curitiba

um texto que um amigo escreveu sobre curitiba e achei interessante.

Curitiba is a city that got famous for its creative solutions applied into urban planning. Like Tokyo that was re-urbanized for the Olympic Games, Curitiba’s social and economic development has been planned by architects since the 1970’s. For example, a specific area outside of the city was designated to concentrate potentially polluting industries, thus preserving the city for the inhabitant’s well-being. The preoccupation with the citizen’s quality of life can also be seen in the city’s pioneering adoption of garbage recycling and public campaigns in order to explain the necessity of garbage separation, similarly to the policy adopted by Tokyo’s government. The charming point is that the green trucks used to collect the garbage ring a golden bell in order to warn the citizens of its arrival.

The result of garbage separation is measured by the number of uncut, preserved trees, shown in giant clocks located around the city. It is part of another public policy towards the ecological preservation of native 林and forests that still remain inside the city. The government creates parks and ecological amusement areas in order to protect Nature from industrial and real estate’s expansion. Even though Tokyo has many ancient parks and gardens, the rate of trees per inhabitant in Curitiba used to be high: around 50 trees/inhabitant, in the 1990’s (then, there were about 2 million citizens).

Geologically, there are many rivers flowing under Curitiba’s region, so it was technically difficult and expensive to build subway lines. An economic, easier solution was the adoption of long-lined, connected buses, similar to those recently adopted by the Kanagawa Prefecture. Those buses run on specifically designated avenues, with few stops, thus being faster than ordinary buses and capable of transporting hundreds of passengers at a time. To use these buses is cheap and convenient, but unsafe during the night. So, I think that Tokyo’s transport system is more convenient.

In spite of careful planning, in order to cross the city from one extreme area to another, usually one must cross the central area. As a result, in recent years, slow traffic became the main problem because there is no available space to open new streets. Even so, Tokyo and every big city in the world share the same constrains.

As for Culture and Arts, Curitiba is not as important as other big cities like Sao Paulo, Rio, Porto Alegre and Salvador, but many famous performers of classic music came from there. Traditionally, as a city formed by immigrants from countries (like Germany, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Syria, Ukraine, Poland, Russia, Africa and more), Curitiba has a history of preserving traditional, regional cultures, to a point in which European researchers go there in order to learn traditions that were lost in their original countries (for example, the Ukrainian art of painted eggs, called Pessanky). In this sense, Curitiba is not as international as Tokyo, despite the recent establishment of multinational companies, like Renault and Ericsson, and the affluence of foreigner employees.

In my opinion, Curitiba is a great city to live: there are many charming spots, its size is manageable as for driving to here and there, the cafes and pubs are calm, the city is clean, and the citizens are ecologically conscious and proud of living there. But Tokyo is more cosmopolitan, bigger, safer, even though more expensive. I am happy to belong to both of them.

by christopher zoellner