Creative Curitiba - the urban design of Curitiba, Brazil

Relations between groups

In any metropolis, particularly in the Third World, businesses and officials find it difficult to associate with the informal network - illicit street vendors and homeworkers. Often there are collisions. Lerner recommends close connection between the two. His town has decided to invite the ragged band of vendors who clutter the streets into open-air markets which travel from one district to another. For residents who cannot pay the high prices in shopping centres, hardware stores or supermarkets, these markets will become pleasant bazaars which sell cheap clothing, building materials and bargains ranging from typewriters to tubas.

The rivers

The IguaAu and its tributaries have the habit of violently flooding stretches of land (the main bed) which were carefully avoided by builders until the modern period. More recently, unlicensed buildings invaded the banks and the valleys. Every downpour in summer was followed by fatal floods, in spite of considerable investments in engineering work (underground galleries, trenches, dredging etc).

A solution was found by setting up easily-floodable reserve areas near the rivers (after some expropriations) and small barrages which slowed down and soaked up premature floods. The rivers will gradually be freed from pollution (only 45 per cent of the inhabitants are connected to sewers at present). For the moment, filtering barrages stop solid waste, and upstream basins reduce sewage pollution by biological means, until the fish can return and carry out their scavenging work. In this way, all rivers are given a reserved area and natural protection. Relief from taxation has been promised for all areas which still contain portions of the primitive forest. Many such areas have been declared.

Density

High-rise buildings have been authorized only along two perpendicular routes, at a short distance from the bus stops. The result is strange; from a distance the town has an extraordinary appearance, because all the rest of the town is very low, but in fact it works very smoothly.

Refuse

Twenty years ago it was. suddenly discovered that waste-disposal sites were full. Since new sites were anti-ecological and an incinerator would be polluting and too expensive, it was necessary to invent a slogan: 'Waste which is not waste'. Immediately the waste was recycled in exemplary fashion. After a few appearances on television, Lerner succeeded in persuading everyone to sort their waste by hand for selective collection; 40 per cent of the waste can be recycled (50kg of recycled paper avoids the need to cut down a tree, and Curitiba saves a thousand trees per day). Organic waste is put to one side and used as manure. This is a way of earning money. Three-quarters of the population are truly interested.

The waste is carried to a factory outside the town and is sorted for sale. The people working the sorting conveyors or bringing waste in are often very poor, alcoholics or homeless.

Economics

Such improvements have to be paid for, without agriculture or agro-industries. The municipality decided to set up an industrial city, not in the form of a specialized area but as an extension of the town, inside a natural park. Some old industries were still polluting the centre of town. They have sold their premises and have set up other installations, this time non-polluting, in new areas especially designed for them. These are not all reserved for industry, but contain a mixture of accommodation, enclosures, services, and recreational areas, and are equipped with a good system of internal and external transport. It is a '60s dream which has rarely been realized. Time for travelling to work is minimal, either because people live in green town development or because they have a special line connecting them to the main working area remaining in the city. To start the economic mechanism, it was necessary to provide financial incentives to foreign industries to set up there, since local firms had refused to take the risk.