« Slow Food, Local Food, Better Food | Main | Our Counterintuitive Stumble to Happiness »
Jamie Lerner
By Neil Peterson | April 16, 2009
Utopian visions of urban living have been around for as long as we have made the effort to live in close proximity to hundreds, tens of thousands – and now millions – of our fellow citizens. From Walt Disney’s initial concepts for EPCOT to Buckminster Fuller’s ‘Dome Enclosed City’, some of the brightest minds hoped to change our approach to communal living by creating cities that were more efficient and provided a high quality of life for all of its residents. Today, EPCOT has become a popular tourist attraction, and Fuller never achieved his dream of enclosing New York City in a geodesic dome, but the dream of a cleaner, smarter city is still alive – and inspiring city planners and civil engineers well into the new millennium.
As an architect and city planner in Curitiba, Brazil Jamie Lerner is familiar with the challenges and opportunities presented by the needs of a quickly growing population – and the politics involved. In addition to helping develop Curitiba’s Master Plan in the early 1960′s, Lerner served the city for three terms as mayor and believes that the involvement of the people – not just elected officials – is crucial in the evolution of a city.
As the capital city of the Brazilian state of Parana, Curitiba’s population boomed in the mid-1950′s as citizens moved from impoverished rural regions into the city in search of work. Seeing the inadequacy of the current infrastructure, city officials sponsored a contest for a Master Plan – one that would address these limitations, and provide solutions that would serve the population for decades to come.
Today Curitiba is a world leader in urban development – in no small part due to Lerner’s progressive ideas – and stands as a model for other cities around the world who are facing massive population growth and few resources to address the problems this growth can bring. One major universal hurdle is the creation of transportation infrastructure, and as we continue to face the pressures of rising fuel costs and limited supply, the solutions discovered in Brazil are coming ever more into play on this side of the globe.
Curitiba’s transportation system is a lesson in efficiency, running over 1900 buses and moving over 1.9 million people each day. Entirely above ground, several networks of buses – each color-coded by bus and route type – serve the heart of the city and the surrounding suburbs. The largest of these buses, designed to hold 300 people, run along the city’s main avenues in restricted lanes, allowing higher speeds than most urban bus systems. Feeder buses, coming into the city from outlying areas, drop passengers at terminals for transfer.
In utilizing existing roadways, Caritiba was able to avoid many of the problems that face cities still struggling to develop underground systems – namely high costs, construction delays, and the inability to adapt to future changes in population density.
Solutions were also found to address the boarding/fare-paying bottlenecks at each stop by building Lerner-designed Plexiglas terminals. At the entrance of each terminal, passengers pay their fare and then wait in the shelter for their bus to arrive, reducing the time the buses idle at each stop and making passenger loading much more efficient. This continued focus on simplicity and ease of use were invaluable concepts to the philosophy of this project, as Lerner has attested:
You have to have a commitment with simplicity. Every child should know the design of his or her own city. They should design the city even, because if you can design the city you can understand the city. If you understand the city, you will respect the city.
Sing a Song of Sustainable Cities – Jamie Lerner TED Talk
Lerner is a champion of responsible, renewable urban living and in calling upon citizens to be actively involved in their community. As we continue to move into more densely populated areas, the lessons to be gleaned from Caritiba could provide quick, cost-effective solutions for a variety of problems – and allow other forms of transit within the city, such as personal vehicles, bicycles, or taxis to work in tandem to offer a cleaner, more efficient transportation network.
Share this Post
Topics: Management, Politics, Sustainable living, Transportation | No Comments »