Video: Antanas Mockus - Miradas Urbanas (Pt. 1)

Video: Jose Abreu on kids transformed by music

Artículo: Lessons for an urbanizing world: the Curitiba´s experience

Lessons for an urbanizing world

Some of the lessons that emerge from the Curitiba experience for other cities include:

• Top priority should be given to public transport rather than to private cars, and to pedestrians rather than to motorized vehicles. Bicycle paths and pedestrian areas should be an integrated part of the road network and public transportation system. In Curitiba, less attention to meeting the needs of private motorized traffic has generated less use of cars.

• A sustainable city is one that uses the minimum and conserves the maximum. This pragmatic application of demand management and recycling is exemplified in Curitiba by solid waste recovery, re-use of old buses as mobile schools, preservation and use of historic dwellings, and employment policies where poor people are employed in the waste separation plant and as teachers of environmental education courses.

• There can be an integrated and environmentally sensitive action plan for each set of problems. Solutions within any city are not specific and isolated but interconnected. The action plan should involve partnerships between responsible actors such as private sector entrepreneurs, nongovernmental organizations, municipal agencies, utilities, neighborhood associations, community groups, and individuals.

• Creativity can substitute for financial resources. Ideally, cities should turn what are traditional sources of problems into resources. For example, public transport, urban solid waste, and unemployment are traditionally listed as problems but they have the potential to become generators of new resources and solutions. Creative and labor-intensive ideas can, to some extent, substitute for capital-intensive technologies. Also, cities do not need to wait for bailouts or structural reforms to begin working on some of their problems.

• Social, environmental and economic solutions can be integrated into holistic approaches. Mayor Lerner’s leadership and creativity proved that there could be a sustainable solution for each set of problems usually found in fast-growing cities worldwide. A combination of public-private partnerships, transparency and participation was promoted in the development of equations of co-responsibility. The experience of Curitiba demonstrates that solutions, not only problems, can be seen in an integrated way.

Beyond the city level, the Curitiba case suggests that state and national governments would do well to acknowledge the strategic importance of cities as potential instruments for positive development and change.

These lessons are being learned by other cities inside and outside of Brazil. In Brazil and other Latin American cities, pedestrian walkways, bus lanes, waste management programs that were pioneered in Curitiba have become popular urban fixtures and procedures. Cities in regions as different as Africa, Asia, North America and Europe have expressed interest in the approaches put to practice in Curitiba.

One size does not fit all—not all cities enjoy Curitiba’s political will and continuity. However, one of Curitiba’s many creative, resource-conserving solutions may fit many cities that make up an increasingly urban world. 

to read the entire article

http://www.eoearth.org/article/Curitiba,_Brazil 

Artículo: "How cars are killing us around the world"

Infographic: "How Cars are Killing Us Around the World"

Image: Infrastructurist

Risk assessment is hard. We humans are hard-wired with many cognitive biases that can often distort our perception of reality and make us fear the wrong things. For example, on average, people will be more afraid of something with which they are unfamiliar compared to something that they see every day. Cars fall into the "familiar" category, and to remind us of the risk associated with driving, the nice people are the Infrastructurists made a really cool infographic that shows how cars are killing people around the world.

To see the high-resolution version in all its glory, go here and click on the pic.

So while it is good to fight for the removal of BPA from food cans and water bottles, we should keep things in perspective and not forget all the people killed and injured by cars.

There are lots of lives to be saved by making our cities more walkable, cyclable, by improving public transit, but making cars that are safer to their occupants and to the pedestrians and cyclists that they hit.

We live in a very auto-centric society, and by making it less so, we can not only clean up the environment and combat global warming, but we can also save lives and reduce the suffering caused by injuries and the loss of loved ones.

by: Michael Graham Richard, Ottawa, Canada

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/03/infrastructurist-infographic-how-cars-kill-us-around-the-world.php

Artículo: Pedestrian Survival Techniques

For the last few months, I've left my bike at home and made my way throughout town mostly on my own two feet. During this time, I've observed a clever strategy, used by countless walkers, for crossing two or three-lane streets. It's especially common among the regulars - the truckers of the pedestrian world - who have optimized their safety and efficiency by repeating the same trip over and over again. It's quite possibly the perfectly rational cross.


The way it works is simple: As you're walking toward your destination, you remain constantly aware of the vehicular traffic coming from either direction. Once a clear break appears, you cross at that moment. There's no wait time, because you continue walking while you watch for the opening. It's highly safe, or at least you have maximum control over your own safety. Before "jaywalking" was stigmatized and banned through a campaign by automobile lobbyists, this was a perfectly acceptable way to approach a typical dilemma.

Walkers are now supposed to wait until they reach the intersection before crossing, but for obvious reasons they do not want to do this.

1. Vehicles could be approaching from a number of directions and its impossible to simultaneously monitor all of these possibilities.
2. Turning lanes increase the total distance that must be crossed.
3. Stoplights encourage a certain number of drivers to speed to try and beat the red light. The severity of a hit would be much higher.

The only three times I felt my safety compromised over this period was while legally crossing. On one occasion, watching the walk signal I almost stepped out in front of a truck careening through the red light. On two other occasions, right-turning cars were not paying attention to the crosswalk and had to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting me. None of these were near-death experiences, but they underscore the tension pedestrians feel between trusting in official protection and using their own safety intuition.

When walkers must cross at intersections, pedestrian buttons can make things more problematic. In Charlottesville and many other towns, a walk signal will not be displayed unless the button is pressed. This means that if you push the button one second after your cycle begins, you will need to wait for another entire cycle before your signal is given. Research shows that only half of pedestrians press buttons at all, and most folks who do press will not wait unnecessarily. They attempt to cross anyway, only deprived of information about how much time remains in the cycle. Unless the button is "hot" and adjusts signal timing or activates lighting, there's no reason to have it at all.

Pedestrians should be empowered by engineering solutions to follow their own safety intuitions. They have a huge incentive to protect their life, and the truly reckless (or inebriated) will ignore signals or legalities anyway. FHWA sponsored major studies of various pedestrian safety devices in high-crash intersections and last year released a treasure trove of information about what techniques proved effective. In many cases, focusing on modifying driving yield behavior and speeds was more effective than attempting to herd pedestrians.

Engineering is incredibly important, but the best engineers will tell you that they offer sets of trade-offs not absolute solutions. The relative values between pedestrians' right to life, motorists' right to convenience, and costs of implementation cannot be calculated but must be provided subjectively by the ones who make the final decision. Hopefully in a democracy, that's you and me.

http://sustainablecitiescollective.com/Home/29623

Video: The urban ‘moving bike’

The urban ‘moving bike’

Onno Sminia and Louis Pierre Geerinckx represent what we need more of. The two Dutch industrial designers simply felt there was a better way to move within their urban neighborhood without having to depend on their parents, renting a moving truck and/or finding parking, much less do it on any kind of regular basis.
So they innovated and built their own solution, a moving bike, and then formed a new company around it, Vrachfiets, which means ‘cargo bike’ in Dutch. How’s that for problem solving? Two pedalers provide the added power needed for heavier loads, while the next version will have solar-powered electrical assist the up the towing capacity even more.
They already have their first interested customer, the City of Delft, in the Netherlands.
Slowly but surely, the emerging generations are creating their own pedestrian-only/carfree world.

Articulo: Urban Renewal Through Public Art?

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Yesterday’s post on the extraordinary rice paddy art of the Japanese village of Inakadate got me thinking about the power and purpose of art, public art in particular. Japan’s well-documented generational flight from the country to the city has gutted many rural communities that will likely become ghost towns once their predominantly elderly inhabitants pass on, and forgotten completely once their buildings rot. Yet here is Inakadate, drawing 150,000+ visitors annually to a village of fewer than 9000 residents 400 miles from Tokyo to stare out a tower window at rice paddies. Such is the power of art.

A recent article on the proposed razing of the infamous Jordan Downs housing project in Watts raised some questions for me about the underlying intention, the core goal, of urban renewal. Racism, classism, and other prejudices are probably inescapable, but I don’t find them to be legitimate motivation. Isn’t the point of urban renewal—as a process, not a product—to provide a struggling area with a neighborhood it can be proud of? After all, people who take pride in where they live also take care of it. They maintain it, cultivate it, activate it, personalize it, beautify it, protect it, and adapt it to their particular needs and desires. They become a true community, the Jane Jacobs kind.

Architecture plays a major role; enormous Communist Bloc-style “human warehouses” don’t make things easy, and demolition isn’t always a bad thing. But architectural interventions are expensive, laborious, and disruptive. Artistic ones, in comparison, can be much cheaper, more inclusive, more dynamic. They can create a unique sense of place, inspiring residents to take pride in what they already have—who they already are—instead of suggesting that nothing here is worth saving, the slate should be wiped clean. The inclusion of art suggests a process of improvement, not replacement. This is certainly not novel thinking. Still, I wonder how many failed urban interventions might have been successful had public art been a genuinely considered agent of change.

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Of course, areas targeted for urban renewal (by whatever name) typically have more pressing needs than civic pride: education, opportunity, health care, nutritious food, a healthy home. Art might not feed the hungry (though Inakadate proves it can), but why should renewing dilapidated and impoverished areas be a linear process? If it requires engagement, communication, and commitment at all levels, then can’t art play a significant role? Whether it’s rice paddy art, city buses, murals, civic graffiti, chalk art, sculptures, building facades, signage, horticulture, folk architecture, or any other form, public art can help bring a community together. It can be a powerful force of renewal, without destruction, displacement, or disparagement.

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http://link.social.com/