Hope, Human, and Wild

I have just finished reading the first few chapters of Bill McKibben's "Hope, Human, and Wild" late last night. I must say that so far I enjoy the reading very much. I like his style of writing, especially the way that he compares and contrasts different areas of the world with specific examples. The place that Mr. McKibben visited that most stood out to me was Curitiba, Brazil. He spent about a month in Curitiba interviewing various people and visiting many places.


Curitiba is located in mountainous southern Brazil and has become a perfect example of how a city should be designed. Even while the cities population has skyrocketed the streets remain well organized, there remains a lot of green space in comparison to other large cities, and most importantly people there remain happy. All of this didn't happen by accident of course. Most of it can be attributed to Jaime Lerner who served multiple terms as mayor of Curitiba.

Jaime Lerner first became mayor in the 1970's and almost immediately started transforming the city not for cars, but for the people.  Lerner placed an emphasis on having people around him, including many architects, that wouldn't say "this can't be done" and instead would find creative ways to make things work.  He believed  in three main concepts in developing new ideas which were frugality(costs), simplicity, and speed. While keeping things relatively cheap and simple he could provide great services such as transportation or public parks without draining the city's budget. At the time of writing the city was operating on a budget of about $156 per capita compared to $1,279 per capita in Detroit.

The public transportation in Curitiba was in my eyes their greatest accomplishment. It not only allowed the growing population to travel around the city without the need for more roads or bigger roads, but also reduced pollution throughout the city. Public transportation in Curitiba consists almost entirely around buses. While many large cities at the time were investing in expensive subways, Jaime Lerner decided that subways would have been too expensive and so instead opted to recreate the cities bus systems. As of 1993, 1.5 million people a day were riding the buses. The buses have their own dedicated lanes which allows them to travel faster and get people where there going faster. This avoids both the buses getting stuck in car traffic as well as cars getting stuck behind buses, which from experience in even a comparatively small city such as Kalamazoo can get quite frustrating no matter what side of the situation you are on. The city doesn't need to subsidize it's bus system the way cities need to subsidize their subway systems and the system actually turns a profit. Besides the dedicated lanes, Lerner also implemented longer hinged buses to get more people on each bus and created "tube stations" where people could load and unload much faster greatly increasing the speed and efficiency of the bus system.

http://blog.inpolis.com/2012/03/14/curiciba-latin-americas-green-city/