Sustainability - A Matter of Choice

LIVING SUSTAINABLY



An urban ecological revolution

In 1971, the main street in Curitiba, in the Brazilian state of Paran‡, was closed to all vehicular traffic. Pedestrians, flowers, and trees took over. It was the beginning of a revitalization of the old downtown area, and indeed of the whole city.

The greening of the city was enhanced by an urban tree-planting plan initiated in 1974, helped by the Municipal Secretariat for the Environment, which provides 15,000 saplings each year. In 1989, environmental education was introduced in 105 municipal schools. Now, children take field trips to observe city landscaping and plant trees in their school grounds. Also in 1989, a "garbage that is not garbage" programme began, in which city residents recycle about one-third of all solid waste. Curitiba has become a model city for the modern world. The waste management programme, public transport system, and industrial and social sectors are all involved in the development of the city.

It could have been very different. In the decade following World War II, Curitiba, then of modest size, underwent a period of rapid growth due to new wealth generated by a coffee boom in the northern part of the state. Between 1940 and 1950 its population rose from 140,000 to 180,000, and then doubled in the next ten years. A city master-plan devised in 1942 aimed at transforming Curitiba into another S‹o Paulo. Fortunately the municipal authorities themselves rejected the plan and chose the path to a city that was both pleasant to live in and environmentally friendly, long before that term became a byword.

With an efficient public transport system, Curitiba's fuel consumption is 50 per cent of the national average. Originally the city had half a square metre of green area per person; this has now increased to 50 square metres. In today's world, this is a remarkable story of sustainable development, particularly in a developing country.

Conditions in Curitiba contrast sharply with those in urban areas all over the world, which suffer from ineffective health care, poor public transport and waste disposal systems, bad sanitation, and a lack of green space. This is what it means to live unsustainably. And yet things could be so different, as Curitiba has demonstrated.



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Copyright 1996, The World Wide Fund For Nature