Curitiba Brazil by Tim Gnatek
Frontline World
Thirty years ago, Curitiba, Brazil unveiled a master plan to address urban issues with environmentally-friendly public transit and social programs. FRONTLINE/World Fellow Tim Gnatek took to the busses, walkways and streets of the now world-renowned city for a second look at what urban planners and environmentalists around the globe point to as a world model.
INTRODUCTION
Brazil's motto is Ordem e Progresso, "Order and Progress." In my travels through South America's largest country, from the Argentine border to the tropical Northeast, nowhere did I see this ideal better expressed than in the city of Curitiba.
Curitiba is the capital city of Paran·, one of Brazil's southernmost states. It is known internationally for its progressive transportation system, social services and environmental practices. When I first began reading about Curitiba, I imagined a golden city whose planners had solved all the problems of urban living.
My arrival in Curitiba, however, presented a more realistic perspective. Far from an idyllic utopia, Curitiba faces the same problems that metropolises around the world do, including overcrowding, poverty, pollution and limited public funding. What's different about Curitiba is that its planners have come up with some creative and inexpensive ways to go about solving universal problems for cities. They've invested in an extensive bus system that operates for less than a tenth of what a subway costs to operate; developed recycling programs that clean up the environment and also address poverty; attracted new industry while expanding green spaces; and used preserved historical areas to revitalize neighborhoods and grow tourism.
Curitiba has a radical approach to city planning, unique not only within Brazil but also globally. I traveled to Curitiba to discover what other cities might learn from this model and to see whether this experiment in urban design will last.
The Early Years to the 19th Century
Founded in 1693 by Portuguese explorers, the small village of Nossa Senhora da Luz e Bom Jesus dos Pinhais was an early waypoint for prospectors. By 1721, cattle herders had replaced unsuccessful gold seekers in this agriculturally rich region, and they renamed their new home "Curitiba." It was Curitiba's early leaders who first established building regulations, such as limiting the number of trees that could be cut and requiring homes to have tile, not wood, roofs.
In 1854, Curitiba became the official capital of Paraná, one of Brazil's southernmost states, known for the world-famous Iguaçu Falls just a few hundred miles away, on Paraná's border with Argentina. By the end of the century, when a tide of European immigrants arrived in southern Brazil, Curitiba's population had surpassed 50,000.
Curitiba's First Urban Plan: 1940s
By the 1940s, Curitiba was experiencing rapid growth. Word of the region's thriving agriculture industry attracted new settlers from such nations as Japan, Syria and Lebanon. Now at three times its turn-of-the-century population, Curitiba was confronted with increasing demands for improved services, housing and transportation. The city hired French planner and architect Alfred Agache to help ease the growing pains. Agache expanded Curitiba's sewer system and rerouted its traffic patterns. Sweeping arclike patterns now radiated out from the city center to better manage the flow of cars and buses that were clogging city streets.
Unchecked Growth: 1960s
Curitiba's population swelled to more than 430,000 people in 1960. French architect Alfred Agache's plan from the 1940s hadn't considered future waves of newcomers. Some Curitibanos feared that sprawl, fewer green spaces and lost character would follow the increasing numbers of people.
In 1964, Mayor Ivo Arzua issued a call for proposals to prepare Curitiba for new growth. A team of young, idealistic architects and planners from the Federal University of Paraná, led by Jamie Lerner, answered. Their proposal laid out plans to minimize urban sprawl, reduce downtown traffic, preserve Curitiba's historic district, and provide easily accessible and affordable public transit. Improving upon Agache's plan, Lerner's team also proposed adding main linear transit arteries to Curitiba to provide direct, high-speed routes in and out of the city. Their proposal was adopted and eventually came to be known as the Curitiba Master Plan.
Implementing the Master Plan: 1970s
After his plan for Curitiba was adopted in 1968, leading architect Jamie Lerner created the city's first urban planning department to help organize and direct further redevelopment efforts. Among the department's innovations in the 1970s was Rua Quinze do Novembro, the heart of commercial Curitiba andBrazil's first pedestrian-only street. The city also adopted a trinary road design, called the Sistema Trinário, to minimize traffic in the city, whose population had now surpassed 600,000. The new system sandwiched a central two-lane street restricted to buses and local car traffic between wide, fast-moving one-way streets. And to attract business, Curitiba began developing an industrial zone on the city's outskirts, which they called Industrial City.
The Green Era: 1980s
The 1980s was a decade marked by widespread economic recession, rising urban poverty and increasing deforestation rates in Brazil. Yet, now with more than 900,000 people, Curitiba rolled out a number of ecofriendly and social programs during the 1980s.
• "Green areas" protected from future development were established in Curitiba, and a number of parks were dedicated to the city's different ethnic and immigrant groups.
• Curitiba's transit system was expanded, and a color-coded system for the various bus lines was created.
• Regional administrations were established to decentralize government.
• A citywide recycling program was initiated in which Curitibanos separated organic waste and trash, plastic, glass, and metal. The city sold the salvage to cover the costs of operation.
International Recognition: 1990s
Curitiba had grown to more than 1.4 million people when it hosted, in 1992, the World Cities Forum, an advance event leading up to the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development, Earth Summit. The event brought international attention to Curitiba for the city's bold urban planning. Throughout the 1990s, Curitiba continued to add to its stock of green spaces and cultural sites, with the building of a new botanical garden and an opera house located on the site of an abandoned quarry. Curitiba also succeeded in attracting new industry to its Industrial City, with automobile companies Renault, Audi/VW and Chrysler moving in. New red multicabin buses, carrying up to 270 people each, were integrated into its transit system, and high-speed bus stops, called tubes, were created.
The Millennium
The 21st century has ushered in more improvements for Curitiba's 1.8 million people. With tourism becoming increasingly important to the local economy, Curitiba added a sightseeing bus line to its transit system. New job-training and small-business incubators run by the city help lower-income Curitibanos learn technical skills and launch new businesses. The city also recently began building a technology park to attract new-economy businesses. And it is at the fore of Brazilian cities' investing in alternative fuel technologies.
The Future of Curitiba
While visiting Curitiba, I witnessed scenes of daily life that added greater dimension to the international model I read about back home. Seconds after a man tossed an empty can onto a dark street, I watched a child dart from a corner to collect and redeem it for cash or food through Curitiba's world-renowned Cambio Lixio trash exchange program. I saw people lining up all hours of the night to log on at free, public Internet terminals along Rua 24 Horas -- one of the city's lively pedestrian-only streets, lined with shops and restaurants. I watched children playing on park equipment that I learned was transported to Curitiba by an old city bus, later converted into a mobile recreation center. The vignettes were testaments to the city's embrace of urban planning and environmental protection -- something I didn't witness in the rest of my travels in Brazil.With the construction of a new transit axis, Curitiba is continuing to invest in its renowned transit system.
As more and more people flock to cities worldwide, the challenges for urban planners and leaders also grow. Many are turning to Curitiba for answers. Few cities have attempted to adopt Curitiba's holistic approach to urban planning, but a fair number have borrowed from its solutions to address individual urban ills. Some city leaders travel to Curitiba to see for themselves just how the city operates, and they return home inspired to start similar programs.
During my travels, I met a delegation from Mexico studying the city's success as Brazil's leading recycler. I learned Curitiba's rapid bus transit model has also been exported around the world, from Bogotá to Seoul. Los Angeles adopted a similar system after former Mayor Richard Riordan traveled to Curitiba. Other U.S. cities, including Detroit, Seattle and San Diego, are also considering adopting Curitiba's transportation solutions. In all, Curitiba officials told me, 41 cities are operating a transportation system based on the Curitiba system, with 46 more in development.
Curitiba didn't become a success story overnight. Its innovations evolved over a generation and through experimentation. The city also had the advantage of local leaders who had urban planning expertise and who early in Curitiba's history invested powers in an independent and progressive planning office.
Curitibanos I met shared a pride in the unique urban experiment of their city. But they also conveyed an uncertainty for Curitiba's future.
I was invited to a family dinner with longtime Curitiba resident Jose Luiz Miccelli. The 43-year-old technician told me that without the diligence of local leaders and fellow Curitibanos, he fears his city could quickly go the way of others.
"All these things that have happened to Curitiba, they will end if there isn't constant attention given to it," he told me as we sipped coffee and tea and nibbled from a traditional Brazilian spread of cheeses, sliced meats and pastries. "Transportation and especially all the ecology issues -- recycling our trash -- we're afraid it will go away, that cuts will be made and things like environmental education will stop."
A supporter of Curitiba's current mayor, Cassio Taniguchi, Miccelli is concerned when term limits will require Taniguchi to leave office in 2005. A civil engineer, Taniguchi was involved in Curitiba planning since the 1970s. No one with an urban planning background has emerged yet as a serious candidate in the next election.
But despite citizen concern over its future leadership, Curitiba revealed itself to be a city committed to maintaining its traditions. After 40 years of practice, there is a shared responsibility ingrained in the citizenry to do so. And it's that identity that just might be Curitiba's best defense against inertia in its
Curitiba's Innovative Answers to Universal Urban Problems
Curitiba is Brazil's showpiece of urban planning, known among city architects worldwide as a pioneering achievement in metropolitan renovation and innovation. In the 1960s, a redesign effort was initiated by aspiring architects who planned to carry the small but growing capital of the state of Paraná into a new era -- and to do so without the excessive borrowing that Brazilian public works projects are known for. What's more, the designers brought their own values into the planning process, finding cost-efficient and environmentally friendly solutions to the city's urban problems. Some 40 years later, the Curitiba Master Plan has become an international blueprint for sustainable city design, and its authors have been elevated as city heroes.
It is hard not to be impressed by this city's accomplishments. Exploring Curitiba by foot, bus and car, I discovered this is a city that created a truly interdependent system addressing environmental, social and economic concerns. Every day I saw yet more creative, cost-efficient ways of getting to the core of urban problems. Roll your cursor over the various icons on the map for a tour of several of Curitiba's inventive solutions.
Parks
Curitiba, which means "pinewood" in the Native Indian language Guarani, has a higher rate of green space than any other Brazilian city. Its 28 parks and undeveloped land cover about 20 million square meters. Many of Curitiba's parks were reclaimed and converted from industrial or commercial use. For instance, the Free University for the Environment, Curitiba's environmental learning center, was once a quarry. After it was depleted of stone, the land was donated to the city. When I toured the center, remains of the old operation were nowhere in sight. Instead, the old quarry wall made a dramatic backdrop for a quiet duck pond secluded from the roadway. The center's office is perched above the water on beams made from recycled lampposts.
Another of Curitiba's parks, Saõ Lourenço, lies in the middle of a river floodplain. Before it became a recreational area in 1972, the land was a favela, a tight collection of squatter's homes. During yearly winter rains, the valley basin would flood, carrying the shantytown's trash into the water supply. Curitiba's city planners came up with a creative solution: build low-income housing for these people away from the floodplain and convert the land into a park. Squatters went willingly to the new housing, which was outfitted with plumbing and electricity and paid for in part with help from the state. The community today has a park with jogging trails and picnic areas, and a herd of sheep grazes the grass instead of noisy lawnmowers.
Curitiba's approach toward environmental protection often incorporates solutions to human needs, the city's environmental education director Samora El Ghoz Leme told me. "The environment is not just physical," she said. "It's an interactive relationship with people."
Curitiba is the nation's number one recycler, separating about 19 percent of its garbage. Curitiba encourages recycling through incentives such as the Cambio Verde program, which enables poor citizens to exchange their metal and glass waste for fresh produce. The city also maintains a trash museum at its central recycling center. Valuables recovered from the trash are on display, including a verified pre-Classic Greek sculpture that somehow found its way from the Louvre Museum in Paris to Curitiba.
Transportation
Curitiba's planners designed its public transit system to be economical. Rather than building a new train or subway system and pay exorbitant construction costs, Curitiba's designers worked with existing roadways to create a convenient, comprehensive and affordable bus system. It's been so successful in Curitiba that dozens of cities worldwide have adopted the model.