Urban Management in Curitiba Building Full Citizenship, Curitiba
Curitiba is located in the wealthier
southern part of Brazil. It is the capital
of the predominantly agricultural state
of Paraná and has a population of
1,600,000. It is situated near the
coastal mountain ridge at 900 metres
above sea-level and developed rapidly
as a city in the latter half of the
nineteenth century with the arrival of
many immigrants from Europe. It
continues to be one of the fastest
growing cities in Brazil with its population increasing from 500,000 to
1,600,000 in the last thirty years. The city has been transformed into an
important industrial and commercial centre with a large and healthy
industrial sector. Despite substantial improvements in the quality of life for
the majority of the population, Curitiba still has ten per cent of its
population living in corrugated tin and wood shanties . This is a much
lower proportion than in other Latin American cities however and these
shanties are gradually being improved through municipal programmes.
The accomplishments of Curitiba have come about despite limited means.
The city's budget is $1 billion a year, which is modest for a city its size.
How then has this all been achieved? The answer lies back in the 1960s
when a group of forward thinking young architects prepared a city plan for
Curitiba that took a completely different path to that elsewhere in Latin
America. Not for them the fashion of borrowing money for big showy
projects. Rather it was the needs of the environment and the local people
which had priority. As a result of their ideas the Curitiba Master Plan of
1966 was produced which established a new linear model of urban
expansion and provided a comprehensive and integrated approach for the
city's future development. The plan was fully implemented and the city
continues to build on these sound foundations thirty years later.
Housing has always been a part of the city integrated planning process
and the Curitiba Popular Housing Company (COHAB-CT) works in close
co-operation with the Institute of Research and Urban Planning (IPPUC) to
ensure a continuous supply of low-cost housing, which is renowned for its
quality and for helping to restore a sense of citizenship to the people. In
the 1970s the city turned away from conventional large housing
complexes, preferring to break up large projects into smaller and better
integrated ones, using the already existing infrastructure. Even the
smallest complexes have schools, day-care centres and health centres
included. The continual influx of people into the city creates a constant
demand for housing.. Housing programmes are designed to meet the
needs of specific communities. Funding is made available for self-build
projects, for the purchase of urbanised lots, for urbanisation and regulation
of irregularly occupied areas and for partnerships with the private sector
where building advantages are traded for lots and housing units. In order
to overcome the lack of resources to meet housing needs, the Municipal
Housing Fund was created in 1990. This provides funds for low-income
housing from private developers through levies charged on new
development permissions. Of the deficit of 40,000 dwellings in 1991,
27,000 dwellings have been provided to date. Emphasis has always been
placed on innovation and experiment and two recent innovations are the
Technological City of Curitiba and the Villages of All Trades.
The Technological City of Curitiba has been created to pioneer new forms
of construction, seeking to identify new ways of achieving quality housing
at low cost. Private housing construction companies nationwide were
invited to submit innovative low-cost housing designs using a range of
alternative technologies and twenty were selected. Six houses of each
type were built and are currently occupied and being monitored for their
acoustic and thermal performance and durability of the construction
materials. The houses provide a showcase which attract many visitors
from within Brazil and beyond. Villages of All Trades have been developed
with the idea of bringing workplace and dwelling together under the same
roof. These villages are located in pockets of substandard housing, which
benefit from the improved infrastructure, landscaping and sanitation works.
300 dwelling units have been built to date under this programme.
It is for its innovative public transport system that Curitiba is best known.
The system is used by more than 1,600,000 passengers each day and
accounts for over 70 per cent of daily journeys. As a result, Curitiba has
one of the lowest levels of air pollution in Brazil, few traffic jams and a low
household expenditure on transport. Concentric circles of local bus routes
connect to five major radial routes. On these routes articulated buses
move in their own lanes, each carrying 270 passengers. They go as fast
as an underground system but have been provided for less than two per
cent of the capital construction cost of an underground system. The buses
are clean and fares are cheap. No bus is allowed to operate on the roads
once it is more than ten years old. Private companies compete to own and
operate the buses and keep a percentage of the fare. The rest is paid to
the city council who pay for the roads (well maintained) and terminals
(clean and modern) and buy up the old buses (converted to form mobile
classrooms, clinics and day-care centres etc.)
The city also leads the world in its waste management policies. Two thirds
of all rubbish in the city is recycled. Paper recycling alone saves the
equivalent of 1,200 trees a day. Poor families in dense shanty areas
unreachable by truck bring their rubbish in bags to neighbourhood centres
where they are exchanged for bus tickets or eggs, milk, oranges or
potatoes. Children are encouraged to collect waste materials for recycling
and receive good quality toys made from recycled plastics in return.
Rubbish is recycled in a plant which gives jobs to handicapped people and
former alcoholics who have trouble finding jobs elsewhere. The recovered
materials are sold to local industries. The programme costs no more than
landfill, the city is cleaner, there are more jobs, farmers are supported and
the poor get food and transportation.
Education is seen as the passport to the future. A series of text books
have been developed for the 117 state funded schools in the city. These
books use examples drawn from the city of Curitiba and encourage the
children to love the city they live in and feel a sense of belonging and
responsibility for it. Small neighbourhood libraries in the form of
lighthouses have been built near the schools. Painted in bright colours,
each library houses 5,000 books. At night the lighthouse is illuminated
helping to provide security on the city streets at night.
Care for marginalised children receives priority treatment in Curitiba with a
range of co-ordinated programmes. Industries, shops and institutions are
encouraged to ‘adopt' a few children, providing them with a meal a day
and a small wage in exchange for doing simple maintenance, gardening or
office chores. SOS Street Educators walk the streets at night finding
children sleeping rough and encouraging them to join one of the many
programmes available to house, educate and employ them.
A range of programmes seeking to improve all aspects of daily life for the
citizens flourish under the well administered city government. People are
consulted at all levels and kept continuously informed on what is being
done in their city. Seven new Citizenship Streets have been established as
regional governance centres. These are connected to the mass
transportation terminals and are equipped with libraries and sports
facilities. They are used for shows, movies, craft and antique fairs and are
supplied with all public services including those which formerly were only
available in the city centre. This is intended to be a moving of the city hall
to the people, a further way of encouraging the sense of citizenship that is
the key to Curitiba's success in the past and to its continuing success in
the future.
For further information please contact
Mayor Cassio Taniguchi
Prefeitura Municipal de Curitiba
Secretaria do Governo Municipal
Avienda Candido de Aberu 817
80530-908 Curitiba
Paraná
BRAZIL
Tel +55 - (0)41-2523266
Fax +55 - (0)41-3522852
For further information about the work of the Foundation e.mail us at info@bshf.org