Enrique Penalosa - Building happiness

Enrique Penalosa is one of my favorite progressive planner/leaders. Former mayor of Bogota, Columbia, he leapfrogged many traditional development steos by making smart strategic decisions on how to use the relatively poor city's resources for maximum benefit to the most people. As he told us over lunch one day, "we know how to incubate an egg to be a healthy bird that can fly away and live a happy life, but we cannot do that for our own children."

So many developing countries simply copy the mistakes of the developed world. Enrique has proven to be smarter than that. Plus, I tend to have a soft spot for former soccer stars (Enrique attended Duke on a soccer scholarship).

Here's a great article on him by Jay Walljasper, former editor at the Utne. The article first appeared in Ode Magazine.