear alliance of political interests and money, consisting of: builders, developers, real estate, automotive, and politicians who use cement as a campaign message. This alliance will affect the urban form of our cities. It combines with the restricted land use, lack of public spaces, the abandonment of public transport, and removal of the pedestrian streets. This same alliance builds bridges rather than pedestrian traffic lights, high-speed major roads that divide neighborhoods and housing developments on the outskirts of cities, it raises the cost of services must be expanded horizontally, emits about 30% greenhouse gases in Mexico and are attributable at least 15 000 fatalities a year. It is accompanied by the federal government's discourse against taxes on cars, according to President Calderón as the negative externalities of the cars we have to take everyone, even the vast majority has no car. This alliance, in which all parties participate willingly, is responsible for urban disaster which we live. A disaster that produces social contexts such as Cancun, Ecatepec, and Ciudad Juárez.
The design of cities and living in them do not have to be Greek tragedy. Erroneous decisions of the past need not be destined for inevitable a city built for cars. Governments can correct. Each weight, public or private, that a government spends on a new street is a weight that could be spent on improving or expanding public transportation, to extend sidewalks. Every dollar that the federal government spends on petrol subsidy payment could be holding spend to subsidize new housing in urban centers.
If our cities do not have to be a tragedy, because we do not have to be spectators. Any motorist can stop being one, and it needs to demand that their government stop spending money as we spend. Http://andreslajous.blogs.com
Twitter: @ andreslajous
Master in Urban Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/editoriales/49037.html
In Monterrey the government tries to build a tunnel to cross the mountains of Cerro de la Silla, in Cuernavaca a second floor in Plan de Ayala Avenue, in Guadalajara, the second floor of 23 kilometers, in the State of Mexico over the second floor of peripheral, in the Federal District 40 miles of freeways and high in the aptly named "urban motorway" (Who wants to live in a city with a highway that runs through the middle?), in Morelia a mega tunnel that penetrates the Loma de Santa Maria, and overpasses in Saltillo have reached the point of being a high-speed orgy whose goal is to eliminate any light. Against this
barrage of public expenditure on road works, any city dweller can take a moment to ask: What are building the city where I live? No road work
not bring more cars. Economist Anthony Downs calls the principle of triple convergence, in which the calculations made by users of cars and other transportation change from the perception that a path runs faster than another. The problem is that all think alike and try to avoid traffic, we became the new traffic. Once we have a city expanded horizontally with a permanent problem of transportation and quality of life, we turn to ask: what was first the car or the pavement? The answer is not easy to capture. But the most studied arguments why more roads, more cars generated can be read in the article by the now Environment Secretary in the Federal District, Martha Delgado ("Who benefits from the peripheral double-decker?" Reform 26 / 12/04)
excessive construction of road works, is mounted in a clear alliance of political interests and money, consisting of: builders, developers, real estate, automotive, and politicians who use cement as a campaign message. This alliance will affect the urban form of our cities. It combines with the restricted land use, lack of public spaces, the abandonment of public transport, and removal of the pedestrian streets. This same alliance builds bridges rather than pedestrian traffic lights, high-speed major roads that divide neighborhoods and housing developments on the outskirts of cities, it raises the cost of services must be expanded horizontally, emits about 30% greenhouse gases in Mexico and are attributable at least 15 000 fatalities a year. It is accompanied by the federal government's discourse against taxes on cars, according to President Calderón as the negative externalities of the cars we have to take everyone, even the vast majority has no car. This alliance, in which all parties participate willingly, is responsible for urban disaster which we live. A disaster that produces social contexts such as Cancun, Ecatepec, and Ciudad Juárez.
The design of cities and living in them do not have to be Greek tragedy. Erroneous decisions of the past need not be destined for inevitable a city built for cars. Governments can correct. Each weight, public or private, that a government spends on a new street is a weight that could be spent on improving or expanding public transportation, to extend sidewalks. Every dollar that the federal government spends on petrol subsidy payment could be holding spend to subsidize new housing in urban centers.
If our cities do not have to be a tragedy, because we do not have to be spectators. Any motorist can stop being one, and it needs to demand that their government stop spending money as we spend. Http://andreslajous.blogs.com
Twitter: @ andreslajous
Master in Urban Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/editoriales/49037.html
