Curitiba, Brazil
Michael O. Patterson
[Reprinted from Civic Values, 21 December
1999]
Curitiba, Brazil. Just an average Brazilian city, really. It has
the best mass transit system in the world, has basically housed its
street children, and uses sheep to trim the grass in the parks. For
those who look at livability indexes, as with the Government
Performance and Results Act, Curitiba is almost off the charts. In
recent surveys, more than half the residents of American cities like
Detroit and New York City would like to get out of the city. Yet
over 98% of Curitibans are happy with their city. Even the Japanese
don't have those kind of stats. This city was built around people,
not the people forced into the city. It has a government that works
with the people, with the organizations, to create a good place to
live. Oh, it has its slum housing -- but it is clean, because a sack
of garbage can be exchanged for a sack of food, from a municipal
truck.
Jaime Lerner, a major part of this, started out by fighting an
overpass , that would have destroyed his neighborhood. He had grown
up in a real neighorhood, and for him his street -- the Rua Quinze
-- was the city. He decided to make it into a walking mall, with no
cars allowed. As mayor, he sat with his public works guy, and
planned it out. They knew the merchants would never approve it.
Like Edwin Moses, the legendary New York planner, they tore up the
pavement, replaced it with brick and cobblestone, and put in
decorative elements ncluding thousands of flowers, lights, and
kiosks. They also had it done by the following Monday morning. Later
that day, other merchants wanted the walking mall extended to in
front of their stores. A group of car owners decided to drive down
the street to get it back for cars. The major put paper down the
length of the mall, and had many children sitting on the street
painting on the papers. People took the flowers, at first, but the
city kept replacing them till they were left alone. The city
respects its citizens, and the citizens return that respect. Bus
stations are made out of glass, and are not vandalized.
Other things were done. Traffic was rerouted -- into 3 groups of
parallel avenues -- the outer ones were one way, either in or out,
and the middle street was for buses, which meant no costs for
tearing down buildings to make highways, and kept streets to human
scale. Zoning was fixed so that apartment conplexes were allowed
only close to bus routes. The city grows in lines, with no backup,
preserving varied kinds of housing, with people at different income
levels, organically, like D'Arcy Thompson's notes in 'On Growth and
Form'. They plant trees everywhere, and fines people who cut them
without permission, even on their own land. Where there are problem
trees -- trees that are getting too big -- they plant other trees,
and wait till the new trees are good-sized before cutting the
problem trees.
The city regulates where factories can be built, and what they can
do. They note that the quality of life attracts good corporations,
the kind that pay good wages, and they don't have to use tax
concessions. Companies help pay for municipal child care. The city
often employs single mothers from the slums, and sometimes helps
people get materials to build homes with. Architects help people
design homes that they can build one room at a time, all most can
afford. The city has kid's programs -- and they treat all children
like their own, with foster homes that care, or dorms, and jobs. The
head of the department is most concerned that they get food, and
love. City day care is free to toddlers and older, and run almost 12
hours per day. They even serve meals. Kids plant community gardens,
using seed supplied by the city. Some new arrivals in the 1980's
tried to make a living from pushcarts, competing with merchants. The
city, instead of destroying them, as they would in an American city,
licensed them instead, and put them in locations that helped the
city. The city found it was cheaper to buy food from farmers and
trade it for bags of garbage -- and the trucks don't fit in the
narrow streets of the favelas, anyway. Children who sort out plastic
by categories can exchange it for bus tokens.
Several million people ride the buses each day -- passengers are
picked up in their neighborhoods, taken to terminals. Some buses go
to special shelters where passengers load through several doors,
having already paid their fares, like a subway. Buses are
self-supporting, and get no money from the government. Ridership
increases, because the buses are just faster. Old buses become
classrooms for job skills training. Nothing is free, they know that
free things have no value. A stone quarry was completed as a
University -- in 3 months. They gather information for city
planning, because that is the only way they can get it. The military
knows that the best way to make people homicidal is to constantly
irritate them, interfere with their living quarters, have unfair
laws enforced in an unfair fashion, treat them with gross
disrespect, playing favorites, and so forth, and it works in
America's inner cities as well.
Crime is much less in this city. The lack of opportunity, constant
frustration and resentments that reduce the veneer of civilization,
so common in US cities, are much less here. Yes, there are problems,
but not anywhere near what they are elsewhere in Brazil.
The city looks to <i>recycle</i> buildings rather than
tear them down, converting old buildings to new uses. Curitiba took
federal money available for building concrete levees to keep rivers
from flooding, and spent it on land for parks, and small dams to
make lakes. The city went from 2 sq ft of green perperson to 150 sq
ft -- which increased property values. The city runs on around
$150/person, vs. around $1,280/person in Detroit, about double that
inNY City, or $800/person in Dallas/Ft Worth. The city finds ways to
do things cheaply, simply, and quickly. They put up an opera house
in a month. They can't afford research, or consultants, so they find
something that works, and implement it as soon as possible. Lerner
says you can't leave problems to experts, they are only expert in
the way things can't be done. He finds people who find ways to get
things done, and has brainstorming sessions. One product of such a
session was the 24/7 street, which has shops and so forth that are
open 24 hours per day -- to use the space more efficiently, and
reduce the force that ties up space with buildings used only a few
hours each day. The mayor believes that you have to have fun, at
work, laughing, and create things that make people happy.
Designers come from other cities for the workshops. One group
designed a mobile tent factory so children could create toys from
recycled items. His staff love seeing their ideas come into form; in
most places they couldn't get anything done.
Americans live in cocoons, watching TV programs designed to fill
them with fear of their neighbors. Often they have no idea who their
neighbors are. Fr. Thomas O?Brien notes that the worldwide breakdown
of community leads directly to addiction. Mother Theresa noted that
the major deficit in the first world is love, and attention from
friends and family. Curitiba starts by making kids happy -- so they
feel secure, have hopes for the future, and opportunity. The city
has bike paths, soccer fields, and safe public space that is really
nice. It has public concerts, street fairs, and volleyball courts,
and a real, living downtown, not a faux fake. It is a place to enjoy
life. Some Saturdays, city workers still put out paper for kids to
draw on, to remember the original act that started it all. No, it's
not perfect, but it's much closer to perfect than any American big
city.
Curitiba has been covered on alternative radio, national public
radio, and in books, including Bill McKibben's Hope, Human &
Wild.