Curitiba, Brazil - Environmental Role Model
The provincial capital of Curitiba, Brazil, a city of several million with a large needy population, against all odds, has become a self-sustaining world-class model of metropolitan management.
First class examples include Curitiba's fast efficient bus system, pedestrian-only downtown streets, low income housing, network of parks and lakes, internet savvy libraries, accessible health clinics and schools with high standards.
In addition, families and businesses recycle and compost 70 percent of their trash.
A mind-set of co-responsibility compels businesses to offer higher than average wages, launching cottage industry and volunteering to work on environmental projects.
Paul Hawken, Natural Capitalism, writes, that Curitibanos seek solutions that are simple, fast, fun and inexpensive.
Thus, Curitiba's citizens benefit from a day-in-day-out flow of interconnected, interactive, evolving solutions under a stream of imaginative leaders whom America's 600 mayors pledged to reduce global warming would do well if they began emulating Since urban visionary Jaime Lerner became Curitiba's mayor in 1971, severing three non-sequential terms, until 1992, the city has been an incubator of pioneering innovations.
Their civic society is flourishing beyond expectations.
In an interview with Frontline World, Lerner stated, "I can say to make change, a real change, in a city -- or in a state, or anywhere -- you have to have political will, solidaristic view and an equation of co-responsibility.
And when you have an equation of co-responsibility, when people understand the ideas, they know how to share it.
" Lerner, an architect, believes,"...
the city is a structure that functions between human settlement areas and economic activity.
" The problem, he believes, lies in the fact that, "...
most countries have assigned more importance to economic activity than to the people.
"Furthermore, Lerner believed, that the city is not a problem, but a solution because in the city are the answers to everything: to work, the house, the transport.
First class examples include Curitiba's fast efficient bus system, pedestrian-only downtown streets, low income housing, network of parks and lakes, internet savvy libraries, accessible health clinics and schools with high standards.
In addition, families and businesses recycle and compost 70 percent of their trash.
A mind-set of co-responsibility compels businesses to offer higher than average wages, launching cottage industry and volunteering to work on environmental projects.
Paul Hawken, Natural Capitalism, writes, that Curitibanos seek solutions that are simple, fast, fun and inexpensive.
Thus, Curitiba's citizens benefit from a day-in-day-out flow of interconnected, interactive, evolving solutions under a stream of imaginative leaders whom America's 600 mayors pledged to reduce global warming would do well if they began emulating Since urban visionary Jaime Lerner became Curitiba's mayor in 1971, severing three non-sequential terms, until 1992, the city has been an incubator of pioneering innovations.
Their civic society is flourishing beyond expectations.
In an interview with Frontline World, Lerner stated, "I can say to make change, a real change, in a city -- or in a state, or anywhere -- you have to have political will, solidaristic view and an equation of co-responsibility.
And when you have an equation of co-responsibility, when people understand the ideas, they know how to share it.
" Lerner, an architect, believes,"...
the city is a structure that functions between human settlement areas and economic activity.
" The problem, he believes, lies in the fact that, "...
most countries have assigned more importance to economic activity than to the people.
"Furthermore, Lerner believed, that the city is not a problem, but a solution because in the city are the answers to everything: to work, the house, the transport.
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