Curitiba City Planning
Curitiba is one of the greenest cities on the planet. In Brazil, very close to Rio de Janeiro, Curitibas progress is based on sustainable development. The politics in the city are based on the citizens, and the city integrated its transport system of buses to be near the densely populated areas of the city. The city collects plastic and inorganic trash, and was awarded the highest environmental prize for its recyclable waste scheme. They recycled enough to fill several thousand sky scrapers, and have a team to sort through a large portion of the trash looking for recyclable materials like bottles. This gives many people jobs. There is also a library which utilizes recycled books found in the trash. Jaime Lerner is the lead designer of the city. He found a solution to the park issue by working with a team to make flooding have less of an effect. The parks are along major waterways and contain retention ponds for floor rains. When the rainy season occurs, these parks are filled with water and do minimal damage. The Integrated Transport System which Lerner designed is a quick cheap bus system to take people to the city. The buses link people to the mainlines which lead into the city, and there are buses that connect mainline to mainline. Along these ‘mainlines’ lie most of the residential housing within the city, as the densely populated areas were deemed necessary to be along the main transport route.
This has effected the way the citizens are able to get to work, making it easier and less costly. The current bus system is 500 times cheaper than a subway, and carries 7000 passengers per day. The articulated buses increase numbers and bi-articulated buses carry 4000 of these passengers per day. Buses are easily and quickly boarded due to the holding chamber. This holding area is entered when you pay for the bus and allows people to easily enter and exit the automobile quickly. The vast majority of commuters in the city take the bus, and the city has the lowest rates of pollution and per capita fuel consumption in Brazil.
Jaime Lerner is a legend in Curitiba. He claims to be a philosopher first, and says the three main components for a city are mobility, then sustainability, then identity. He is most fascinated with his idea of the boarding tubes. He worked with another team member to create his park network, which avoids flooding and allows many people the luxury of a nice park during the dry season, as they are along major rivers and have nice views and grass. The grass is cut by sheep. Slums are a major setback to many places in Brazil. Lerner feels slums are good here because everyone respects each other. In slums if you collect trash and recyclables, you will get free food. This is an incentive for many people to make money, but at what cost if these people continue to live the way they have been. I feel this is also a reason we saw so many homeless people while we were there. However, residents in slums are being moved to new homes with facilities as the city doesn’t want to continue to have a slum problem. Avoiding issues that Rio now has to face is their goal. Lerner said “if you cannot make life better for people, then make cities better for people”. Lerner compared the city to a computer system, with a hub and a connection system. He wants each problem to be a project with input from everyone involved to decide what action is best. He made the flooding and leisure problem one by deciding on a park system around the major waterways where floodwaters rise into the park and not someones home. He made buses that transport a large amount of citizens to and from the city. He made a web of services that ensure quality of life for citizens through constant inflow of information. At the start, the diagram of the city was simple. A city is a place of encounters. He created a communication and transport system that eased these encounters. He has a strong center with 5 transport routes. High to low density areas are marked with more transport routes to less major transport routes. The idea of potential, or what the land has to offer, allowed the development of many services within the city. The city was built on a plateu with strong natural waterways so these waterways were avoided when developing housing. The transport system has been building on the same 5 route design as originally planned with a current ‘green line’ being set in place over an existing highway. Overall system efficiency is the heart of Curitiba. The potential of the city is exciting to look at when determining action, but doing things within your means is even more exciting.
Lerner explained that a city is not a problem but a solution, in a speech at TED Talk. He says that it can be a solution for a country but it is certainly a solution for climate change. Every city can be improved in three years he says. It is a question of equation of co-responsibility and design. He equates Curitiba to a turtle, with a shell that resembles major routes and other features of a city, all still on one shell. A car just eats and eats but does not provide to the sustainability feature of a city, and a bus equates to a sustainability feature. Curitiba is designed using a make it happen approach, and quickly. They propose a scenario to the city, state, and country. This creates Curitiba’s structure. You live and work together, with dense areas having more public transport, as 2 million passengers enter the transport system per day. Each city should have a major role to provide mobility and sustainability. The boarding tubes provide higher performance than a strong subway system because of the insanely easy access. Lerner also explains how the design of the city is more important than how the resources are used, and information for future generations on city planning and use are vital. Living and working together can play a major role in the success of a city, with each person working a job 24/7. An efficient city that reduces carbon emissions is very possible he adds in at the end.
I learned most about the city of Curitiba while listening to Lerner talk about the way that the city integrates its transit system with the demands of the population density. It is amazing how they designed the city to have 5 major roadways, and today the cities densest populations are found along these main roadways. These roadways transport hundreds of thousands of people a day into the city and out of the city. The city has designed the roads to have day-long access to routes for buses by creating individual sections of road designed specifically for them. These buses have easy access as you pay before you get into the holding tube. This holding tube has allowed minimal idle time for the bus and it is always in motion going from place to place. Some busses here even run on soy based fuels, which is an astounding accomplishment for any major city anywhere. The parks in Curitiba were designed to be flood areas, as a park system here has been built around the major water-ways. The flood season will not affect homes here as easily since most of the surrounding areas to the rivers were made parks, and not used for houses. The city has made astounding efforts to become the most sustainable city in the world. Sidewalks that have water infiltration mechanisms allow for minimized runoff, trash collection is a major industry, and trash-sifting jobs are everywhere, as people sift through trash looking for recyclable material. The poor here have found ways to find food since the government will give them food for their efforts in collecting trash. The city has found that their design from more than 40 years ago is still prospering.
This has effected the way the citizens are able to get to work, making it easier and less costly. The current bus system is 500 times cheaper than a subway, and carries 7000 passengers per day. The articulated buses increase numbers and bi-articulated buses carry 4000 of these passengers per day. Buses are easily and quickly boarded due to the holding chamber. This holding area is entered when you pay for the bus and allows people to easily enter and exit the automobile quickly. The vast majority of commuters in the city take the bus, and the city has the lowest rates of pollution and per capita fuel consumption in Brazil.
Jaime Lerner is a legend in Curitiba. He claims to be a philosopher first, and says the three main components for a city are mobility, then sustainability, then identity. He is most fascinated with his idea of the boarding tubes. He worked with another team member to create his park network, which avoids flooding and allows many people the luxury of a nice park during the dry season, as they are along major rivers and have nice views and grass. The grass is cut by sheep. Slums are a major setback to many places in Brazil. Lerner feels slums are good here because everyone respects each other. In slums if you collect trash and recyclables, you will get free food. This is an incentive for many people to make money, but at what cost if these people continue to live the way they have been. I feel this is also a reason we saw so many homeless people while we were there. However, residents in slums are being moved to new homes with facilities as the city doesn’t want to continue to have a slum problem. Avoiding issues that Rio now has to face is their goal. Lerner said “if you cannot make life better for people, then make cities better for people”. Lerner compared the city to a computer system, with a hub and a connection system. He wants each problem to be a project with input from everyone involved to decide what action is best. He made the flooding and leisure problem one by deciding on a park system around the major waterways where floodwaters rise into the park and not someones home. He made buses that transport a large amount of citizens to and from the city. He made a web of services that ensure quality of life for citizens through constant inflow of information. At the start, the diagram of the city was simple. A city is a place of encounters. He created a communication and transport system that eased these encounters. He has a strong center with 5 transport routes. High to low density areas are marked with more transport routes to less major transport routes. The idea of potential, or what the land has to offer, allowed the development of many services within the city. The city was built on a plateu with strong natural waterways so these waterways were avoided when developing housing. The transport system has been building on the same 5 route design as originally planned with a current ‘green line’ being set in place over an existing highway. Overall system efficiency is the heart of Curitiba. The potential of the city is exciting to look at when determining action, but doing things within your means is even more exciting.
Lerner explained that a city is not a problem but a solution, in a speech at TED Talk. He says that it can be a solution for a country but it is certainly a solution for climate change. Every city can be improved in three years he says. It is a question of equation of co-responsibility and design. He equates Curitiba to a turtle, with a shell that resembles major routes and other features of a city, all still on one shell. A car just eats and eats but does not provide to the sustainability feature of a city, and a bus equates to a sustainability feature. Curitiba is designed using a make it happen approach, and quickly. They propose a scenario to the city, state, and country. This creates Curitiba’s structure. You live and work together, with dense areas having more public transport, as 2 million passengers enter the transport system per day. Each city should have a major role to provide mobility and sustainability. The boarding tubes provide higher performance than a strong subway system because of the insanely easy access. Lerner also explains how the design of the city is more important than how the resources are used, and information for future generations on city planning and use are vital. Living and working together can play a major role in the success of a city, with each person working a job 24/7. An efficient city that reduces carbon emissions is very possible he adds in at the end.
I learned most about the city of Curitiba while listening to Lerner talk about the way that the city integrates its transit system with the demands of the population density. It is amazing how they designed the city to have 5 major roadways, and today the cities densest populations are found along these main roadways. These roadways transport hundreds of thousands of people a day into the city and out of the city. The city has designed the roads to have day-long access to routes for buses by creating individual sections of road designed specifically for them. These buses have easy access as you pay before you get into the holding tube. This holding tube has allowed minimal idle time for the bus and it is always in motion going from place to place. Some busses here even run on soy based fuels, which is an astounding accomplishment for any major city anywhere. The parks in Curitiba were designed to be flood areas, as a park system here has been built around the major water-ways. The flood season will not affect homes here as easily since most of the surrounding areas to the rivers were made parks, and not used for houses. The city has made astounding efforts to become the most sustainable city in the world. Sidewalks that have water infiltration mechanisms allow for minimized runoff, trash collection is a major industry, and trash-sifting jobs are everywhere, as people sift through trash looking for recyclable material. The poor here have found ways to find food since the government will give them food for their efforts in collecting trash. The city has found that their design from more than 40 years ago is still prospering.