Enrique Peñalosa, former mayor of Bogotá, will visit Duke University and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Jan. 21-23 to talk about his innovative urban transit and public space projects, which he introduced to Bogotá in the last decade.During his visit to the Triangle, Peñalosa will give a public lecture, “Cities, Equity and Quality of Life,” at 6 p.m. Jan. 22 in the Nicholas School of the Environment’s Field Auditorium, on Duke’s West Campus. The lecture is free and open to the public.Peñalosa, who graduated from Duke in 1978 with a bachelor’s degree in economics and history, has been awarded the Eisenhower Fellowship, National Simon Bolivar Prize for Journalism and the Prize of the Society of Economists of Bogotá and Cundinamarca. During his tenure as mayor of Bogotá (1998-2001), he successfully advocated for sustainability and mobility in the city’s transportation system. In an article in Semana.com, Peñalosa said, “An advanced city is not a place where the poor move about in cars, rather it’s where even the rich use public transportation.” Peñalosa gave a TED talk in 2013 on why buses represent democracy in action.He has been featured in The New York Times, PBS Television, BBC and many others, and has advised cities throughout the world, including Cape Town, Denver, Berkeley, Seattle, Melbourne, Sao Paulo and New York City. While in residency, Peñalosa will visit classes at Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill and participate in a reading group and workshop.Peñalosa was invited by the Duke Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies in partnership with the Duke University Middle East Studies Center, the Nicholas School of the Environment and the UNC Center for Sustainable Community Design to participate in the Rethinking Global Cities Project.
