Gil Penalosa
There was plenty of talk of parks and public transit during Gil Penalosa’s speech on Wednesday, Jan. 28, but what really got the crowd assembled at Thompson Rivers University going was a reference to Stuart Wood elementary.
“How are you going to convince people to live downtown if there is no school?” said Penalosa, a former parks commissioner and founder of the nonprofit 8-80 Cities, which works with municipalities to improve public spaces and pedestrian routes.
School District 73 voted to close the downtown school despite protest from some downtown advocates, though Kamloops city council mostly opted to stay out of the debate, citing jurisdictional issues.
Penalosa criticized that approach, saying councils should take activist roles when it comes to the sizes and locations of community schools, calling amalgamation “destructive” because it often leads to fewer children being able to walk to school or to friends’ homes after classes.
“We have to go to the board of education and we have to fight. The councillors and the mayor, they have to fight,” he said to cheers.
The evening talk was part of the Community Innovation Lab, a three-day series of workshops, speeches and events run by the Fresh Outlook Foundation. The foundation describes itself, and the event, as “inspiring community conversations for sustainable change.”
Penalosa encouraged participants to put more pressure on elected officials to prioritize public spaces, pedestrian-friendly streets and other accessibility measures.
Penalosa believes a healthy and economically sustainable community is one designed to ensure citizens of all ages can get around safely. To gauge if Kamloops makes the cut, he encouraged people to visualize a child of eight and a person of 80 trying to walk through their neighbourhoods.
“When you have that child you love and that 80-year-old person in your mind, ask yourself — would you send them across that intersection?”
To improve cities, Penalosa suggests widening sidewalks, offering safe separation for cyclists when they share the road with cars, lowering speed limits in residential neighbourhoods — a practice he said is gaining popularity in the United Kingdom — and improving bus shelters.
Penalosa sees building those sorts of infrastructure pieces as a matter of priorities more than money.
“If those sidewalks become more important than widening the street, they’re going to do it,” he said, encouraging the audience to build alliances with a wide variety of groups, including businesses and the public health sector, “until everyone’s talking about sidewalks.”
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