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Curitiba, Brazil...Where the LA Orange Line Was Born

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Posted March 30, 2009 with 731 reads

Keywords: brazil sustainability transportation, Urban Planning, Economy

Curitiba, capital city of the Brazilian state of Paraná, with a metro area of 3.5 million is the fourth largest economic region in Brazil. It draws its name from the Tupi indian word meaning “big pines.” It's also a city of big urban visions, produced by a culture and form of social organization different from what one finds in the United States.

Brazil is accustomed to big change in short chunks of time. When JFK was planning the "New Frontier" president Juscelino Kubitcheck launched Brazil's Bossa Nova (new wave in Portuguese- the music was part of the marketing support for the plan, believe it or not) which moved the nation's capital from Rio to Brasilia and launched the Itaipu hydro complex, which provides 25% of Brazil's electric power, in just five years.

PBS Frontline and many experts on urbanization say Curitiba probably has the world's best public transportation system. Approximately 1,100 buses make 12,500 trips each day, moving 2 million commuters. Fuel efficient buses made in Brazil use 30% less fuel than those in other major Southern Hemisphere cities and make urban air quality the best among the nation's major metro areas. An amazing combination of vision and political will made a city with an average per capita income of $5,900 the model for public transport in metro LA, where the average Angelino pulls down $47,000/year.

Last month I visited Curitiba, taking a $30 250-mile bus ride from Piracicaba, the world's sugar and ethanol capital at the western end of the Sao Paulo megacity. Pira has the lush, tropical feeling one gets in the Louisiana sugar belt because it was settled by Confedrado refugees from the US War Between the States and Italians who didn't get to central casting for Bertoluccis's epic 1900. In sharp contrast, Curitiba is a cross between its sister city, Lyon, France and Los Angeles.

The Curitiba concept is actually a "street level subway" with triple articulated busses running on designated streets, stopping at long stations with pre-pay turnstiles where no money changes hands. Buses run on strict schedules people can count on, sometimes as frequently as every 90 seconds. And they move fast. When the bus enters into a traffic road, it gets a special lane. Motorists who wander into the lane get out of the way. Getting a ticket for not respecting the bus is a problem. Things like the Fraternal Order of Police Bumper Sticker and the annual bottle of Seagrams 7 aren't part of the culture.

Curitiba's original city master plan featured a star system of boulevards and arteries and was developed was developed by Alfred Agache, the doyen of French urban planners. But Brazil's frenetic economy and a long military interregnum caused this model to run out of gas. When the opening to democracy took place, architect and city planner Jaime Lerner ran for mayor and brought a new vision to Curitiba, with public transportation as its focus. Lerner would go on to become governor of Paraná state, the economic power in Brazil's European-like southern region.

By 1992 the transportation system had reached out to the extent that 41 percent of Curitiba's citizens were living within 3 blocks of a major city bus line. And while automobile commuters give the city an LA feel, the sustainablity index is more like Chicago, where the attitude is "business as usual." There is no celebration of sustainability here. It's taken for granted. Even Wal-Mart offers cotton shopping bags provided by employees who wear sustainability logo t-shirts. Just part of the daily life. Changes in latitude, changes in attitude.

What is different in Brazil is that, unlike the US or Canada, family units in most major metro areas rely on public transportation to commute to jobs, travel to school or to go shopping, to sporting events or cinema or other social after work activities. Many stores offer free home delivery. US style pickup trucks are used for what they were originally designed to do, not to reflect the "Scottsdale" or "Sonoma" lifestyle. Mobile homes and campers aren't part of the mix. When people migragte from one area of Brazil to another in search of job and career opportunities, it is on the bus.

Curitiba also serves as the model for the public transportation system in Bogota, Colombia and other cities in South Asia and Europe. But it is not without critics; some who filter Curitiba's achievements through the perspectives of their own mother culture, not Brazil's. Curitiba citizens are in general comfortable with this street level subway system and other efforts to make their city more sustainable. For the growing number of high density cities in powerful low income economies like Russia, India, China, and Indonesia the Curitiba model is as good as it gets.

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RobertoGhidini said:

Just once more:

- The correct name is Alfred Agache not Albert Agache.

Thanks!

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Wed, 2009-05-27 04:48 — RobertoGhidini

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BibiParchenReis said:

Quality of life is uneven in Brasil, as it is becoming in the United States. But state and local governments do have quality of life secretaries and of course bureaucracies to follow developments. The problem Brasil faces, as evidenced by the comments posted here, is that a culture of complaint has developed based on the values of the US and other northern cultures and their environmental movements, which are not rooted in the culture of Brasil. While there are angry people still obsessed with the military regimes, it was the military who caused US industrialist Daniel K. Ludwig to stop his efforts to turn a huge landhold in the Amazon basin into the world's largest paper pulp mill, in 1979.

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Wed, 2009-04-08 19:25 — BibiParchenReis

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RickReno said:

@ Luis Patricio,

The auto industry (Renault-Nissan) has a huge footprint in the Curitiba SMSA. The reality in Curitba, as in most of Brazil, is that small motorcycles are the general alternative. Bicycles do not get much respect in Brazilian culture alternatively. In Cuba run by the Castro half-brothers and their regent, Carlos Lage, one can buy bicycles for very little money, and not worry about getting run off the road becasue automobiles and motos do not dominate. In Brazil, bicycles and the subculture that appreciate them carry risks. Ride your bicycle down the street on a night after a big Corinthians or Flamengo futebol game, and you run the risk of getting run off the road by rowdy fans drunk on Nova Schin lager beer. It is cultural. Just like Brazlian police and government link the rise in drug related crime and gangs with the popularity of US exported rap and hip-hop music. You can't transpose the values of Amsertdam or Utrecht, or the wage and tax system that exists there to Brazil.

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Wed, 2009-04-08 14:44 — RickReno

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RickReno said:

@Helio,

Thanks for your comment albeit getting in late in the game. You must be a busy schedule person... As for the details, Lerner was mayor during the "abertura" so for me that counts as the "opening to democracy". What one explains as "democracy" in Brazil as you suggest it, rings of "US style" democracy, not Brazilian "democracy" which is not modeled on any US-British legal notion of "democracy" but, instead, modeled on the Lateran Accords negotiated between the Vatican and Mussolini's Italy during the late 1920s. My intention is to focus on the success, and if the pathology of underdevelopment that some Brazilians have released still causes you to stay submerged in the minutiae, then I suggest you look at the fact that other cities have adopted the model, in the US, in the Northern Tier of South America, and in Asia. Crowded buses are a fact of life in many cities in Brazil. And better crowded and saving 30% in fuel than , uh, can you offer a better example?

Regarding the politics of all this, I believe it was Argentina's Juan Domingo Peron who said "when I decide, I exclude," and he was correct. So there are always those who will not feel sufficiently included. The US president and his inner circle are coming to grips with this very issue, right now, as they seek to lower expections in the US as it experiences an economic environment that Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman says has no visible end

And by the way, you might want to search a bit better on the Bossa Nova connection. As you may know, the highly successful Samba na Oca history of Bossa Nova sponsored by government and private enterprise ran for about four months last year in Sao Paulo. Having visited it more than once, I can tell you there were many storyboards and photographs that substantiate the connection between the JK public relations machine and some of the big names in what we know as Bossa Nova music. Unfortunately, I am unable to find any archival material on the web. But you might want to contact some of the sponsoring organizations for more details, or the public relations firms they hire for assistance on such matters.

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Wed, 2009-04-08 13:20 — RickReno

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RickReno said:

Roberto, with all due respect, you sound like a Made in the USA "ecocrat" one of the ecology, green types for whom nothing on earth is ever good enough. "Favelization" is no different than "homeless" in the US, or "bidonville" in France. The claim that the plan helped reduce automobile use was made. And one can always find pollution, but there is less in Curitiba than other cities in Brazil. Perhaps you might want to offer a few links to support your claims of falsehood. Nobody made the claim that Curitiba is ecologically correct in the main text of the little article I posted. Moreover, I offered a link to a critical article, and your arguments seem to mirror those arguments...

The notion of "correctness" has "Made in USA" all over it. So whose values are you filtering Curitiba through? Brazil's, globalist interests? Blog de Favre (=blog de "Wermus" 2nd international) or some operativo cult? Perhaps a few links in support of your storytelling can help all members of this community develop a better understanding of what it is you are trying to share. Of course public transportation in Curitiba has increased and USDOT noted price hikes as early as 2005. So what do you want, friends of Tirofijo in Colombia's Magdalena Media to run the transport system in Curitiba to ensure it works for the revolutionary notion of O Povo? On the other hand you can pay about twety five US cents to ride the subway system in Mexico city, which is a "social justice" price. Pay the equivalent of $1.25 to ride the subway in Rio. Which is safer, which is cleaner, which has less crime. All economies in Latin America and South America are dollarized. If Los Angeles and Bogota have adopted the Curitiba plan, the Curitbanos must be doing something right.

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Wed, 2009-04-08 13:10 — RickReno

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RobertoGhidini said:

The system of efficient passengers' transports, - still that of the point of view operative/financial - that has the city of Curitiba, supported in the ideas proposed in the Preliminary Urban Plan - 1965 (Plan Wilheim), of the land use and collective transport, promote the orderly and zoned lineal growth, according to structural axes, it has not been able to minimise the growth of the motorization, of the contamination of the air and the pollution of the rivers and that the "favelisation" is today something above the population's 12 % in the city.

It subtracts us to conclude that indeed Curitiba is false, because the image of a sustainable, fair city, ecologically correct and with a system of transport like the first world, it is not true. I find that the only thing positive, is the efficiency of the system of transport. Based on the transfer and capital concentration from the workers toward to the company of transports promoted for the most part by the legal instrument of the vouchers, it transports and completes the social paper, the rest, really, is false: this city-marketing from those that made the plan for the exclusivity's of the design of the city and of it's make-up and the privileged decisions taken without the consideration of new information.

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Wed, 2009-04-08 10:36 — RobertoGhidini

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RickReno said:

Thanks for your comment, Robin. More sustainable, depends on who defines sustainability. In Brazil where climate is tropical and subtropical, and desert in the dry Sertao region of the northeast, not everybody needs an AUI-40 hot water heater. Many homes and apartments use instant hot water heaters in kitchens and bathrooms. This helps reduce water use, electricity and gas bills. Dishwashers that burn a lot of electricity and use loads of hot water are not dominant like in the US because even working class families prefer to hire a part-time housekeeper to wash and do other chores. Home washing machines operate mainly on cold water and use less electricity because they cycle with less force and the "ringer" cycle is shorter and works in bursts. One can also argue that the government mandated electric power ratings on appliances in Brazil give a better "read" of conumption than what one finds in the US. Most automobiles are four and small six cylinder engines with stick shifts. Brazil needs to work on its truck emission standards though and muffler laws on passenger cars and trucks need a closer look. On the other hand when Jeb Bush was governor of Florida he eliminated all emission restrictions on passenger cars, and since Florida is so flat, the pollution can blow across the Gulf of Mexico to Texas, where his brother lives:)

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Tue, 2009-03-31 16:56 — RickReno

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Robin Carey said:

I've always been fascinated by the story of the Confederate veterans who moved en masse to one of the few countries where slavery was still legal in 1865. Thanks for this look into what appears to be a beautiful part of the world, Eric, with a more sustainable life style than we are used to here in the U.S.

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Tue, 2009-03-31 16:06 — Robin Carey

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