Curitiba: A sustainable city in the developing world

Geographers love talking about sustainability! But what does it mean?

To be sustainable means to be able to keep going – for a long time. It seems like a simple idea, but when you are talking about things that use up material, space and energy (like a city), it may not be so easy after all...

How can you build a city for hundreds of thousands of people to live in without burning up energy, polluting the ground and the air and generally making a real mess of the place? Well, one city in Brazil seems to have the answer.

Curitaba, the state capital of an area of Brazil called Paraná, has been described as the most sustainable city in the world. Curitiba is largely a result of work by a man called Jaime Lerner.

40 years ago, when industry was growing quickly in Brazilian cities, Curitiba decided to do things differently. Firstly the city only allowed companies who were ‘non-polluters’ to move there. Then they built industrial areas with so much green space at first they were insulted as "golf courses" (until they became much more successful than anyone else!)

Over 30 years, Curitiba's earnings or domestic product grew faster than the rest of Brazil. Whatever they were doing – it was working!

So, what was working so well?

When the city planners built the city, they spent a lot of time thinking about the people who would be living there.

They built:

• Health centres

• Schools and a university

• Day car networks

• Neighbourhood libraries

• Sports facilities

A pedestrianised zone in Ciritiba city centre

The planners made it easy for people to use these public (municipal) services by building ‘Citizenship Streets’. This meant building municipal facilities close to mass transportation terminals - in particular Curitiba’s remarkable bus system (see below).

After all – there is no point providing these great services if hardly anyone can get to them!

The city has an Open University (pictured above) so that residents can take courses in subjects like mechanics or hair styling. The Curitiba government are trying to provide work opportunities and a chance to earn more money for everyone in the city. They also want people to be able to own their own homes and have been buying large areas of land for people to build on.

Self-help – building a new kind of city

In Curitiba there is a Municipal Housing Fund to help lower-paid workers to build their own homes. The workers can meet an architect for an hour, for free, to help them develop their plans .

When a favela area is cleared, residents are moved into planned communities and get some building training and a small mortgage. This helps them to buy the land and materials for the house and build it themselves.

The workers new building skills can also help them to find better paid work. Slowly, informal workers from shanty towns are becoming home owners with a much better chance of having a steady job.

Jaime Lerner – Curitiba’s architect

By the 1960s, Curitiba's population had ballooned to 430,000. Architect Jaime Lerner, who later became mayor, led a team that suggested these ideas: 

• Strict controls on urban sprawl

• Reduction of traffic in the downtown area

• Preservation of Curitiba's Historic Sector

• A convenient and affordable public transit system

He achieved these through pedestrianisation of large parts of the Central Business District, as well as a new road design to reduce traffic - the Trinary Road System

Five of these trinary roads form a star across the city centre. The bus rapid transport system carries more than 2 million passengers per day. Although there are lots of car owners in Curitiba, road traffic has dropped by 30%, and air pollution is the lowest in Brazil.

Curitiba – a green city

The city pays careful attention to its green areas and is called the ecological capital of Brazil. It has 28 parks and wooded areas and there is a massive there are 52 square meters of green space per person. (There was only 1 square meter of space per person back in 1970).

This ‘greenness’ has been made possible because:

• 1.5 million trees have been planted along the streets

• Builders pay less tax if their projects include green space

• Water is diverted into new lakes in parks (which also helps stop flooding)

• Grass cutting in the parks has changed to sheep grazing which is a great sustainable use of green space!

Assessment for learning - Quiz

Before attempting this quiz, make sure that you have read all the articles in this issue:

• Road to Rio – Part 1

• Living in Rio

• Curitiba