Bus Rapid Transit station, Curitiba, Brazil, April 26, 2011. Simon Norfolk/ INSTITUTE
November 24, 2013
The twenty-first century marks the consolidation of a
demographic shift that was set in motion by the industrial revolution and has
not stopped gaining momentum since. Around the world, the supremacy of rural
populations over urban ones has been reversed and cities have experienced
accelerated growth. They have been through deep transformations that have left
a legacy of fantastic possibilities and challenges.
According to the 2007 UN Habitat Global Report on
Human Settlements, approximately one billion human beings live in slums—and the
figure is growing. Likewise, in environmental terms, it is estimated that 75
percent of greenhouse gas emissions are linked to cities, as many sources
including United Nation agencies and the Clinton Global Initiative point out.
Therefore, the search for solutions to enable
lifestyles that can bring about a more harmonious relationship between our
civilization’s social, economic and cultural demands and nature is ever more
pressing. It is in the cities that decisive battles for the quality of life
will be fought, and their outcomes will have a defining effect on the planet’s
environment and on human relations.
There are those who portray an urban world in
apocalyptic colors, who depict cities as hopeless places where one cannot
breathe, move or live properly. I do not
share these views. My professional experience has taught me that cities are not
problems; they are solutions, and so I can face an urban world with optimism
instead of fear.
My strongest hope resides in the speed of transformation. For instance, the
demographic projections based on the high birth rates of twenty or thirty years
ago have not been confirmed, allowing us a more encouraging view on the growth
of cities for the next years and decades. This opens up an increasingly
positive perspective of evolution in which a doomsday scenario is not the only
alternative.
Renewable energy sources, automobiles emitting less
pollution, new alternatives of public transportation and communication
technologies that reduce the need for travel are preventing the chaos that was
predicted for large urban centers. The evolution of technology and its
democratization are presenting new perspectives for cities of all shapes and
sizes.
In terms of physical configuration, cities of the
future will not differ significantly from the ones of yesterday and today. What
will differentiate the good city will be its quality of life. Socially just and
environmentally sound cities—that is the quest.
By having to directly deal with economic and environmental
issues, this quest can foster increasingly positive synergies between cities,
regions and countries. As a consequence, it will motivate new planetary pacts
focused on human promotion.
You may say I’m a dreamer. But, if I may quote John
Lennon, I’m not the only one. The experience of Curitiba, a city where I had
the honor of serving as mayor for three terms, among many other cities that
have taken these issues to heart in the past decades, shows that this positive
scenario is possible.
But for that, a certain sense of urgency is vital. The
idea that action should only be taken after having all the answers and all the
resources is a sure recipe for paralysis. The planning of a city is a process
that allows for corrections, always, especially if you are open to feedback
from the people involved.
The lack of resources cannot be an excuse not to act.
Some resource-rich cities have seriously compromised their future with costly
and equivocated interventions, such as the channeling of rivers and the building
of extensive infrastructures for private transport.
To innovate is to start. Hence, it is necessary to
begin. Imagine the ideal, but do what is possible today. Long-term planning is
necessary, but we need urban policies that can generate change beginning now.
The present belongs to us and it is our responsibility to open paths. In the
roots of a big transformation there is a small transformation. The essential
thing is to make it happen and then take the rest of the time enhancing it.
Start creating from simple elements, easy to be implemented, and those will be
the embryos of a more complex system in the future.
For instance, the Integrated Mass Transit System of
Curitiba (which later became known as Bus Rapid Transit, or BRT), which started
in 1974 with one twenty-kilometer axis of dedicated lanes transporting
twenty-five thousand passengers per day, has evolved into a system that now
transports daily over 2.2 million passengers in the capital and its
metropolitan region with a single tariff in over eighty kilometers of dedicated
lanes.
Those responsible for managing this urban world must
have their eyes looking at the future, but their feet firmly on the ground at
the present time. Those that only focus on the daily needs of the population
will jeopardize the future of their city. On the other hand, those who think
only about the future, disregarding the daily demands, will lose the essential
support of their constituents and will not accomplish anything.
Urban Acupuncture
Many cities are losing the battle against degradation and violence exactly
because they settled for the view that difficulties were too big and could only
be dealt with after all planning instruments and financial resources were in
place. Thinking this way only exacerbates the problems, which encourages
citizens to believe that a solution is no longer possible.
A city is a collective dream. To build this dream is vital. Those
responsible for the city must react. It is crucial that they project a more
optimistic outcome for its future, by presenting successful scenarios that can
be desired by the majority of the population to the point that citizens will
commit to them. To build this dream, this scenario, is a process that
acknowledges and welcomes the multiple visions that inhabitants, managers,
planners, politicians, businesses and civil society have of their city, and
demands the setting of co-responsibility equations to make it happen. The more
generous this vision, the more grounded the equations, the more good practices
will multiply and, in a domino effect, the more rapidly they will constitute a
gain in quality of life and solidarity.
Once the priorities are set, we have to make it happen, and to make it
happen quickly. Strategic punctual interventions can create a new energy and
help the desired scenario to be consolidated. This is what I see as urban
acupuncture: it revitalizes a sick or worn-out area and its surroundings
through a simple touch at a key point. Just as in the medical approach, this
intervention will trigger positive chain reactions, helping to heal and enhance
the whole system.
What I see is that many cities today need urban acupuncture because they
have neglected their cultural identities; others because they have neglected
their relationship with the natural environment; others still have turned their
backs on the wounds left by economic activities. These neglected areas, these
scar marks, are precisely the target points for stimulation. The contemporary
world demands increasingly fast solutions, and it is the local level that can
provide the quickest responses. But it is necessary to have a strategic view,
to plan to make it happen for the people
and not for centralized and centralizing bureaucratic structures.
It is necessary then not to lose track of the essence
of things, to discern within the amazing meanders of today’s available
information what is fundamental and what is important, to distinguish the
strategic from the daily demands. A clear perspective of future objectives is
the best guide for present action. That is to say, to bind the present with a
future idea. There are three imperative issues to be addressed when
establishing the priorities of a city and considering its scenarios: mobility,
sustainability and identity.
In terms of mobility, every city has to make the best
out of each available mode of transportation. The secret to success resides in
not having competing systems on the same space and using everything that the
city has in the most effective way: buses, metro, cars, taxis, bikes, pedestrian
areas. For instance, non-proprietary individual modes of transportation can be
part of a transit network, such as Paris showed us with the Vélib’ bicycle
system. The same concept could be used for compact, energy efficient cars.
It’s my belief that the future of mass transport is on
the surface due to its greater flexibility, lower costs and shorter
implementation time. Using a mix of features (such as dedicated lanes, on-level
and prepaid boarding and high frequency), it is possible to achieve a performance
similar to more expensive underground systems. A healthier city happens where
the car is not the only comfortable option of transportation; where the energy
of unnecessary displacements is saved; where walking along its streets, parks
and avenues is encouraged.
Regarding sustainability, the main idea is to focus on
what we know about the problem instead of what we don’t. We must remember to
transfer this knowledge to our children, who will then teach their children.
Simple things from the day-by-day routine of cities can be part of the
solution: how each one can help by reducing the use of cars, separating
garbage, living closer to work or bringing work closer to home, giving multiple
functions during the twenty-four hours of the day to urban equipment, saving
the maximum and wasting the minimum. In my last term in office as mayor we
implemented a recycling program that was embraced by most of the households and
increased exponentially the percentage of recycled garbage in Curitiba. Called
“lixo que não é lixo” (garbage that is not garbage), it had school children as
its main ambassadors. We developed an educational campaign with specially
designed characters (a Familia Folhas, the Leafs Family) that would visit the
schools and talk to children about recycling. In turn, the children would take
that knowledge home and make sure their parents knew about it. It was an
outstanding success.
Sustainability is an equation between what is saved
and what is wasted. Therefore, if sustainability equals saving/wasting, when
wasting is zero, sustainability tends to infinity. Waste is the most abundant
source of energy.
Although the use of basic construction materials such
as cement, metal, glass, wood and plastic in the most sustainable way possible
can help improve the situation, as certifications such as the U.S. Green
Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program
recommend, these advancements will be of little consequence if all that happens
is that people move from one sustainable building to the next in an
unsustainable urban environment.
Therefore, it is in the conception of cities that the largest and most
significant contribution to a more sustainable urban environment can be
made—again, provide the city with a structure of growth that does not segregate
life and work. A sustainable city, for instance, cannot afford the luxury of
leaving districts and streets with good infrastructure and services vacant. Its
downtown area cannot remain idle during great portions of the day. It is necessary
to fill it up with the functions that are missing.
Last but not least, there is the issue of identity.
Identity is a major factor in the quality of life; it represents the synthesis
of the relationship between the individual and his/her city. Identity,
self-esteem, a feeling of belonging: all of these are closely connected to the
points of reference people have about their own city.
Rivers, for instance, are important references.
Therefore, instead of hiding them from view or burying them in concrete, cities
should establish riverbanks as valuable territories. By respecting the natural
drainage characteristics, cities can make sure the preserved areas provide
necessary episodic flooding relief channels and still be used most of the time
for recreation in an economically and environmentally friendly way. Parks can
work within a similar logic, providing areas that people can relate to and
interact with.
Historical districts are also major reference points,
closely related to the city history since its inception. However, these areas
often suffer a process of devaluation and degradation. Finding ways to keep
these districts alive by connecting identity elements, recycling outdated uses
and hosting a mix of functions is vital.
Cities are the refuge of solidarity. They can be the
safeguards of the inhumane consequences of the globalization process; they can
defend us from extraterritoriality and the killing of identity. The main
component of a more humane city is diversity—of functions, of incomes, of ages,
of uses, of typologies and so on. The greater the sociodiversity, the higher
the quality of life.
The democratic city is the city without ghettos—be
they healthy or poor; housing complexes segregated in remote peripheries or
luxurious gated communities within cities. Democracy requires diversity, the
coexistence of multiplicity that brings benefits to all. The democratic process
requires that all strata of the population participate actively in the making
of the city.
Soul of a City
The resources to implement change can be attained through co-responsibility
equations: mechanisms to articulate efforts, potentials, and capabilities of
the government, private and social sectors.
Nowadays, in the environmental area, mechanisms of compensation for carbon
reduction have been created and are being implemented little by little. Let me
recall one possible co-responsibility equation aimed at substantial gains for
the environment, social development and quality of life. At the United Nations
Conference on Global Solidarity: The Way to Peace and International
Cooperation, in 2000, I proposed a UN Solidarity Bonus as a compensation
mechanism. The country that accomplishes actions of environmental
preservation/recuperation would earn an environmental bonus, which could be exchanged
for a social bonus such as the relief of foreign debt or direct social
investment—and preferably both.
The UN can be the coordinator of such compensation, setting up with the
member states an equation that encompasses local governments and accredited
NGOs that would share their social mobilization skills, in a virtuous effort of
income generation and educational advancement throughout the world.
Especially in the developing world, there are large numbers of people—often
unemployed—living in unhealthy, unsuitable areas and, with that, contributing
to further deteriorating the environment. The favelas that emerge in large
numbers often in fragile environmental areas, such as riverbeds and mountain
slopes, are an increasingly more visible reality. The illegal occupation of
seemingly vacant land grows, for housing or income-generation activities. These
people could be mobilized to preserve their environmental heritage, being paid
for it and receiving more access to information and education through the solidarity
bonus. This mechanism creates a win-win situation: the less-developed countries
would simultaneously diminish their financial debts and also their social
debts.
The environmental agenda is a life contract that the present signs with the
future. This apparently simple, even naïve mechanism, can have a huge impact in
the reduction of poverty in cities all around the world. It is an equation that
can rapidly alleviate the needs of the most needy. For the wealthier ones, this
equation would ensure, in addition to the environmental benefits, an economic
gain in the sense that it would lead in time to the growth of consumer markets
in these countries, with the inclusion of large and new contingents. It also
represents insurance for democracy and world peace. It is an example to
illustrate how help to the environment and to a parcel of the population can be
for the benefit of all.
Poverty, ignorance and environmental degradation,
among others, are unacceptable debts and can no longer be postponed. And these
debts cannot be paid without a global effort and strategy. If we want peace, we
must create possibilities to disseminate more rapidly the wealth, knowledge and
effective participation of all peoples in the designs of humankind. It cannot
be just a ‘mitigating solidarity,’ incapable of generating lasting results. It
is critical that we move toward the practice of ‘preventive solidarity,’
capable of generating better perspectives to all peoples. Our fiercest wars are
happening in cities, in their marginalized peripheries, in the clash between
wealthy and deprived ghettos; the heaviest environmental burdens are being
generated there due to our lack of empathy for present and future generations.
And this is exactly why it is in our cities where we can make the most progress
toward a more peaceful and balanced planet.
A city is a structure of change, even more than a model of planning, than
an instrument of economic policies, than a nucleus of social polarization. The
soul of a city—the strength that makes it breathe, exist and progress—resides
in each one of its citizens.
Jaime Lerner is an architect and urban planner. From
1994 to 2002, he was governor of the state of Paraná, in southern Brazil. He
previously served three terms as mayor of Curitiba, Paraná’s capital. Among his
many awards are the United Nations Environmental Award (1990), the Child and
Peace Award from UNICEF (1996), and the World Technology Award for
Transportation (2001).