摘要：Although the usefulness of walking and cycling to
promote health is increasingly recognized, the importance of civil society
leadership in developing new policies and activities is often overlooked.
This case study, of Living City (Ciudad Viva) a community-based organization in
Santiago, Chile, examines how several communities used knowledge about
transport's impact on the environment and health, gained through opposition
to a major highway project, to build effective sustainable urban transport
initiatives.
Inspired by urban reforms in Bogotá, Living City now focuses mainly on
"active transport" (formerly non-motorized), building the policies,
attitudes and infrastructure necessary to encourage walking and cycling, and
the inclusion of the differently abled. It has won two major awards for
innovation and now partners with NGOs in The Netherlands and elsewhere in
Chile and Latin America.
Moreover, Living City now organizes cycling-inclusive training programs,
design charrettes and participatory processes in cooperation with Santiago's
regional and national authorities. Its publication, La Voz de La Chimba, distributed free
throughout the city by volunteers, has helped to open people's eyes to the
implications of active transport for social equality and health, and
provided support to other citizens' initiatives, struggling to get off the
ground.
This experience illustrates how citizens' and community organizations
acquire important knowledge and practical experience in learning by doing
situations, and how they can learn to reach out to ordinary people and key
policymakers, building bridges across the citizen-policy divide to produce
innovative, win-win programs that simultaneously bring change at micro- and
macro-levels.
