Ciclovías and Sidewalks

Mobility Justice in Latin America

Most mornings and evenings, you’ll find me on my bike in Mérida. Riding through roundabouts, waiting at narrow medians, or navigating streets with no sidewalks, I experience firsthand how policies — or their absence — shape daily life. Cycling is transportation, but it’s also a way of practicing civic pedagogy: by choosing to ride, I model that streets belong to people, not just cars.

That daily practice sharpens how I see the city. I notice things others might pass by — a sidewalk made impassable by parked cars, a crosswalk that leads to nowhere, a median so narrow that pedestrians balance precariously as traffic speeds past. To long-time residents, these problems may look “normal.” But as someone who arrived from elsewhere, I see them clearly. And once you see them, you can’t unsee them.

To make those patterns visible, I’ve begun documenting Mérida’s mobility failures on a Google Map with geotagged photos. Each pin is a snapshot of how planning decisions accumulate into daily barriers: the absence of curb cuts, crossings designed for cars rather than people, sidewalks too narrow for a wheelchair or stroller. This is both documentation and pedagogy — a way of teaching myself, and others, how policy lives in the streets.

I want to take that practice further. One idea I’m exploring is a “mobility walk” — inviting urbanists, journalists, or community members to walk or ride with me along a short route that highlights key barriers. At each stop, we could ask: How might this feel different if the sidewalk were twice as wide? If a tree provided shade? If a bus actually stopped here? Seeing the city through these questions turns everyday obstacles into civic imagination.

Mérida is not unique. Across Latin America, mobility policies have long prioritized cars: wide roads, scarce sidewalks, and transit systems that strain under disinvestment. But there are also hopeful counter-examples. Bogotá’s TransMilenio showed how bus rapid transit could transform daily travel. Mexico City’s “Less Parking, More City” initiative reimagines how land use shapes mobility. Weekly ciclovías — from Bogotá to Mérida’s own Biciruta — reclaim streets for people, community, and health. These experiments remind us that mobility is never neutral: it can reinforce exclusion, or it can open up more just and livable cities.

I’m beginning to share these reflections more widely, starting with local journalists and urbanists. It’s a small step, but one that begins to connect personal experience to public dialogue — a bridge between daily rides and regional policy debates.