A Piece of Paradise in South Bogotá

Tossing a frisbee amidst the trees. 

Entrance to a different reality:
El Parque Bosque San Carlos.

Uribe Uribe and Gustavo Restrepo are two of those nondescript working class enighborhoods of south Bogotá which are pleasant enough places to live, but have little more to recommend them. So, I was stunned when bicycling thru these neighborhoods today to come upon a forest - a real uban forest!

It's called the Parque Bosque San Carlos, and on a holiday afternoon like today it was full of neighbors walking their dogs, playing football, throwing frisbees and dancing. I didn't feel like I was in Bogotá at all - and much less the often grimy and monochronous southern side of the city.

San Carlos is smaller than the also treey Parque Simon Bolivar Park and Parque Nacional. But San Carlos is much more forested, and those other parks are located in the wealthier north Bogotá,whose residents have more opportunities to escape from the city. And San Carlos is a complete park, with jogging paths, futbol pitches, basketball courts, children's play areas and lots of green spaces.

Even flowers!

How did this happen? The park adjoins the Santa Clara Hospital, so the land must have once been part of the hospital's campus, which is why it wasn't built up with houses. I read that the trees, almost all of them eucalyptus, were planted around 1950, making them seventy years old. Some have gotten diseased, and in late 2016 the city closed the park for some six months and cut down more than 40 trees and planted 30 trees more adapted to the local climate.

 The success of San Carlos ought to set an example for the city to turn the unused lands around the San Juan de Dios Hospital and the Central Cemetery into parks as well.

A nice place to walk a dog - even backwards.

A sapling grows, presumably of a native tree.

The park has several children's play areas.

A birdhouse, and a glimpse of the working class neighborhood.

Parchita makes a friend.

Rolling away.

A great place to learn to ride a bike!

Enough room to play ball.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Cheating Children of their Green Space

'We need green areas to breathe!'

'We want more recreation.' 'We want to breathe.'

 Recently, schoolchildren marched thru the gritty Santa Fe neighborhood calling for more green areas and recreational spaces - which are in short supply in the poor, industrial area. The neighborhood also has some of Bogotá's poorest air quality.

Yet, ironically - and infuriatingly - just a few blocks away there ARE large green spaces - which are -incomprehensibly - fenced off from the neighbors' use.

A fenced off green space along Calle 26,
across from the INPEC.

When the city built the TransMilenio line along Calle 26 to the airport in 2011, for no apparent reason they demolished houses and businesses long both sides of the avenue. Since then, the land has sat empty and unused, fenced off with barbed wire and with dogs and guards to keep out anybody who dares to walk their dog or play ball on the grass.

When tourists ask me why this is, I just shake my shoulders and confess that city bureacrats, who are obviously much more intelligent than I am, must have very good reasons to spend our tax money  to deny Bogotanos access to public green space.

Jaime Garzon, the martyred comedian, scowls down at the off-limits green area.

Don't dare walk your dog in this green area along 26th Street.

Don't you dare walk on the grass!

No approaching this mural.

A grassy area, once part of the Central Cemetery, could be turned into a large park, rather than fenced off.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Bogotá's Pocket Parks

La Concordia Park in La Candelaria: Green space for lovers and a court for futsal, just meters away from traffic and high-rise buildings. 

In the poor, troubled Santa Fe
neighborhood, trash piles up across
the street from a tiny park. 

Bogotá's big parks, particularly Parque Simon Bolivar, and its new ones, like Parque Tercer Milenio, have received lots of attention. And justifiably so: on sunny weekends those parks fill up with thousands of Bogotanos picnicing, playing soccer and flying kites.

Watching futsal at lunchtime in a
Santa Fe neighborhood park. 

But measured in person-hours per square meter per day, Bogotá's 'pocket parks' may get more use.

Relaxing in La Esmeralda Park
in Teusaquillo. 

These parks, which often cover less than a city block, are squeezed between apartment buildings and factories; they might be be bordered by noisy, polluted avenues and their sunlight blocked by high-rises. A few do not even have grass. They may have only a damaged swing set and pull-up bars, a cracked futsal court and a few benches. Unlike Simon Bolivar and other big parks, where you can breathe fresh air, enjoy country-like quiet and pretend that the city is far away, these tiny parks are both in the city and of it, often with all of its noise, pollution, trash and even crime.

Eating lunch by a reproduction
of a San Agustin monument
 in the Los Martires district. 

But, for shop and office workers who want to sit outside to eat lunch, or factory workers organizing a quick soccer game, these parks provide a break, if not an escape. And Bogotá's new Mayor Gustavo Petro intends to densify the city. That's a positive plan for several reasons: it will mean shorter commutes for the poor, who now live primarily on the city's outskirts, from where they have to spend hours each way in traffic jams on their ways to the city's business districts and wealthy areas where they work. A denser city also means that services such as electricity, water, transit and trash collection are easier and less expensive to provide.

Dogs and couples play in their own
ways on a green patch by La Plaza
del Periodista, in La Candelaria. 

However, a denser city will also make these tiny public spaces all the more valuable.

 In terms of social justice, investment in parks and public spaces is one of the best. That's because parks get used by the rich and poor alike in a healthful way.

Cops check someone out in a Santa Fe park.

Evening on La Plaza del Periodista.

Trash piles up by a tiny park in Santa Fe. 

The Arzobispo River in Teusaquillo is lined by this green corridor
 - and sports the visual warnings on this bridge. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours