Towards Carfree Cities VI

9:00 AM EDT on September 20, 2006

September 20-24, 2006
BogotÃ¡, Colombia
http://www.worldcarfree.net/conference/

From September 20-24, 2006, the Towards Carfree Cities conference will be held in the Americas for the first time. Hosted by Fundacion Ciudad Humana in Bogota, Colombia, the conference promises inspiring speakers and interactive workshops. On-site visits will allow participants to witness all the remarkable changes put in place in Bogota over the past years, changes which are now spreading throughout Latin America and abroad.

In the words of former Bogota mayor Enrique Penalosa (one of the keynote speakers): "We were able to change the priority from a city for cars which is what had been built for the last 80 years, to what I believe is much more a city for people [...] We made sidewalks. We widened footpaths in many cases, even taking away space from car roads. We built, or rebuilt, about more than a thousand parks. We built some fantastic schools and nurseries and libraries. And we built about 350 kilometres of bike paths, and we created maybe what is today the world's best bus system."

Aaron Naparstek

AARON NAPARSTEK is the founder and former editor-in-chief of Streetsblog. Based in Brooklyn, New York, Naparsteks journalism, advocacy and community organizing work has been instrumental in growing the bicycle network, removing motor vehicles from parks, and developing new public plazas, car-free streets and life-saving traffic-calming measures across all five boroughs. Naparstek is the author of "Honku: The Zen Antidote for Road Rage" (Villard, 2003), a book of humorous haiku poetry inspired by the endless motorist sociopathy observed from his apartment window. Prior to launching Streetsblog, Naparstek worked as an interactive media producer, pioneering some of the Web's first music web sites, online communities, live webcasts and social networking services. Naparstek is currently in Cambridge with his wife and two young sons where he is enjoying a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. He has a master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and a bachelor's degree from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Naparstek is a co-founder of the Park Slope Neighbors community group and the Grand Army Plaza Coalition. You can find more of his work here: http://www.naparstek.com.

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