Page 11 - Teste nec

Guadalajara (during five months I interned with the environmental
ngo Colectivo Ecologista Jalisco where I observed their strategies to
influence urban policy and governance structures).
Enrique Peñalosa’s talk in Guadalajara was, in reality, a fund-raising
event of Ciudades Públicas, a non-governmental organization that
would eventually become Guadalajara 2020 (gdl 2020 from now
on) in 2004. Despite its name, Ciudades Públicas was a private-led
organization whose roots can be traced back to a small group of empre-
sarios from the local jewelry industry that started to organize in the mid
1990s to “clean up” Plaza Tapatía — a central public square where their
jewelry showrooms were located — from prostitutes, drug addicts and
informal street vendors. Initially the empresarios thought about hiring
a music band or an opera singer to raise funds for their cause but an
urban planner they knew recommended that they invite Enrique Pe-
ñalosa, “who was a world recognized expert in urbanism and has given
talks in many cities around the world” (gdl 2020 leader 1, personal
interview, 2013). While in this case it was this group of local empresarios
rather than an international organization who funded Peñalosa’s trip,
it was the “world recognition” he had cultivated thanks to his confer-
ences around the world what elevated him to the category of “world
expert” in urbanism: “We didn’t even know who he was, or his ideas, we
just wanted to have a recognized expert in urban issues that would be
able to attract many people” (gdl 2020 leader 1, personal interview,
2013). And although the empresarios were initially more interested in the
fund-raising possibilities of the event than in Peñalosa’s ideas, Peñalo-
sa’s visit resulted in two important outcomes: 1) it started shifting the
beliefs of the members of Ciudades Públicas and the objective of their
organization from their narrow and conservative emphasis on “clean-
ing up” Plaza Tapatía to the goal of transforming the city through trans-
portation and public space interventions; and 2) it helped forge a local
alliance of representatives of the private sector and media elites decided
to influence the government to translate those beliefs into public policy.
This rearrangement of urban governance in Guadalajara started with a
particular event: Peñalosa’s 2003 visit to Guadalajara and his narration
of Bogotá as a simplified story of urban transformation.

AN INFINITY OF SMALL THINGS: THE BOGOTÁ MODEL AS A
SIMPLISTIC STORY OF URBAN TRANSFORMATION LINKED TO
PUBLIC SPACE AND TRANSPORTATION POLICIES

About two thousand tapatíos — Guadalajara inhabitants — at-
tended Peñalosa’s talk at the Instituto Cultural Cabañas, a historical
building located at the heart of Plaza Tapatía. The auditorium was
packed with representatives of Guadalajara’s local and state govern-

68 PERSuASIVE PRACtItIONERS AND tHE ARt OF SIMPLIFICAtION ❙❙ Sergio Montero

03_montero_dossie_107_p58a75.indd 68 3/31/17 4:59 PM