Blueprint for an eco-safe city.

• Author: Pedriera, Mauricio
• Position: Curitaba, Brazil

Act locally, think globally is a maxim Curitiba's unflappable mayor swears by. While many of us listen, dismayed and helpless, to reports of global warming or the shrinking species diversity, Mayor Jaime Lerner has been rallying his constituency towards environmental victories. In fact, Curitiba, the charming green-sparkled capital of Brazil's southern state of Parana, has been praised as one of Latin America's most livable cities.

About to celebrate its tercentenary next year, Curitiba has a population of 1.5 million and a half a million cars running about its streets. yet it seems to have found the secret of an environmentally balanced growth. Whether pointing out the clean residential streets bordered with big yellow or purple flowered ipe trees, the ingenious transportation system, or the large public parks with lakes and river-dams, Curitibanos are quick to tell visitors that they live in the best place on earth.

The secret of Curitiba lies in a direction that was determined many years ago and that has been maintained to this day. In the early 1960s, while planners and urbanists in most Brazilian cities "thought big" and dreamed of taller buildings, of more driving and parking space and overpasses for more cars, and of building subways in each state capital, a small group of local architects raised the banner of environment and balanced growth. That banner has been handed down by consecutive administrations, although with some political differences regarding priorities. As a result, Curitiba displays a quality of life that is unique among other Brazilian capitals and is hard to match elsewhere.

"It is not easy, and it is becoming harder," remarks Mayor Jaime Lerner, who was in that original group of architects and is now in his third term at the head of the administration, having held office on and off during the past twenty years. "The problems of Brazilian cities are very serious. People are becoming poorer, pressures are building and one has to find a way to manage this process.

It is Lerner's contention that most problems affecting the environment have to do with the way people live and how they travel. Key to his philosophy is simplicity. "I think it is fundamental for all cities to define where they are heading, where people are going to live and where the city's growth is leading," remarks Lerner. "Sometimes the answer is very simple: normally the city follows the trail and the memory - the trail of transportation, which means that as the city grows, it gets a lift on the transportation. And memory is the soul of cities, it is our identification, it is belonging. When you achieve this in a city, you have come a long way," stresses Lerner.

The achievements of the mayor and his fellow architects and urbanists are a model for city planners throughout Brazil. These include innovative projects not only in the field of...