Streets Ahead

Carlos Cadena-Gaitán, assistant professor at EAFIT University in Medellín, Colombia, was joined by Louise Yeung, chief climate officer at the NYC Comptroller’s Office, and Shachi Pandey, founding principal of Metropolitan Urban Design Workshop, for a discussion about the role of streets in mitigating the effects of climate change.

Medellín’s Zona Urbana de Aire Protegido (low-emission zone), which Cadena-Gaitán introduced during his time as the city’s transport secretary from 2020 to 2021, establishes a wide-ranging set of measures to combat emissions and create people-centric streets. The low-emission program, Cadena-Gaitán noted, was accompanied by an increase of female cyclists—a 300 percent increase over the period of one year. In discussing street safety and access, Yeung noted the significance of “connecting the work around streetscape design to gender,” particularly in the context of a rise in “violence against Asian women in public spaces.”

Partnerships among agencies, funding, governance, and political will, panelists agreed, are crucial if we want to transform streets and combat the multiple crises that confront our cities.