Municipality of San José

Costa Rica will allow for the gradual reopening of public parks and certain recreational facilities, the Health Ministry and National Emergency Commission announced Tuesday. 

Municipalities will grind trees up and turn them into mulch to reuse them in public parks, gardens and as organic fertilizer for public areas.

San José Mayor Johnny Araya said the city is currently amid the process of hiring a consulting firm to conduct feasibility and cost studies of the streetcar project.

Araya said the municipality is investing approximately ₡360 million ($647,000) in improving the city’s video surveillance system, which currently has 120 cameras mainly in downtown San José.

"We’re not issuing warnings or asking vendors to clear out. We’re confiscating all merchandise obstructing passage for pedestrians and motorists,” San José Police Chief Marcelo Solano said.

San José officials say they have taken appropriate measures to prevent the kind of flooding that turned some city streets into lakes in recent years.

A fair to raise funds for drug rehabilitation organization Hogar Crea causes confusion downtown.

Mechanical bulls? Check. Zumba? Check. Traffic? Only if there are too many rollerbladers. The Tico Times visits a Sunday fun day on Paseo Colón.

Heavy thunderstorms and flash floods washed away cars and flooded homes across the Costa Rican capital of San José, with the neighborhoods of Los Yoses, San Pedro, Montes de Oca and Desamparados among the hardest hit by the rains.

Not even the rains that have started (finally) this year seem to be enough to wash away the urine you see on the sidewalks of San José. Stained walls, that telltale smell, and sometimes the culprit unashamedly making eye contact after he finishes. San José has so far been unable to offer any response to this bane of pedestrians but a group in Germany has found a way to fight back.