A pedestrian-only area in Curitiba, Brazil

Integrated planning the key to success in Curitiba

Environmental sustainability is being achieved in Curitiba (Brazil) as a result of the cohesive strategy that underpins all of its municipal projects.

Specific goals are social inclusion, accessibility, public amenities, urban transparency, efficiency, and environmental sustainability for the city and the metropolitan area. A unique aspect of Curitiba’s strategy is how it maximizes the efficiency and productivity of transportation, land-use planning, and housing development by integrating them so they support one another.

Some of the city’s successes include:

• 70 percent of the city’s trash is recycled;
• residents who live in shanty towns receive free groceries and bus tickets in exchange for their bags of garbage;
• residents who live in shanty towns have access to social programs and health services funded by recycling programs;
• Nearly one-fifth of the city is parkland with, on average, 52 square metres of green space per person and 1.5 million trees planted along streets by volunteers;
• More than two million people a day use Curitiba’s inexpensive and efficient transit service, even though the city has more car owners per capita than anywhere else in Brazil; and
• Downtown areas have been transformed into pedestrian venues, including a 24-hour mall with shops, restaurants, cafes, and a street of flowers tended by street children.

ICLEI’s Local Agenda 21 (LA21) Campaign promotes a participatory, long-term, strategic planning process that supports local governance by identifying local sustainability priorities and mobilizing local governments and their citizens to implement long-term action plans that address these sustainable priorities. Using the LA21 approach of participatory sustainable development planning, ICLEI aims to assist local authorities to move beyond general sustainable development planning and to apply this approach in tackling areas of priority concern. For more information, please visit www.iclei.org/la21.

Curitiba is one of 25 local governments in Latin America that are currently Members of ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability. For more information on ICLEI and its activities in Latin America and the Caribbean, please visit www.iclei.org/lacs.

Source: ‘Environmental planning in Curitiba, Brazil’, Cities Alliance: Cities without slums, 2006 Annual Report.