DAUP-MUPD-UPL-2015-Lecture 7

Comparative Urban Planning Law By: James A. Kushner

Chapter 1 Voula Mega, The Concept and Civilization of an Eco-society: Dilemmas, Innovations, and Urban Dramas.

In Cities and the Environment: New Approaches for Eco-societies, edited by Takashi Inoguchi, Edward Newman, and Glen Paoletto 1999

The Concept and Civilization of an Eco-society • The city is dynamic and complex socio-economic and human eco system, a place of encounters, challenges, sociability, confrontation, dialectics, and emotion.

The Concept and Civilization of an Eco-society • According to Aristotle, the city is “built politics”: the high interaction between its form and the political values predominating in its governance.

• Vitruvius wanted the city to be solid, beautiful, and useful.

• Levi-Straus proclaims it to be the human invention “par excellence.”

The Concept and Civilization of an Eco-society • Jacobs defines the city as a settlement that consistently generates its economic growth from its own local economy. • Mumford defines it as the form and symbol of an integrated social relationship.

The Concept and Civilization of an Eco-society • As we move towards the 21st century cities will continue to be the main centers of economic activity, innovation, and culture.

The Concept and Civilization of an Eco-society • Cities are increasingly strong on European scene, they compete more, but they also collaborate more. • They all want to win the battle of sustainable development and to become more attractive to people and capital.

The Concept and Civilization of an Eco-society • But cities are becoming more ambivalent.

• There are cities that: – Include but also exclude – Assemble but also divide – Integrate but also disintegrate – Enrich but also impoverish – Fulfill but also drain

The Concept and Civilization of an Eco-society • Turning problems into opportunities is a paramount challenge for all actors and decision-makers.

• “Sustainability” has been the most popular and emblematic term in recent years.

The Concept and Civilization of an Eco-society • “Sustainable development” succeeded the concepts holistic, integral, or endogenous development.

• Urban sustainability links cities to the density of the planet.

• Process not as an end-point, as a journey rather than a destination.

The Concept and Civilization of an Eco-society • Environmental Sustainability cannot be envisaged without social equity and economic sustainability.

The Concept and Civilization of an Eco-society • “Creative, balance– seeking process extending into all areas of local decision-making.

• A healthy environment, social cohesion and economic efficiency, harmonious coevolution, based on a active citizenship, are the pillars of urban sustainability.”

The Concept and Civilization of an Eco-society • Cities should not simply invest in a better environment, but should be recreated as Civitas (the social body of the cives), or citizens, united by law. • It is the law that binds them together, giving them responsibilities on the one hand and rights of citizenship on the other, places of civilization.

The Concept and Civilization of an Eco-society • The city at least has the capacity to renew itself. • The renaissance cannot be perceived without as overall rethinking of the city, its form, and its function.

The Concept and Civilization of an Eco-society • Habitat II (Istanbul 3-14 June 1996) – Indicators: A new measure of progress.

– Measure the success of on course of action and even stimulate action, but they do not indicate what kind of action to take.

The Concept and Civilization of an Eco-society • Cities are networks of networks and at the same time the poles of global networks. • Society is based on networks and local actors constitute the diversified poles of the global networks.

The Concept and Civilization of an Eco-society • Technology, information, and markets are global, but people are local. • Information technology provides the infrastructure for the integration of the global system.

The Concept and Civilization of an Eco-society • The space of flows (global) is in interaction with the space of the place (local) and the cities gain and increasingly dual (global-local) function.

The Concept and Civilization of an Eco-society • Competition is geographically uneven and new technologies have the power to shrink distance and to extend geographical distribution.

The world today is more about cities than countries, and a place like Seoul has more in common with Singapore and Hong Kong than with smaller Korean cities.

City Life in Developing Nations Bill McKibben, Curitiba, in Hope, Human and Wild: True Stories of Living Lightly on the Earth (Ch2. 1995)

Curitiba • Curitiba: a mid-size Brazilian city • Mentioned in planning magazines • Winning various awards from the UN • Poor: average per capita income $ 2500 • Population: 1.5 million • Why?

Curitiba • Livability!

• 99% happy with their town • It has slums favelas • Under a city program a slum dweller who collects a sack of garbage gets a sack of food from the city in return.

Curitiba • “Decent lives helping produce a decent environment.”

• Fine transit system.

• Its inhabitants are attracted toward the city center instead of repelled out to a sprawl of suburbs.

• 25% less fuel per capita than other Brazilians.

Curitiba • It came from designing a city that actually meets people’s desires, a city that is as much an example for the sprawling, decaying cities of the First World as for the crowded, booming cities of the Third World.

Curitiba • • • • • • •

1940  125,000 residents 1950  180,000 residents 1960  361,000 residents Population explosion Traffic downtown Air pollution It was clear that the time had come to plan, and as in almost every other city, planning meant planning for automobiles.

Curitiba • The scheme called for widening the main streets of the city to add more lanes.

• Knocking down the turn-of-the-century buildings that lined the downtown • Building overpass that would link two of the city’s main squares.

Curitiba • Any American living in a city that has undergone urban renewal or been cut off from its waterfront by a belt of highway would recognize the plan in an instant.

• It’s how urban areas around the globe have been reconfigured for the auto age.

Curitiba • Jamie Lerner: Mayor of Curitiba at the age of 33. • Remake Curitiba not for cars but for people.

Curitiba • Pedestrian mall • A human-scale city • Jackhammering up the pavement, putting down cobblestones, erecting streetlights and kiosks, and putting in tens of thousands of flowers.

• Children sitting in the former street painting pictures.

Curitiba • Instead of buying up buildings and tearing them down to widen streets, planners stared at the maps long enough to see that the existing streets would do just fine.

• No highways in the city – three streets still scaled to human beings.

Curitiba “Every city has its hidden designs old roads, old streetcar ways. You’re not going to invent a new city. Instead, you’re doing a strange archaeology, trying to enhance the old, hidden design. You can’t go wrong if the city is growing along the trail of memory and of transport.

Memory is the identity of the city, and transport is the future.”

Jaime Lerner (Curitiba mayor)

Curitiba • Transport in the case of Curitiba means buses.

• Glass “tube station”, a bus shelter raised off the ground and with an attendant to fares.

• “Speedbuses”

Curitiba • “Cheapness” is one of the cardinal dictates of Curitiban planning.

• Many of the city’s buildings are “recycled”.

– Old furniture factory  Planning headquarters – Gunpowder depot  Furniture factory – Glue plant  children’s center

• “Simple is brother to cheap.”

Curitiba “It’s very hard to understand simplicity.

Simplicity needs a kind of commitment.

You have to be sure of yourself.”

Jaime Lerner (Curitiba mayor)

Curitiba • “twenty-four-hour street”, a block-long covered arcade near the city center with shops and restaurants than never close.

Curitiba “You have to begin the game. You don’t have to have all the answers before you start – you can’t be such smart guys. To start is important.”

Jaime Lerner (Curitiba mayor)

Curitiba • Ideology in the name of constructive pragmatism. Building things to human scale may be an ideology of sorts.

• It gave buses priorities over cars.

• Many streets are totally canopied, tunnels of green.

Curitiba • Streetchildren.

• A shelter with activities ongoing all day in an effort to keep the children off the streets.

• “They need a lot of love.”

• “13 support houses” where a pair of houseparents raises 8 or 10 of streetchildren.

• Newsvendors – carry bags for shoppers – assistant gardeners • Food program • “Food is what they need. Love is what they need. They come out differently if they get it.”

Curitiba • Two priorities: Environment and Children • Education • “PIA” centers – pia is Indian slang for small child and also stands for Childhood and Adolescence Integration Program.

Curitiba • Garbage program 1989 • Buying surplus food from farmers in the surrounding countryside and trading it for bags of garbage – 6 kilos of trash bought a sack of rice, potatoes, beans and bananas. For a kilo more, some eggs.

Curitiba • Because the streets are narrow and unpaved, the garbage trucks hired by the city couldn’t get up them and collect trash, which was piling up in the favelas.

• They calculated how much would it cost to pay the garbage haulers to collect the trash from the crowded slums.

• They determined how much food they could buy for that sum and then let the slum dwellers collect the trash themselves and bring it down out of the favelas to the trucks.

Curitiba • Along the way, the program manages to support small farmers who might otherwise have to abandon their fields and migrate to town.

Curitiba • To learn from Curitiba, the rest of the world would have to break some long standing habits – the habit of finding answers in the rich countries, for instance, “People can’t imagine there’s a city in Brazil with all the facilities.”

Curitiba Videos • Brazil- Curitiba, a sustainable city • http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Brazil+Curitiba&aq=f • Jaime Lerner: A song of the city • http://www.ted.com/talks/jaime_lerner_sings_of_the_city. html • Eduardo Paes: The 4 commandments of cities • http://www.ted.com/talks/eduardo_paes_the_4_comman dments_of_cities.html

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