Happy City opens with a joyful adrenalin rush. Charles Montgomery is sweating at the pedals in a mountain-bike dash through the streets of Bogota with the city's charismatic "Mayor of Happiness", Enrique Penalosa. "Then he was off," Montgomery marvels, "jumping curbs ... and barking into his cell phone while his pin-striped trousers flapped in the breeze." The image of hyperkinetic populist Penalosa - who was mayor from 1998 to 2001 - rushing through barrios and urging his citizens to stop using cars and organize fiestas, may be romanticized. But he did divert the highway budget into building bike paths, pedestrian plazas and Bogota's first rapid-transit system. In Montgomery's view, Penalosa had "redesigned the experience of city living for millions of people".
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