By Mayu Ccasa (Learner, 10 years old)
Do you believe that there isn't much room for walking and biking in Lima? Do you feel overwhelmed by hearing people in cars yelling and claxons sounding? Do you long for this to improve?
I am here to share with you what I think is happening with our city. Lima is a badly planned city, with cars driving on bike paths, poor constructions, and outdoor public spaces that are too often closed to the public. We have to change this and now I’m here to raise awareness.
I’ll tell you why this matters to me. I think that we should construct houses worth buying and living in. Sometimes, when I go on Sundays to play football to a sports center, the court is closed, and this is just inexcusable because children should be able to play on weekends. When I go biking sometimes some person tells me: “the sidewalk is for people, not for bikes,” and it really disappoints me and it’s just unreasonable to tell a child to bike in the car lanes. These are only two out of many experiences I had. So, it’s really not good to live like this (I’m telling you this by experience), and this must change now.
So, here is my message for you: As citizens, we have to make Lima a better planned city, a more walkable and bikeable one, a friendlier one, and a safer one.
I’d like to share with you how I think we can solve this problem. We have to ask the government to open up outdoor places like parks or sports courts and make them more accessible to everyone, because in the parks sometimes the municipal police (Serenazgo) doesn’t let children play. They should let people enter whenever they want to sports courts and parks. Also, we can encourage citizens to tell their governments how they want their work places, homes, and outdoor spaces to be. That way, city zoning and planning could improve.
Gentrification is also a problem because it drives the prices up, and that is not okay. I think gentrification is not ethical. For example, in 2019 to 2020 there was a case from an influential family of a politician that bought a property on a residential zone, and made the zoning change to commercial, absolutely elevating the price of this one by millions, and it keeps constructing to now. I think this shouldn’t be legal, because we can’t change it just to profit a few.
In conclusion, bad planning and zoning are, in my opinion, the result of corrupt, arbitrary, illegal, unethical, unfair, cruel practices. I know that some of the things that upset me about gentrification and corrupt zoning and planning also hurt a lot of people, and I'm almost sure they also bother you, so, my question to you is: what can you do to drive change in our city?
