About this episode
Pop quiz: what is the most critical—yet criminally overlooked—frontier in our battle against climate change? If you said “cities”, you get the gold star! Drawing from decades of global experience transforming urban landscapes, Gil Penalosa, today’s guest and founder of 8 80 Cities, argues that how we design our cities in the next 40 years will fundamentally determine human sustainability for centuries to come. While most climate conversations obsess over energy, Penalosa, who came in second place in 2022’s Toronto mayoral race, passionately demonstrates that urban planning is the secret weapon we’ve been missing—a holistic approach that combines health, equity, environmental sustainability, and human joy. His message is both urgent and optimistic: by reimagining cities as interconnected, walkable, green spaces that prioritize people over cars, we can create solutions that are not sacrifices, but pathways to a more vibrant, connected, and livable world. With infectious enthusiasm and razor-sharp insights, Gil challenges listeners to see urban design not as a technical challenge, but as a profound opportunity to reshape how humans live, move, and thrive together.
Notes and resources
Full transcript
Michael Gold (00:01)
Gil Penalosa, welcome to Climate Swings. Thank you so much for being here.
Gil Penalosa (00:06)
Thank you Michael for inviting me. Happy to be here.
Michael Gold (00:10)
So can you just start with a brief sketch and outline of your professional background and what you’re currently up to just to get our audience up to speed?
Gil Penalosa (00:22)
Okay, originally I’m from Bogota, Colombia, and where, as I say, in my professional life, I was in the private sector running a television production and broadcasting company. Then I went into the public sector and I was commissioner where I led the construction of over 200 parks. Also, I took a small program of open streets of just about eight miles and we turned it into
the world’s largest pop-up park, where every Sunday and holiday we have over a million and a half people walking, running, cycling. 26 years ago, I moved to Toronto. Well, I went to school a couple of years at UNC Chapel Hill, and also I had a master’s from UCLA. And in Toronto, I’ve been living for the last 26 years. And about 20 years ago, I created a nonprofit
called 880 Cities. And now I moved from being executive director just to be chair, founder and chair. And I’ve been over the last 20 years, I have worked in over 350 cities in all continents. And a little bit that’s where I am today.
Michael Gold (01:40)
And how did you start your interest in urban urbanization, urban planning, urban design? I’m just kind of curious how that interest got sparked in you originally.
Gil Penalosa (01:54)
Well, actually, it began when I was in high school. The UN were creating the largest ever conference by the UN on human settlements. And it took place in Vancouver. And just by luck, our father was in charge of it. He was the number two at the UN as Undersecretary General.
And he traveled all over the world inviting presidents and ministers. He visited more than 98% of the countries. And he would share with, especially with my older brother and me, lot of the anecdotes of the cities, the things that he felt that was working well, the things that were not. And he invited us to that conference in Vancouver. And I don’t know if it was Vancouver or UN Habitat or what, but both
my brother and I were bitten by cities. Years later, he has been mayor of Bogota twice, and I have worked in over 350 cities. And although it was, I was just finishing high school and then starting university. But one thing that concerns me is that a lot of the problems that they were talking in 1976 are the same that we have now, except for population growth.
Population growth was by far the biggest issue in 76. And through all of the nations getting together, they were able to stop the population growth. The peak was about 19, about 10 years later, 1986, 88. And since then, the population, the growth has been coming down. The total population is growing because there are more children and youth than older. So
it’s gonna take even another 30 or 40 years, but it is clearly decreasing. So on the population side, but social issues such as climate change, quality of water, the quality of the air, sprawl, inequalities, slums, all of that was happening 50 years ago. I don’t know why is it that we have not changed.
It’s not a technical issue, it’s not a financial issue, it’s a political issue, but not really a political party. It’s not left or right, but it’s in general about how do we want to live as human beings.
Michael Gold (04:29)
And just keeping it kind of in the retrospective zone for a while, thinking back to those very early days of kind of the urban planning, urban thinking movement that you were a part of when you were basically just in high school or at the very beginning of your career. What were the main entry points when it comes to the discussion around sustainability?
What did people think about most? I mean, you mentioned population growth, but clearly there were other facets to the idea of what makes a sustainable city at that time. And it would be great if you could just kind of provide some color and context on that.
Gil Penalosa (05:14)
Well, sustainability was obviously was not as important as it is today. Although many people were talking about it, but clearly not as much today, everybody. Today, the problem is how to get decision makers to move from talking to doing. But everyone is talking. Yeah, you know in the 80s people were not really talking as much.
When I left UNC Chapel Hill and I went to Colombia, for a year I worked in the slums of a city called Cali. Slums that had been encroached some places by pirate developers and there was no water, no sewage. It was extreme, extreme poverty. I mean, every other day I would see a child die and they would just say, stomach issues.
Without clean water or whatever they would do. It was so poor that some people would go around with a microphone asking for donations to the neighbors just to buy a blanket to wrap their body and bury their body. So it was very poor. So clearly the issues of water and quality of air and whatever were an issue. But I would say that it was not as big of an issue such as planting trees
or less cars or less pro or the bus really happening everywhere. And I think that’s one of the big problems. I think that in general, Michael, when we look at the cities that have been built in the last 70 years, most of it is bad or not good at least with rare exceptions like acupuncture.
The majority of the communities that have been built in the last 70 years are not good for quality of air or quality of water or climate change or mental health or physical or social health. They’re not good almost for anything. So the reality is that we need to realize, come to terms with that, and we need to do cities radically different. We also need to manage the cities radically different.
For example, all the existing infrastructure must be used in multiple ways. So there are many things that we need to do differently. It’s really incredible how long we’ve been doing this. And there have been some warning signs, but we have not taken. This sprawl has continued, the single-family housing based on coal, on oil,
on gas and we really have not done a very good job with that. I mean, we have done amazing things in other areas. I don’t want especially the young people to be pessimistic and think that nothing has been done. No, when I was born, maybe eight out of 10 people were living in extreme poverty, less than $2 per day. Today is less than one and soon it will be zero.
So it’s really incredible to have gone from eight out of 10 to less than one out of 10. When I was born, maybe seven out of 10 didn’t have clean water. Now almost everybody has clean water. Less than one out of 10 don’t have clean water. So I mean, we have done some major improvements, but clearly not enough.
Michael Gold (08:51)
Yeah, I mean, there is a growing recognition and awareness among urbanists and city officials that cities are major actors in the global environmental movement, essentially, or major actors at a global environmental level, especially now when it comes to massive concerns like climate change.
I’m kind of curious to get a sense of in over the scope of your career, how the discussion among city officials about their role in issues like climate change has evolved. Because if from what I, from what I understand you’re saying, there are a lot of kind of, on the ground issues that haven’t gotten any better, but it does seem like there are a lot more, there’s a lot more awareness around what cities need to do or the role that they’re playing
in these big picture problems.
Gil Penalosa (09:48)
Yes. Well, also, like when they had the UN conference on human settlements, when UN Habitat was created, the technicians, the PhDs, the academics, they knew the problem and they knew also the solutions. So it’s not like they didn’t know. Even we have come to realize that many of the oil companies, have known for decades and decades and decades the impact,
and they just kept quiet, similar like the cigarettes kept quiet of how much damage the cigarette was doing. The oil companies kept quiet, total lack of integrity, total lack of care for humanity. So I mean, people knew, but politically is when I said that it was not such an awareness. I mean, there was not enough form of awareness that politicians will run on
having fewer cars and smaller roads and lower speed and more density because maybe they thought they would not get reelected. So it was clear that 40 years ago, a lot of people knew what was happening, what needed to happen. mean, some of the best places, I live in Toronto, some of the best places of Toronto were built 50 years ago, much better than we have built in the last 30. I mean, Copenhagen.
A lot of cities were doing well 40, 50 years ago. So it’s not that no one, but in the case of North America, US, Canada, Australia, UK, and so on, the sprawl, for example, it has been really terrible. So we went from a period where maybe 70 years ago, it was mostly technical people that knew, including the people doing the damage, as I say, as the oil companies.
Then it became a little bit more mainstream and politicians knew it. And maybe 20 years ago, people began talking about it, everybody, and then some acting on it. And now everybody talks about it. But still, there is not enough action. Something that has been really, really bad for this is that I think many people have politicized these issues when this has nothing to do with politics. It’s about humanity.
It’s not that the left-wing people are going to die and the right-wing people are going to survive or vice versa. It has nothing to do with political parties. It’s about humanity. So there should be an agreement on the what. Maybe there might be differences on the how. How are we going to tackle this? But on the what, there should be absolutely no disagreement. And I think from the point of view of environmental issues, I think that there is no doubt
that how we build cities has the largest impact on environment, on climate change, for better or for worse. Some people, some ignorant people claim that the cities are bad for the environment, when it’s just the opposite. Cities is the best thing that could happen for the environment. I mean, if you think of a couple of buildings having 800 condo units on a block.
Imagine those 800 units in one block as single-family housing. How many blocks and blocks and blocks of streets, of sewage, and pipes, and water, and sidewalks, and maintenance, and whatever would have to be done for 800 single-family housing when you can put all of those in one block? So there is absolutely no doubt. So even when they look at that and they say, but the cities are producing CO2,
when you take a look at the total number, but you got to take a look at that per capita, per housing unit, per person. And there is nothing better for the environment than having dense cities. And I think that when I was starting, Michael, I mentioned how the population is decreasing in all of the top 20, 30 countries, so-called developed. The rate of growth is decreasing. So we need to have about 2.1 children per woman
to be at zero growth and also zero decrease. Well, all of us are way below. The US is like 1.7. Canada, we thought we were about 1.5. The number just came out at 1.3, same as Japan and others. South Korea is the lowest at 0.88. So above 2.1, there are very few countries, mostly in Africa and some cities in India. But even by 2100, most of the countries like
Even India is going to peak around 2017, 2018, and it’s going to decrease by about a hundred million already by 2100. China is going to decrease by about 300 million. So the population is decreasing. So we need, we’re in a very special moment that we need to use this population growth. Like in the case of the U.S., the U.S. is going to build around 50 million homes in the next 40 years.
Part of it is because of population growth, because of immigrants, and also because the Hispanics are having a lot of children, which is good for this. And also because there are fewer people per household. So if you have a, whatever, a thousand units, and you got 2.5 people per household, you’re gonna need a lot more units if now you’re gonna have only 1.5 people per household. A lot more people are living alone.
So that means that you need more units because there is even with the same amount of people but living fewer per household, you need more units. In the case of Canada, all of the medium and large cities are gonna increase the population between 40 and 100% in the next 30 years. We have an amazing opportunity with this population growth in the US and in Canada and Australia because we can fix
the many of the errors, many of the mistakes that we have done in the last 50, 70 years of sprawl. If politicians have the guts to say all of the population growth is gonna be in the existing footprint, all of it, no more sprawl. So we can go to the arterials and provide some density in the arterials. I mean, in the suburbs, in the suburbs people don’t walk. Why? Because there’s no place to walk to
Michael Gold (16:15)
Mm-hmm.
Gil Penalosa (16:27)
because it’s not safe because the cars go too fast. But the number one reason is because there is no place to walk to. Why is it that there is no place? Because there is not enough density, but in the arterials. So for listeners, the roads that are two or three lanes on each side, so four and six lanes total, if instead of having one or two floors, that is what we have in most of those, sometimes retail on the first and something in the second. If we put six floors.
Michael Gold (16:36)
Mm-hmm.
Gil Penalosa (16:56)
I’m not talking about 50 stories because when we talk about density, people have the wrong impression that density is because we want 50 story buildings. Now, I usually hate 50 story buildings. We can have the same density in five story buildings next to each other than in 50 stories every other block. But the quality of life is totally different. In five, six, seven stories, people get to know their neighbors. It’s easy to build community.
If one of the buildings is aging poorly, you fix it. If it’s aging very bad, you tear it down and you do another. When you have a 50 story building, you don’t know anybody. An elevator breaks down and you have a traffic jam worse than in a highway. If the building is aging poorly, no one fixes it because it’s too expensive. It’s 50 stories. If it’s aging really bad, no one turns it down because it’s 50 stories. So the reality is we need to tell people that we seem to think that there are two options,
Michael Gold (17:33)
Mm-hmm.
Gil Penalosa (17:53)
single-family housing or gigantic buildings. And since people hate gigantic buildings, then they fight and fight and fight because they want to keep the single-family housing.
Michael Gold (18:02)
So the connection between urban density and reducing the land and the resource footprint of people, basically of human settlements and climate is very well established at this point. And in fact, your organ… Yeah, yeah.
Gil Penalosa (18:18)
Completely, completely.
I mean, a friend of mine that is also Colombian, but I’m Colombo-Canadian, he’s Colombo-French, Carlos Moreno, wrote a beautiful book called 15 Minute City. And I think the big approach, the innovative approach is not about that everything should be walkable. Always people want things walkable. 100 years, it’s only in the last 100 years with the cars
that people started moving to the suburbs and everything became very, very far away and people started using their cars to get to every place. Before the car arrived, all of the cities were 15 minute city. The US cities, when you look at the maps of the cities before they were torn apart and broken down by highways in the 30s, in the 40s, in the 50s, all the US cities were 15 minute cities, all of them. And then when they broke them apart, then…
Michael Gold (19:11)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Gil Penalosa (19:13)
Why is that the 15 minute city is in, it might be 15, might be 20, might be 10, it doesn’t matter the number. Also because it depends on who’s doing the walking. But the concept is simple. We should have all of our basic needs within walking distance. We should be able to walk to the library, to the park, to the school, to public transit, to grocery stores, to the restaurants and everybody. We forget, for example, sometimes I go to our neighbors and people say, Gil, here everybody drives,
even in the wealthiest neighborhood of the US, 30% of the people or more do not drive. Everyone under 16 don’t drive. Many over 70 don’t drive. And also more and more, many between 16 and 70 don’t drive. So why is this so important for the environment? Because then there will be fewer cars, fewer contamination, fewer noise. So it’s gonna be good for all types of weather. During the pandemic,
during the pandemic, cities like Oakland, California. In Oakland, California, as of tomorrow, all of the neighborhood streets, all of them, like 80, 90 miles of streets are gonna be slow streets, slow. Only for the people that live in the neighborhood and only at 10 miles an hour. So when people were on arterials in a traffic jam, they have to stay on the arterials. They cannot cut through the neighborhood full speed.
These neighborhoods are only for the people that live there, are only a 10 miles. The quality of the air became better. The noise became low. They became safe. Children were playing on the streets. Old, olders, people with disabilities, mental, physical. So we can do a lot of things that are better. I mean, the issue of how we’ve been doing cities, Michael, is so easy. For example, you fly over the city.
When you fly almost over any city, it’s easy to see where the wealthy people live and where the poor people live. Because where the wealthy people live, there are lots of trees and parks. Where the poor people live, there fewer or not trees and no parks. So it’s something that’s obvious. Now we have come, all the data shows the benefits of trees. They clean the air, they absorb the water in the big rains. I mean, multiple benefits.
However, for example, in Toronto, we have 28% tree canopy. And people say, oh, how good we have 28%. Yeah, but we shouldn’t look at numbers city-wide. We should look at numbers at the neighborhood level. The wealthy neighborhoods have over 50% tree canopy. The low-income neighborhoods have less than 10, and some less than 5%. So if I live in a neighborhood with 5% tree canopy, I don’t care if the city has 28, if mine has only five.
So that is the issue where I said that cities, need to be equitable, sustainable, and fun. And in the case of the trees, it’s very clear that we need them to be sustainable, but also we need equity. So it’s not just the wealthy neighborhoods that benefit from the trees, but all neighborhoods, especially so we should focus on the low income ones.
Michael Gold (22:30)
Right. And bringing it back to the climate connection, your organization actually did a webinar recently. I believe the title was something like, The Best Climate Activist is a Good Urban Planner. And as I was mentioning, the connection between climate action and urban design and reducing the footprint of people is very well established, but it does not seem to be a particularly strong piece of the broader climate advocacy
landscape, which is heavily focused on energy. It’s focused on agriculture often. So why do you think people aren’t talking about the role of urban design in climate more often?
Gil Penalosa (23:20)
I think mostly because we are kind of put in a box and we only talk about a small thing. The other day was in a city where they are doing a gigantic highway. And no, they’re even doing, I’m sorry, an LRT, a light rail, which is really, really good. And one day the head woke up and said, what if we put it underground? It’s gonna cost only 2.4 billion more.
And people didn’t say anything and he’s building it right now underground. For the environment, it’s terrible to do underground things. The amount of concrete, the amount of energy, the amount. So it’s going to be the same train at the same speed, fewer stations, and it’s going to cost 2.4 billion additional. And I didn’t see anybody complaining. For example, people, the housing advocates.
How many housing they could have done with those 2.4 billion? Why were they not marching on the streets against us and saying, look, we could build so many houses or the cyclist organizations or the tree organizations or the others. But no, people are only talking when they are discussing the budget for homelessness, they talk about homelessness. We could have ended homelessness in that city if the train had gone above ground and not below ground.
So I think one of the biggest points that we are not connecting the dots. I think that even more post-pandemic, everything we do in cities should be almost like under the umbrella of urban health. By urban health, mean physical, mental and social. Of course, by physical is our bodies, by mental our brain and social our relationship. So every decision we say, should we be planting trees in the wealthy neighborhoods that have
have access to the mayor so they can advocate, but they already have over 50% tree canopy? Or should we prioritize the trees in the lower income neighborhoods where very few people have trees? So if we say, from the point of view of health, what would work? So I think that climate change, environment and public health should be in everything. It should be, if cities were making decisions based on the impact.
And like sustainability, I really like the definition of sustainability based on sustainable happiness. That is the happiness of the individual, the community, or the global well-being, as long as it doesn’t affect others, other generations or the future. So if we had urban health and sustainability as the guidelines on every decision, there shouldn’t be any project in any city contemplated
without having the impact on those two. And I’m sure that we will be doing things very, very differently. Also, another thing, Michael, is because I’m very concerned that a lot of people that talk about sustainability, two things are having a huge negative impact. One is that they are allowing these two politicize, which is crazy.
Michael Gold (26:27)
Mm-hmm.
Gil Penalosa (26:29)
because this is not left or right. I remember with Michael Bloomberg was mayor of New York. A lot of the decisions that he was making in New York and you study what was happening in Portland, one in the East Coast, one in the West Coast, one very capitalist, one very socialist. They were doing exactly the same things. They were promoting public transit. They were promoting a bike. They were promoting walkability, planting trees. So it’s a huge error to say because then
Michael Gold (26:52)
Mm-hmm.
Gil Penalosa (26:57)
the Republicans or the conservatives, they come to power and they say, no, I’m not about sustainability. No, they should be the most sustainable because it is about conserving. So I think one thing that is a huge mistake has been to allow to politicize issues. And the second that I think is terrible is to show as if sustainability was making a sacrifice. People say, ⁓ I’m gonna be sustainable. How terrible? No.
Michael Gold (27:14)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Gil Penalosa (27:26)
We can be much happier and much healthier and live much better in a more sustainable way. I think it is nothing negative, but people tend to see, my God, I’m gonna have this gigantic house. The people in the US have never ever, ever have as many things, as much money and as much things as today. But the levels of happiness have been coming down. So it’s very clear that having a bigger car, a bigger house, a bigger this
Michael Gold (27:50)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Gil Penalosa (27:55)
is not making people happy. So sustainability is not synonymous to sacrifice, just the opposite. Sustainability might be freedom and happiness.
Michael Gold (27:57)
Yeah.
Yeah, that’s actually really where I was headed with my next question where you see a lot of cities that are implementing net zero targets for climate. And a lot of times the issue gets framed in a way that amplifies the idea of trade-offs and the idea of sacrifice, as you were saying. How can urban climate goals be met in a way that also optimizes for
you know, well-being of citizens and green space and, you know, fun and abundance kind of as you were discussing.
Gil Penalosa (28:49)
Well, I think that we need to focus on the benefits. It’s not about walking or cycling or trees. Those are the means, not the end. So we need to realize, inner citizens, what do they care? What do they care? For example, when we’re talking about having fewer cars, the cars in North America are very, very, very expensive. The people that have a private car in the US are spending over 20% of their income on mobility. And if they are low income people, it’s like 30% of their income.
It’s very expensive. There is nothing, nothing that could improve the economic situation more than being able to downsize from two to one or from one to zero. Because if people walk, bike, and use public transit in the US, they’re going to spend 4% of their income and a car 20%. So if they go from 20 to four, they’re going to save 16. What are they going to do with the 16? They’re going to spend it in the local economy.
So it’s going to be good for the restaurant. They’re going to fix their garden and their house. So it’s going to be good for the local economy. So we need to tell people, you don’t have money to go on vacations. You don’t have money even to go to dinner with your family. Here, it’s as if you won the lottery because you’re going to have this 16% this year and next and next next and forever. So it’s a lot of money. So we should focus on whatever matters to them.
Maybe if they don’t care about money, but they care about health, then we gotta say, why is it walking so important? Because pretty much the magic pill is called physical activity. And the only way, the only way that we can be physically active is if we walk or bike as a normal part of everyday life. Because we need to do, it’s not about doing marathons, it’s only 30 minutes a day, 30 minutes, but it has to be five or more days a week. The only way to do it is walking or cycling.
You can play tennis once or twice a week. You might play golf, you might do what? But if you want to do five or more days a week, large groups of population is only walking or cycling. So we need to see what is it that matters to people. Let me give you an example. When the parents are dropping kids off at the school, it’s very dangerous. They are driving very fast because they are late to work. Not that kids are late to work, they are late to work. And then in places like Paris,
they created school streets. And school streets is basically that the street in front of the school is closed to cars. Initially, the mayor thought about two hours in the morning, two hours in the afternoon, and then she said, what if we do it permanent? So now they have done over 300 schools. Over 200 of those are permanent. But then you gotta say, is it about car free, car free, so growth? No, no, no, no. It’s not a good sale.
Because many people, when you spend 20% of your income on the car, oh, you want to fight for the car. So no, she said in Paris, she said, what do people care in Paris? Green. So she said, we’re green in Paris. And when we make this a new public space, we’re going to plant trees and flowers and plants and all kinds. So she said, around green. In London, in London, the UK, they are doing exactly the same program. But in London, they are not as green, but they are very concerned about the quality of the air.
Michael Gold (31:56)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Gil Penalosa (32:15)
So the mayor
said, look, we cannot continue. When the cars are dropping kids off, the classroom that are near the drop off area, the quality of the air is poisoned for over two hours. So we are poisoning our own children. So he said, we’re gonna do school streets because of quality of air. So you need to find what is it that matters to people. Is it the quality of the air or is it greening or is it health or is it whatever? So the same thing is happening in the US. It becomes very dangerous.
We should not allow anyone to be dropping kids off near the classrooms because we are poisoning our own children. But we gotta focus on the benefit. What is the benefit to, in the case of politicians, sometimes we need to have five cards in the pocket. One with the benefits to health, one to the environment, one to economic development, because maybe each counselor has a different priority. Since all of these things are good for all of us, sustainability is good for everything.
Michael Gold (33:14)
Mm-hmm.
Gil Penalosa (33:14)
But then
we gotta come out with the card of benefits that matters to that specific decision maker.
Michael Gold (33:21)
Yeah, there’s a part of a big a big facet of the climate movement calls for essentially the electrification of everything. So that includes electric vehicles and homes and buildings and whatnot. How do you see the sort of broader theory of change that you advocate around urban planning being in having a synergy with those kinds of goals, those energy and electrification related goals? Or are there
points of tension between them potentially.
Gil Penalosa (33:53)
No, think that everything that improves the quality, the sustainability is good. Everything. So anything that meets sustainable goals or health goals are good. But of course we need to do better. It’s not what is a little bit better, but what is much better. For example, things such as the size of the building. If you do a six story or 12 story in wood
it’s going to be much better than if you do 50 story in metal. So then those tall buildings environmentally are very, very negative. The cars, regardless of the car, if it’s electric or hydrogen or gasoline, it takes a lot of energy to build. It requires a lot of space. It’s gigantic. It’s kind of crazy that we
think that we need such gigantic cars to move one person. So even if it’s electric, it’s not gonna be good. We need to eliminate. Also, it’s about equity. It is really crazy that we have allowed to think that eight, 10, 12, 14 year olds depend on someone with a car just to take him for an ice cream or to the school or to the park.
They should be able, an eight-year-old should be able to go anywhere in the city, walking, cycling, in public transit. They should not have to depend on people with cars. So even if the cars are electric, it’s one step forward, but clearly there’s not enough. So it’s not enough having four cars in one home or two. We need to reduce so the issues of having proximity are equally valid, of children and youth having more autonomy are valid.
Michael Gold (35:34)
Mm-hmm.
Gil Penalosa (35:47)
So stopping sprawl is equally valid. The height of the building and the materials that are used to build them is equally valid. So yes, we can electrify many facets.
I’m totally in agreement with electrifying more, but also we need to be very careful where that electricity is coming from and also not to think that it’s quite an unlimited source of energy so that then we can waste.
Michael Gold (36:11)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. So the idea of cars in particular, ⁓ gets very freighted with cultural and emotional and political connotations as you’ve alluded to, of course. And it takes a kind of, ⁓ bold public persona to really strongly advocate for less cars in, especially in North American context where the cities are so
car-centric and people are so car dependent. You ran for mayor of Toronto in 2022. Did you have a platform about cars specifically while you were running? Because it’s so closely tied to the climate discussion. I’m curious how you address that in a way that people will actually come along with you on that.
Gil Penalosa (37:10)
Well, think we need to be honest with people and to realize, and I was telling people, by the way, I came in second place out of 34 candidates. So it was only me, the only one who actually challenged the current mayor. And there is no city the size of Toronto in the world that have solved mobility to the private car. None. If that was a possibility, there would be hundreds of examples because every city has tried
but none have solved mobility. So we need to be very clear and honest with people and say, it’s not through the private car. But nevertheless, then we allow people crazy like the premier of Ontario that he said, I’m gonna tear apart the bike lanes that are taking space from the cars. Who said they’re taking space from the cars? Why not use the car taking space from the bicycles? It’s something that is completely crazy.
I, so that was one of the things we do need to reduce. We need to have many, many more. Also from the point of view of vulnerability, the most vulnerable is the people walking, then cycling, then in transit, then in cars. So that should be the order of priority. Also the CO2 they emit, again, walking and cycling, almost nothing, then public transit, then cars. So those should be our absolute priority. And also,
is having citywide transit. For example, we are doing now in Toronto some subways, underground subways, very, very, very expensive that are not going to solve mobility. We need citywide public transit. So assuming that money was not an issue, we might even consider that option. But given the fact that money is a big issue, then we can do either
10 kilometers of underground subway or 10 miles of underground subway, or we can do 100 of bus rapid transit or 40 of light rail LRTs. So the reality is that we need to come up with certain decisions. I mean, sometimes even simple decisions, traffic, people are obsessed with congestion. One thing that I said, what if…
the mayor of any city in North America would come out and say, hey, let’s do a campaign. Let’s create the community working hours. What is the community working hours? Is that everybody works from home or from the office or from anywhere. Everybody works from 11 to three. And if you are a morning person, you can start at seven and leave at three or at eight or at nine or at 10 or at 11. So instead of everybody starting at nine
and living at five and creating huge traffic jams around nine and around five. Allow four hours to arrive and four hours to leave. People are gonna be happier. People are gonna be more productive because all of the sudden, the morning people are gonna be able to arrive early and leave early. The night people will arrive late and leave late. Simple things like that can also work. So we need to come up with decisions, but the problem is that…
we need to have a combination of vision and guts. And if we don’t have vision and action, things don’t happen. So some people develop a vision, but don’t have the action. So then people become frustrated because they know what needs to be done, but don’t do it. Others have actions, but no vision. So then they are doing here, here, here, here, it’s like a Frankenstein because they’re doing lots of things, but they don’t click. So the vision…
Michael Gold (40:51)
Mm-hmm.
Gil Penalosa (40:52)
The vision is really simple. It’s like doing the drawing on a jigsaw puzzle. When you’re the jigsaw puzzle, the city that you want, what is the city that you want to become? Then it doesn’t matter which pieces of the puzzle you are doing, as long as they’re pieces of the same puzzle. And the next government will do other pieces and the other other, as long as there is a shared agreement on the vision.
In the pandemic, we told people, hey, stay home for a few days. Within two or three days, we started seeing in cities all over how buildings that we couldn’t see, mountains that we couldn’t see appeared. And then it was not only Delhi in India, it was Milan in Italy, it was cities everywhere. So it was as if we had gotten a magic wand and say, you want clean air? It’s very simple, fewer cars. You have fewer cars, you have cleaner air. We have…
Michael Gold (41:28)
Mm-hmm.
Gil Penalosa (41:44)
many millions of people that are either dying or have lung problems for life because of the bad quality of air. We know how to clean it. Why don’t we clean it? It’s kind of a lot of this seem like common sense but common sense is the least common.
Michael Gold (42:04)
How did you address climate more generally in your run for mayor? Did you incorporate it as a part of your messaging in a prominent way? And how did you find that it landed?
Gil Penalosa (42:18)
Well, I think that the citizens almost everywhere are much more forward thinkers than the elected officials. One of the problems with elected officials, especially when you have re-elections, is that when they win, their number one priority is how to get re-elected in four years. And the best way to get re-elected is do nothing, nothing new at least. Don’t rock the boat. Just do more of the same.
But the citizens are prepared, the citizens, when you look at the surveys, citizens do want better quality of air and better quality of water and better public transit and more green spaces and more trees. And when they look at the buildings, citizens want, even the ones that don’t want any buildings, say, okay, but if it’s five story next to each other, that will be okay. They hate the 50 story, but so.
In a lot of these decisions that are about sustainability, people are very much in favor, very much in favor, much more than elected officials. And also there’s a lot of things that you can do on a trial basis. For example, these school streets. Initially, you don’t have to invest lots of money changing all of the street in front of the school. Do the school street and say, let’s do it for one year. Let’s see how it works.
If it doesn’t, so put some gates. And if they don’t, after a year, people want cars, okay, you take out. But if people like it, then they can stay. So there’s a lot of things that you can do on trial basis that were a lot. Congestion charge. When they started with congestion charge in Sweden, initially they said, okay, we’re gonna do it for a year. And we’re gonna charge, I don’t remember how many dollars to go into the city. And they said, okay.
Michael Gold (43:51)
Mm-hmm.
Gil Penalosa (44:11)
It’s one year. So people say, what a stupid idea. I mean, the people are opposing, say what a stupid idea, but in one year it’s going to go back. No, one year later, people loved it. And actually they increased, they doubled the cost of congestion charge. But sometimes when people think that is going to be permanent, then they oppose like crazy. When you say, this congestion charge is going to be for a year. Let’s see if it works. Then people become much more open about it. So I think that is another
Michael Gold (44:36)
Mm-hmm.
Gil Penalosa (44:41)
way to bring sustainability decisions so that people will accept them. Maybe if in Sweden they had said this is a permanent measure, maybe there would have been too much opposition to do it. But when people realized that it was going to be a one-year pilot, they said, OK. After a year pilot, they realized it was not the end of the world, and they made it permanent. So I think those are the kind of things that we could be doing a lot more.
Michael Gold (45:08)
Yeah. And sort of along the sort of on the flip side of the sort of climate mitigation question and how cities can become responsible climate actors, there’s also pressures that cities are facing from a changing climate itself. So you see heat waves in more intense rainstorms, flooding, et cetera. How has the discussion about climate resilience evolved in
the sort in in urban circles essentially. I mean, surely people are urban planners must be quite, you know, trying to address it quite urgently at this at this stage.
Gil Penalosa (45:49)
Well, yeah, and I think something that that cities need to do also is make sure that everything they do has multiple purposes. Before, people were not care about sustainability and and we were so wealthy that we used to do things like doing a school next to a community center and they don’t share anything, not even the parking lot. When when the community center needs it before eight in the morning and after five in the afternoon, the school needs it in the other hour. So
even parking, so we have gigantic parking lots in front of both. We don’t share libraries. We do a library next to a school and they don’t even share libraries. So we need to share everything. For example, I’ve seen lots of parks that have been done so that they can also hold large amounts of water. So in the once in a hundred year rain, they can hold the water. Yeah, and even maybe it’s not even the one in a hundred, maybe it’s become one in every five years.
So you do a park that you know part of the park is going to be flooded for one or two or three weeks of the year. Okay, that’s fine. Also in Toronto, maybe three weeks of the year, we are at minus 20. So many people are not using some parks here. So that doesn’t mean that that is a part of the city gets flooded. That doesn’t mean that you can not do parks there. No, you can build a park and design it in such a way that is flooded for a few weeks of the year.
but then you can use it for 45 weeks. You are not going to use it for seven. So we need to be able to use that in parking lots and so on. We need to use materials where the water can go right through. So you can have the parking, but you can also go right through. In the parking lots, surface parking, the city should charge very high tax to have surface parking, but you can eliminate the tax
if or the fee, whatever you want to call it, if you put solar panels as roof. So then it’s win-win because then the car, the people that have their cars there in the summer are not going to get overheated because it has a roof and they are going to have all of that energy and the city is going to purchase that energy. So a shopping center, whatever they can use that energy for them or they can sell it to the city if they have leftovers. And then it works.
But then is, but again, it has to be city-wide that we need to be smarter and say, okay, anybody that has surface parking is going to pay so much amount, such fees per spot. You want to, you don’t want to pay that fine. Put a solar panel roof and then we not only don’t charge you the fee, but we buy you the energy that you generate.
So I do think that we need to have some policies that are totally aligned with sustainability.
I mean, maybe 30 years ago, people were just talking about it. Now, no more time to talk. It’s an urgency for action. And everybody’s going to be better. Their children are going to be better. For example, I think we need to engage older people. I find it very curious that when I speak at universities, I love to go to universities, but most of the universities say, ⁓ the boomers, they messed up this world.
First, the boomers did a lot of good things, like we were talking a few minutes ago about water and so on. Second, the boomers are very progressive. I tell the students, look, the boomers were the hippies of the 60s and 70s. There were men marching for gender equality, white people marching for racial equality. I said, yeah, there’s a small, tiny minority of dumb boomers that are against everywhere, the NIMBYs.
And I say it’s not only my backyard, but I call them cave people. The cave are the citizens against virtually everything. And it’s because two or three, why do they become powerful? Because they show up. You show up. So there’s a public meeting to plant trees and they are the ones to show up against it. They show up against wider sidewalks. They show up against bike lanes. They show up against everything. And then those two or three become powerful because no one else shows up.
I think this is a time that people that care about sustainability need to show up. Because usually the only people that show up are the people that are opposing. But if we start showing up more often for sustainable causes, we are going to get most of the decisions in our favor. But we need to send the emails. We need to call up the radio stations. We need to show up at the public meetings.
Michael Gold (50:14)
Mm-hmm.
you
and
Gil Penalosa (50:37)
Otherwise, if we don’t show up, if we’re not at the table, we’re going to be on the menu. We don’t want to be on the menu. Sometimes people say, ⁓ they go by a parking lot. This parking lot, wasn’t that parking lot going to be a park? And now they’re doing a building. They say, did you go to the public meetings? Did you make the phone call? No? OK. Then you were on the menu. You were eating up. People don’t like, don’t enjoy being on the menu. So we need to be at the table.
Michael Gold (50:44)
Mm-hmm. Right, right, right.
Gil Penalosa (51:06)
and being at the table is showing up.
Michael Gold (51:06)
Yeah.
Yeah. This is essentially a podcast about climate careers and people who work in climate and kind of have it as their sort of main professional headline, essentially. And everything that you’ve been talking about, again, there’s such a link to climate that, again, a lot of people don’t really see, but it does seem like…
in the younger generation of say, urban planners and architects and builders and transport planners and whatnot, they’re clearly thinking much more about climate and how to sort of reduce the impact of cities and infrastructure on the planet. What advice would you give them? Like what advice would you give the next generation of people that are doing what you’re doing
to try to effect positive change.
Gil Penalosa (52:08)
I think that we need to be more generous and much more inclusive. The problem is that we don’t listen to anybody. Sometimes when I invited to universities, let’s say recently I was at Brown University and I was at Duke and next week I’m gonna go to Queens University. I tell them, don’t invite, at Duke it was organized by the engineers at Brown University by public health. I say, don’t just invite public health, invite the planners and invite the engineers and the management, sociologists,
and anthropologists, it’s about everybody. How are we gonna build the city? But then I’m really concerned because in cities, one of the biggest problem in cities is that the departments don’t talk to each other. Transportation doesn’t talk to environment and environment to health and health to education. And it’s horrible. But when you go to the universities that they are in the same campus, the buildings are just a few steps from each other.
They also don’t talk to each other. They don’t have courses mixing all kinds of students. I say, when I go, I won’t charge one cent, but you need to have a mix of students. So I will say that the environmentalists most realize that some of the best partners are public health. Because when you’re going to promote that walkability or those trees or those bike, if you talk about that, it’s not about the environment. It’s about mental health. You want better.
mental health for your children, you want better physical health, this is about that. It’s not an environmental, it’s a point. So we need to invite others. So I think that the environmentalists need to know that they should invite the business people, they should invite also the public health, the urban planner, and vice versa. I think the urban planners should invite the environmentalists at all of their meetings. I think…
Urban planners should never evaluate any project without listening to environmentalists and public health, sustainability and health. think they are too critical that any project should be evaluated by those two factors. So I think that if we do more collective decisions, they are going to be much better. And I think the environmentalists are going to be able to, I see a lot of young people.
Michael Gold (54:12)
you
Gil Penalosa (54:33)
that because they read on the paper, the NIMBYs, the elders, they never reach the elders. I have worked in more than 20 states in the US with AARP on older adults. I know them because I listen to them, I talk to them, I work with them, that they are very progressive. Yes, there’s a tiny minority that are not, but then older people would be fantastic allies in the environmental movement.
They have money, they have time, so they can go to the public meeting, they can write the emails, so invite them. Environmentally, it’s not just the young people talking about how horrible the boomers are. Engage those boomers and they’re going to have, also older people vote. And that’s why sometimes politicians listen more to older people than to younger, because the younger people talk, talk, but don’t vote.
Michael Gold (55:16)
you
Mm-hmm.
Gil Penalosa (55:29)
and the
elected officials get re-elected is with votes. So then they listen more to the older. So I will say that in general, environmental people make a broader movement by areas of interest, such as urban planning or others, as well as by different ages and different ethnicities. This cannot be just tiny movement of white people, highly educated, urban, but we need to broaden this.
Michael Gold (55:59)
So it’s about building bridges, including two groups and constituents that you might not expect or that you might think would be opposed or think would be indifferent, but they will actually come along if you provide them the right arguments and incentives.
Gil Penalosa (56:16)
At least try and I guarantee that you’re going to be very positively surprised. Build alliances. We need to build alliances and then people are going to say, no, these are these crazy tree huggers. Yeah, you might have the tree huggers, but you’re also going to have these others and you’re going to be much more powerful. I think that you might end up thinking that you are moving slower, but you’re actually going to move further away if you move with a broader base.
Michael Gold (56:21)
Yeah. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Gil Penalosa (56:45)
especially
public health, environmentalist, engage public health because everything that is good for the mental, the physical and the social health is good for sustainability and vice versa. they, and public health has a lot of credibility, but of course engage others, engage urban planners because as I was mentioning, nothing is going, the highest determinant of our sustainability is how we build cities in the next 40 or 50 years.
Michael Gold (56:56)
Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Gil Penalosa (57:14)
Because
whatever we do or don’t do in the next 40 years is how hundreds of millions and millions and millions are going to live for hundreds of years. So how we build the cities is by far the highest determinant on the sustainability for centuries to come.
Michael Gold (57:31)
Yeah. And as just as a final question to to to wrap things up, just thinking about your own contribution to sustainability, to climate, to the causes that you’re passionate about, like what would you how would you just sort of sum it up in in a sentence or two? Just you know, what would you want kind of your epitaph and people to remember you by?
Gil Penalosa (57:55)
I don’t know, every morning I wake up wanting to do things, but also I want to do more meaningful things. I wish sometimes I ask friends and colleagues, said, hey, I’m doing this, how can I do more meaningful work? Like when people hire me to do a keynote at an event, I say, okay, I’ll go, but use me in the good sense. Not just one talk. If I’m in your city, invite me to talk at the university. Invite me to talk to the city staff.
Invite me to do so. They pay me for one keynote and I end up doing five different talks because I want to raise awareness about the different issues. I want to talk to the media. I want to be useful. Also, I know about the carbon footprint of flying. So then I live in a very small condo that is half of it is owned by the bank. I don’t have a car. I haven’t had a car in 15 years. My wife mostly moves in public transit. I move on a bicycle.
I try to buy locally grown food. So I think it’s a little bit of everything, but also because it’s much fun and it’s healthier and it’s better and it’s exciting. So it’s not because it’s a sacrifice. Having the smallest home that I’ve had almost ever, it doesn’t make me sad at all. I’m so happy because when we chat, we talk.
We always know what the other is. We talk with, we hear each other. And also not having a car, it’s even better. We don’t have to worry about it, where to leave it, where to park it. If at any time I need a car, I rent one for two hours, for one weekend, for whatever. So I’m not anti-car, but many of the people in places like Copenhagen where more than half of the people use the bicycle as a normal part of everyday life.
Many of them also have cars, but they use them on the weekend. They use them at night. They use it to go to different cities. So it’s hard to replace. So I think that what I invite people is that it’s really not only about our future and our children’s and our grandchildren, but it’s also about doing better things for humanity in general. think that we…
Michael Gold (1:00:14)
Mm-hmm.
Gil Penalosa (1:00:17)
When you ask anybody that volunteers, that does meaningful work, that helps others, anybody that does, you ask them and they will tell you that they are receiving much more than they are giving. People don’t do anything for others. say, no, that’s not true. Well, try, try. Help the people, help on a campaign to plant more trees or to have more bike, whatever. And you will see that you will gain much more. So, so I think and my drive.
Michael Gold (1:00:30)
Mm-hmm.
Gil Penalosa (1:00:46)
also is that almost all of the things that we need to do are are doable. At city-wide scale, in rich areas, in poor areas, in wealthy countries, in poor countries, it’s not about how to go to a slum and say, people, you need to build a rocket to go to Mars. No, it’s really simple things that are completely doable. So I just think that if maybe we need to be much, much better at communicating and
Michael Gold (1:00:50)
Hmm.
you
Gil Penalosa (1:01:15)
marketing the ideas. I mean, maybe we need to learn from Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola doesn’t have one single ingredient that is good for anybody. Never the less, they sell it all over the place. So maybe if they sell such garbage to everybody, when we are talking about things that are good for everyone, we do need to be better communicators.
Michael Gold (1:01:21)
You
Well, it sounds like from your own perspective, you’re staying, I was going to say, hungry, but I guess maybe more appropriate to say staying thirsty given your last metaphor there. And you’re still grinding and still hustling and still working at all the causes that you believe in. So thank you so much. This was a really, really, really fascinating discussion. Gil Penalosa, thank you so much for appearing on Climate Swings.
Gil Penalosa (1:02:01)
Michael, thank you very, very much for having given me the opportunity to share with your listeners about some ideas. And if they want any information, my website is gpenalosa.ca and 880cities.org. By the way, on those websites, nothing is sold. Everything is free. Lots of documents and photos and tests and whatever. But thank you very much, Michael, for what you are doing because this is important to share. When I listen…
to this podcast, I learned. Everybody can learn. I think one of the things that we need is sharing and learning much more. We need to learn from experiences of other cities, both what has worked to adapt and improve and what has not in order to avoid and do other things.
Michael Gold (1:02:50)
Absolutely. Well, thank you again so much.