Rapid urban expansion and the emergence of new urban centres in the Global South is frequently accompanied by a lack of adequate infrastructure and services. This is resulting in declining levels of access to water supply and sanitation for a large number of urban dwellers, with the State increasingly unable to fulfill its role as a provider of basic services.

I will elaborate on this using the example of Dar es Salaam, a city that has been the focus of my research for a while.

In Tanzania’s largest city we see that formal service provision is limited to central and more affluent areas. The gap in service provision is particularly high in rapidly growing peri-urban areas such as Tungi and Kigamboni, whose inhabitants are among the worst served.

Both wards are areas that tend to absorb large proportions of the growing urban population, but with disproportionately high percentages of poor households. This is going to accelerate further once the construction of a new bridge that connects these two wards to the city’s main business district is complete.

Peri-urban areas may be incorporated into the city, but still lack services

At the same time, many informal areas previously labelled as ‘peri-urban’, like the Kombo and Karakata subwards close to the airport in the South, have become more consolidated and incorporated into the urban core. Yet they continue to suffer from non-existent or inadequate formal infrastructure and services.

As with the Kigamboni peninsula, the majority of those affected are lower-income people that experience varying degrees of water poverty, often with severe implications on their livelihoods; both in terms of the additional time spent to meet their needs and their income, if their economic activities rely on water.

Global efforts to meet water and sanitation needs

To address injustices in the current provision of infrastructure and services, there has been a renewed commitment globally towards universal access through the Sustainable Development Goals in order to activate people’s right to water supply and sanitation. Tanzania is one of the countries that have endorsed the right to water and sanitation.

In practice, however, efforts to tackle the shortfall have largely been seen as a problem of maldistribution. In other words, proposed solutions currently include expanding the water source, reforming the utility and improving the network – these plans assign major roles to utilities, the state and external support agencies.

Poverty, which is first and foremost conceived as people’s financial inability to pay, is regularly presented as the main reason for people lacking access to water supply and sanitation. This is in spite of evidence that Dar es Salaam’s lower-income households frequently pay more in relative and actual terms for a service that in reality is of a lower quality and lower frequency.

More than just a distributional struggle

But water injustices in cities are much more than just a distributional struggle. They are created by socially fabricated political-economic structures, which have led to clear power imbalances that misrecognise those without access. Power relations play a significant role in Dar es Salaam where water has become a commodified good. Even though water supply is in public hands the utility is heavily pushed to be financially autonomous and commercially viable.

In Dar es Salaam and many other cities in the Global South the lack of entitlement and recognition is associated with the informal status of the urban water poor and their disempowerment. While the utility acknowledges their responsibility to provide Dar es Salaam’s residents with water regardless of their tenure status the proportion of their action contributing towards improving supply in informal settlements has been negligible so far.

Co-produced water practices

The deficiency of utility networks and supply in poor urban settlements has given rise to the emergence of a range of alternative practices. Many of them emerge out of poor people’s needs and can range from individual coping mechanisms to collectively organised and negotiated initiatives. Some of these communal efforts represent different forms of co-produced service provision whereby organised groups of poor communities are collaborating with the state directly.

Goals of current DPU research

Earlier this year, I was part of a group of colleagues from DPU, in collaboration with a number of partner organisations, that embarked on the Wat Just research project – Translocal learning for water justice: Peri-urban pathways in India, Tanzania and Bolivia – to explore alternative practices to access services with a particular focus on co-produced water management in three cities; Cochabamba, Dar es Salaam and Kolkata.

In each city we found a variety of service co-production arrangements that range from latent state support to fully institutionalised co-production platforms. However, very little is known to date about their actual performance and their potential to operate at scale.

The aim of our future research is to examine their transformative potential to address not only the current service gap – i.e. meet the urban poor’s practical needs – but also to investigate how far they can tackle more strategic needs such as challenging and transforming existing power relations that threaten to keep the needs of the urban poor hidden.

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Pascale Hofmann is a lecturer at the DPU and is currently studying for an EngD at the DPU and UCL’s department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering (CEGE). She has been working with Professor Adriana Allen on a research project with seed-funding from the ISSC (International Social Science Council) Transformations to Sustainability Programme.

The project, on Translocal learning for water justice: Peri-urban pathways in India, Tanzania and Bolivia, has brought together academics and NGOs from Bolivia, India and Tanzania to discuss and share the challenges and opportunities of co-produced water and sanitation services in their cities. How can these platforms contribute towards water justice at the city scale? A series of Water Justice City Profiles have been produced, elaborating on the challenges in each urban region, as well as a series of videos that explain the concepts and contexts in which the research operates – several of which will be released in the coming weeks.

“Anthropologists are used to working with people who are watching their world disappear” joked Bruno Latour, as he opened the inaugural conference of UCL’s Centre for the Anthropology of Sustainability (CAOS). He was making the point that Anthropology is a good discipline to house a discussion over the forms of research needed to understand and act on ecological crisis.

The Emergence of the Anthropocene

With charismatic flair, Latour took us through his thesis of ‘we have never been modern,’ [1] updating the arguments from his seminal work with those relevant to contemporary environmental instability. The ‘people’ who are watching their world disappear are not ‘them’ – ‘the premoderns’ who inhabit a remote world and are being dragged into a global modernity where nature and culture are separated and structured by capitalist relations. The people Latour refers to is us, the moderns, the ‘we’ who think of the world in these categories.

The epitome of this modernity is the idea of the Anthropocene, which a recent geologists’ paper claims began on 16^th July 1945 with the first nuclear bomb. This is considered the point when human processes made an indelible mark on the earth’s geological record but, Latour continued, just as the moderns reached this height of mastering nature, we lost faith in our ability to know and control it. We entered a period not of only environmental instability, but also of scientific crisis, with debates between warring camps about what is or is not real, knowable and true.

A Call to Action

Latour’s point was more than an exercise in academic ingenuity, it was a call for action to move beyond denial or paralysis in the face of ecological crisis. The route forward is to abandon the idea that there is one mode of science that can know nature. In the way that modernist ideas of the universality of humanity have been replaced with understandings of cultural diversity, the task now is to recognise a diversity of nature, and find alternative forms of knowing.

Themes from Latour’s lecture echoed throughout the conference, which had brought together speakers to reflect on what an anthropology of sustainability could be. Some main ones were:

1. Escobar’s concept of the pluriverse [2] and the need to understand the multiplicity of nature
2. Materiality and a focus on the specificities of places and the communities who live there
3. Allowing the inanimate world to speak, and including such perspectives in research
4. Complexity, c(h)aos and accepting the need to work with uncertainty

How do you say ‘sustainability’ in Swahili or in Masaii?

CAOS, which has as its logo a worm decomposing the world in order to release nutrients and give birth to new life, aims to critically engage with different traditions of sustainably. It seeks research collaborations that will take the anthropological understanding of specific local culture-nature systems into a broader mode of academic intervention in the world.

The need for such collaborations was clear in comments such as Katherine Homewood’s that ‘there’s no word for sustainability in Swahili or in Masaii’. Her research on ‘sustainable conservation’ in East Africa provided a comparative analysis of two programmes of community conservation. It showed the inequalities and degradation produced through a sustainability agenda which is imposed through specific evaluation metrics and processes of territorialisation. These agendas require academic scrutiny and a commitment to learn local idioms of resource management.

The Need for Ethical Reflection

Bill Adams spoke about a different form of language learning and system adoption. Focusing on conservationism and the discourse of efficiency he argued that environmental NGOs have been adopting corporate methods to maximise their impact. They rank net benefits of intervening in ‘hotspots’, but, he argued, these such methods are used without adequate philosophical or ethical reflection, and risk standardising the mode of operating in the world.

This concern was raised later by Jerome Lewis, a co-leader of CAOS. He commented that “carbon, the stuff of life, is now the stuff of international trade” and urged the audience to reflect on what a universal currency for life could mean for the pluriverse.

A Critique of Political Ecology

James Fairhead turned a similar critique onto Political Ecology, arguing that the framework prioritises capitalism as the explanation for socio-environmental relationships over other causal relationships. Henrietta Moore identified a different way to move analytically from local environmental change to global flows of power. She pointed out that communities constantly reflect on their own interventions in the world and do so in reference to other communities. She argued for research that analyses how these connections between communities produce change.

Concluding the conference, Jerome Lewis urged the audience to ‘resist the one world project’, but also to go beyond Latour’s ‘assemblages of objects’. He advocated for ‘a community of subjects’ who are actively engaging and reflecting on new ideas. The conference demonstrated a compelling range of approaches for this re-imagining of sustainability and for producing knowledge about the relationships between social worlds and the environment. These included artistic interventions, discourse analysis, ethnographic methods and cross disciplinary collaboration.

New Ways of Making Sense of Nature and Culture

One conclusion was that an Anthropology of Sustainability is one which is committed to listening to, working with and learning from the local. Other disciplines share this commitment and CAOS promises to be fertile territory for research collaborations which abandon the world of academic certainty and look for new ways to understand nature/culture and empower agents of change.

Notes:

[1]Latour, B. (1993 [1991]). We have never been modern (translated by Catherine Porter). Harlow: Pearson Education ltd.

[2] Escobar, A. (2011) ‘Sustainability: Design for the pluriverse’ in Development vol. 54, no. 2, pp137–140

 

Charlotte Johnson splits her time between the DPU and the UCL Energy Institute. She has a PhD in Social Anthropology and more recently has been engaging in a project to map UCL’s research expertise in urban sustainability.

This post focuses upon the disconnection between the urban population in Mexico (a large majority) and what happens in the non-urban territory, and reflects on the crucial role and state of journalism. However, events that have come to light in the last 7 days demand a short digression:

Just Another Week On

An on going investigation has revealed that the ‘disappearance rate’ in Mexico is currently a shocking 13 people per day. That is one every 2 hours. These people are usually considered as ‘disappeared by force,’ as reinforced last week by the UN Committee of Forced Disappearances. They are mostly marginalised women and men who predominantly belong to poor rural and indigenous communities.

To add to the tragedy 40% are aged 15 to 29, simply too young to go through such experience without life-long consequences – if they survive. The injustice doesn’t end here: confronting a reign of impunity their own relatives face high risks when choosing to do something about it.

This was the case of Norma Angélica Bruno, aged 26, who had recently joined a group of determined to find ‘the other disappeared’ in Guerrero. So far the group has discovered 48 bodies in clandestine graves across the state. In a sickly ironic turn of fate, Norma was assassinated before the eyes of her three children while walking to the funeral of a murdered colleague.

As if living in a parallel world, the Interior Minister Osorio Chong declared that Mexico has the highest levels of security in ten years and that “very important steps have been taken to give back peace and security to all Mexicans”.

The missing link between society and nature

Despite growing awareness of the crises in Mexico, politicians, analysts, mainstream media and even organised citizens who try to reform or rebuild the State, tend to ignore an underlying issue. The country is highly urbanised and most citizens are, willingly or not, alienated from nature, or more concretely, completely dislocated from what happens ‘elsewhere’.

It turns out, however, that Mexico’s land, water and natural resources are being degraded and extracted at an alarming pace. Mexican institutional framework, created in order to join the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in the early 1990s, has been largely irrelevant in the rhetorical pursuit of sustainable development.

Take water resources, for instance: after conducting hearings between 2006 and 2012, the Latin American Water Tribunal warned of “possible hydric collapse” and condemned the Mexican State for violation of international treaties and its own legal framework to guarantee the right to water as a fundamental human right.

Indigenous Resistance

Indigenous communities have resisted for centuries. However, as a result of a combination of constitutional reforms and trade deals, resource grabbing has increased significantly over the last two decades; and it often unfolds violently.

For instance, in the mountains of Guerrero communities have been resisting the imposition of the La Parota Dam, which would displace 25,000 and severely affect livelihoods of another 75,000. Their decade-long resistance has been relatively effective, yet at a tragic cost: repression, illegal incarceration and assassination of communal leaders.

But this region is by no means an exception. Another ethical tribunal, the Tribunal Permanente de los Pueblos (TPP), documented over the last few years 220 active socio-environmental conflicts across the country, and observed the normalisation of institutional violence towards those who resist.

TPP’s condemnation of the Mexican State, entitled “The dispossession and degradation of Mexico: Free trade and deviation of power as causes of structural violence, impunity and dirty war against Mexico’s peoples”, can be downloaded here.

For years, active community members have regular meetings where they discuss structural problems and actions. With huge efforts they form regional assemblies and have an annual national assembly. This is the case of the Asamblea Nacional de Afectados Ambientales (ANAA).

In my view, these forms of organisation are poorly supported and understood, and are essential not only in slowing down environmental degradation, but also in addressing a key factor in Mexico’s humanitarian crisis.

The brave world of journalism

Mexico has become one of the most dangerous countries to practice journalism, particularly critical, independent journalism. According to the map Periodistas en Riesgo, a recent initiative by Freedom House and International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), 13 journalists have been killed over the last two years (the most deadly period has been May-October 2014) and four journalists are currently thought abducted.

Without brave journalists we would be incapable of understanding what happens in a country whose State machinery has dominated the art of manipulating our mainstream media. On a positive note, as noted by several political analysts, those in power have been completely unable to understand the world of the Internet – despite attempts to monitor and control. Civil society is way ahead in understanding the power and potential of social media, a space where anyone can join in solidarity.

To explore the role of street art in social movements in Mexico DPU and UCL Americas are hosting a unique conversation with artist-activists part of Oaxaca’s Colectivo Lapiztola, on Monday 23 February. Read more and register to attend.

Étienne von Bertrab is a Teaching Fellow at the DPU and a guest lecturer in universities in Mexico. He also works as a consultant in the UK and in Mexico, where he has been a social activist for ten years. Twitter: @etiennista

The MSc Environment and Sustainable Development at the DPU is currently involved in a multi-year project of overseas field research in Lima, Peru. I was part of this project last year and worked in Cantagallo, a small area close to the centre of the city. My team’s initial plan was to explore the way the construction of a transport megaproject was affecting people working and living in Cantagallo. However, unexpected events occurred during our presence there, and they profoundly changed the situation. The megaproject was evolving more rapidly than expected and a relocation process of the population started in fundamentally different ways than officially announced.

While several families had accepted this and begun to clear their plots in exchange for a controversially low amount of compensation, others were trying to resist and negotiate the terms of their relocation with the authorities. Many families were evicted without an acceptable agreement made, if any at all. However, as the video below attempts to illustrate, the situation differs from one case to another because Cantagallo has been inhabited by families with different histories, and thus, different rights according to the law. This diversity has added to the complexity of the situation: in some cases it has created conflicts within the communities and also hampered possibilities for negotiation with the authorities.

On our first visit to Cantagallo, teenagers were playing football in a large circular area at the entrance to the neighbourhood. On our third visit, the landscape had literally changed within a few days: all trees were being uprooted and little temporary houses had started to mushroom in this same football pitch. We were witnessing the eviction of some and relocation of others. We knew we held no power to make a significant change. I remember the sense of panic that invaded our research group when we realised there was little chance we could realistically and positively contribute to the situation. But there was work to do and opportunities to explore.

We decided to capture the complexities of Cantagallo, understand its intricacies and explore the injustices that have been produced and reproduced over time. Some people had already been evicted in the past and were about to experience the same again. We interviewed them to hear their stories. Despite the events, many people came to the workshop we organised there. More significantly, many people from different parts of Cantagallo came to our final presentation to hear what we had to say. It was really unexpected but they all came to listen, to comment and to discuss.

Most importantly, they did it together. This big communication gap that we had observed and thought was hampering progress in negotiations was being bridged in front of us. This gave me hope that they could jointly engage with the authorities over the following weeks. Today (eight months later), I know the people of Cantagallo have not been able to resist the megaproject despite their collaborative efforts. However, I deeply hope that our work has provided them with some grounds to break the continuing cycle of eviction in Lima.

 

Loan Diep is graduate from the MSc Environment and Sustainable Development at the DPU in 2014. Her academic background is in both natural and political sciences; she has degrees in Health, Safety and Environment (University of Caen, France) and a BSc in Environment Geography (UCL). Loan is currently working as a consultant for IIED (International Institute for Environment and Development) and as a research intern at WSUP (Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor). She is also a Bartlett Ambassador for the period 2014-2017. Her interests lie in environmental politics, climate change, water & sanitation in the Global South.

Read more about the MSc Environment and Sustainable Development overseas fieldtrips.

Here at the DPU we’re bouncing out of what has been a very exciting year, celebrating our 60^th anniversary, and into a particularly important one in our collective thinking about urban futures.

We’re going to see international discussions taking place on cities and human settlements, disaster risk reduction, development finance, the post-2015 development agenda and climate change.

Habitat III

Something I have seen dominating a lot of our conversations in the last year has been the road to the Habitat III conference. Although this won’t be held until October 2016 (in Quito, Ecuador if you already want to start planning your trip), the lobbying and agenda-building has already begun. We saw this at the 7^th World Urban Forum in Medellin, and from numerous speakers at our DPU60 conference in July, including Joan Clos, the Director of UN Habitat.

Habitat III will have a profound impact on the way cities are planned, designed and governed. Given the title of this post, however, perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself.

 

The Launch of the Sustainable Development Goals and the post-2015 development agenda; September 2015

2015 will be notable for the launch of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), announcing a post-2015 development agenda that will supersede the Millennium Development Goals.

There are currently 17 Goals in total, which have Ban Ki-Moon’s support, but the numerous targets are yet to be finalised. Indeed nothing is set in stone, and much could yet change in the months ahead.

An Urban SDG

Several staff at the DPU have been busy working as part of the lobby for ‘Goal 11: Make Cities and Human Settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.’

Goal 11 is the essence of the ‘urban opportunity’ – the title of the position paper produced by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

As urbanisation continues globally so does urban poverty. Urban economic output will grow, meanwhile new ways of providing infrastructure and services are required to cater for demand. These concentrated populations represent a vital opportunity that cannot be put off for another 15 years, and this must not become one of those Goals that ‘should have been there all along’. It is in cities that many solutions can, and will need to be found, and therefore this is the optimum moment of ‘urban opportunity’.

I’m looking forward to sharing two blog posts in the next couple of weeks that give greater insights into formulation of Goal 11 and what it sets out to achieve.

 

The Post-2015 framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR); March 2015

The Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) was the first international framework for the creation of DRR policies and plans when it was conceived to cover a 10-year period in 2005. There won’t be a stand-alone DRR goal in the SDGs, but of particular note to us is the proposed Target 4 within Goal 11 for cities to “incorporate climate and disaster risk considerations in their zoning, building codes, and infrastructure investment decisions”.

DPU staff have been very active in UN-ISDR discussions on updating the HFA, look out for more on this soon. I’m sure that many of us will be following the World Conference on DRR in Sendai closely to see how it relates to discussions on urban resilience.

 

The Third International Conference on Financing for Development; July 2015

While this isn’t a topic I can claim much familiarity with, it is pretty clear that the post-2015 development agenda is going to require a renegotiation of financing commitments. When we look at the unconfirmed SDGs as they stand, the 17 Goals and 169 targets are necessarily ambitious if they truly hope to “end poverty, transform all lives, and protect the planet.” But how these will be implemented is far less easy to understand, and I’ll be looking for a few clues in July.

 

COP21 in Paris; December 2015

COP20 in Lima might be quite fresh in many of your minds. Personally I couldn’t help but feel a sense of déjà vu – it seems we’re always told that we’re on the cusp of an epoch-defining agreement, but it slips away.

So could this year really be the year where a global climate deal is finally agreed? And if it is, then so what? We’ve been seeing climate responses increasingly happening at the local level. Let us not forget that the Kyoto Protocol expired in 2012, and if global agreements are the way to go, then the international community has been stalling for too long.

 

Communications in 2015

This year I’m looking forward to seeing DPU communications give you greater insights into the key moments above. Staff here have been shaping the debates and will be responding to the outcomes. Ultimately we will continue to work with governments, community groups and other organisations on the ground to support them in implementing these agendas.

We also have an exciting schedule planned for the DPU blog over the next few months where staff, alumni and other contributors from around the world will share their experiences in development practice.

Stay tuned in 2015!

 

Matthew Wood-Hill is the Media and Communications Officer at The Bartlett Development Planning Unit.

Post written by: Tina Maria Ziegler. DPU alumna 2009

The UNEP recently published “Towards a Green Economy: Pathways to Sustainable Development and Poverty Eradication – A synthesis for policy makers” and this is just one of many publications, about this alleged solution to most – if not even all – of our global problems.

Although the term itself does not necessarily imply the social side of economics or development, Green Economy is defined as ‘key theme in the context of sustainable development and poverty reduction’ (UNEP, 2011). This new economic concept claims to be central to poverty alleviation; creates jobs and enhances social equity; recognises the value of, and invests in nature capital; substitutes renewable energy and low-carbon technologies; promotes enhanced resource and energy efficiency; delivers more sustainable urban living and low-carbon mobility; and grows faster than a Brown Economy over time whilst at the same time maintaining and restoring natural capital (ibid). It seems to be the Swiss army knife of sustainable development. However, at the same time this concept also seems to have a quite high potential to become the new buzzword in development likely to succeed the expressionless heritage of sustainability, by pretending to tackle all current global problems and crises without suggesting a fundamental change in economic mainstream ideology.

UNEPs publication states that, “although the causes of these crises vary, at a fundamental level they all share a common feature: the gross misallocation of capital” (p. 1). However, the theory of Green Economy does not seem to challenge the economic concept which reinforces this misallocation. The basis of the Green Economy concept is: fuelling economic growth whilst generating employment and eliminating poverty (ibid). This shows a fundamental believe in the trickle-down theory. Yet, a theory which hardly materialises to truly reach the poor and underprivileged, but usually reinforces the hegemony of superior transnational companies and imperialising governments. I doubt that in the future the installation of solar panels will eradicate extreme poverty just because it was one of the mechanisms of Green Economy.

And doesn’t it seem like an oxymoron to speak about fuelling growth in a world with finite resources? As stated in UNEPs publication the basis for Green Economy are renewable energies and resource efficiency, however, without compromising the current way of production and consumption. The paradox of being more material efficient in producing so called gadgets which are designed to break after two years in order to make more profit by feeding the demand side is simply not tackled by the principles of Green Economy. I sentimentally think back to my former professor for electrical engineering, who opened his first lecture with following statement: “Truly clean electricity is electricity we never used”. Although so simple and trivial when heard, I still find this quote an eye opener. And a good basis for a real change. In my point of view efficiency is not about more efficient products, but about less consumption. This cannot be achieved by clinging onto the capitalist feedback loop of demand-production-consumption.

All I read so far about Green Economy really makes my ‘greening’ alarm bells ring. Actually the expression of ‘greening’ processes and mechanisms is even used quite regularly in this context and I truly hope that this does not imply approaching a rather superficial change of irrelevant economic processes, only to appear more sustainable or responsible and to resell an economic system, which was not successful to tackle poverty and resource exploitation in the past, but to change substantial underlying principles to pursue equity and resource efficiency. However, there is a long way to go. I am in doubt how far this new concept will be of help. I guess I should keep reading about Green Economy, since hope springs eternally.

Reference: UNEP, 2011, Towards a Green Economy: Pathways to Sustainable Development and Poverty Eradication – A Synthesis for Policy Makers, www.unep.org/greeneconomy

Image Credits: Image via Yeşil Ekonomi Konferansı, http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/06/can-green-new-deal-boost-turkey-economy.php

Post written by: Bridges Brazil

Curitiba, the capital of the State of Paraná, a mainly agricultural state in southern Brazil, is indeed the best planned city in Brazil and an international model for sustainable development, is much more than simply the result of a few successful projects. The city’s achievements are the result of strategic, integrated urban planning. This all-encompassing strategy informs all aspects of urban planning, including social, economic and environmental programs.

Curitiba’s strategy focuses on putting people first and on integrated planning, and these influences are apparent in all aspects of the city. The strategy is what underpins the individual projects system-wide that improve the environment, cut pollution and waste, and make the quality of life in the city better.

A clear strategy and vision of the future in Curitiba has meant that decisions large and small made over the course of 40 years have added up to a city that’s public-spirited and eco-efficient. Strong leadership resulted in successful, long-term implementation of strategy.
The city had few outstanding historical or natural features, but its architects and urban planners have transformed it into a vibrant center with good quality of life that draws many tourists. Curitiba’s population has more than doubled to 1.8 million over the past 30 years.

Despite major challenges that came with rapid growth, significant improvements have been made to the city’s quality of life in areas including public transportation, preservation of the city’s cultural heritage, expansion of parks and green areas, and social and environmental programs.
Curitiba has a long tradition of innovative and integrated urban planning geared toward the strategic imperative of making the city a better place to live, as outlined in the city’s Master Plan of 1965.  From the 1990s until today, the city’s main planning focus has been on sustainable development and integration of Curitiba’s metropolitan region. Strong political leadership and continuity has been essential to long-term implementation of the city’s plan.

The combination of core values expressed in the city plan allowed planning for efficiency and sustainability even in difficult circumstances (i.e., during the military dictatorship, times of economic crisis in Brazil, despite high numbers of poor migrants flowing into the city).
A clear strategy and vision of the future in Curitiba and creation of an agency to make sure it was implemented has meant that smaller decisions made over the course of years and in many individual programs have added up to a city that’s a model of ecological, people-centered urbanism.

Although Curitiba is known internationally as a sustainable, ecological city, it calls itself “the city of all of us.” In almost any area of Curitiba’s urban planning over the years, it is possible to see how consideration has been given to people in the big picture–and also to see the associated, system-wide sustainability benefits of integrated planning.
This is what’s most unique about the city’s strategy: it maximizes the efficiency and productivity of transportation, land-use planning and housing development by integrating them so they support one another to improve the quality of life in the city.

International Study Groups on Urban Development are organized all year round in this model city.
the group engages professors and students and eventually involves public authorities, business people, and others. If you require further information on how to enroll to this dialogues, write to Eliel Rosa bridgesndialogues@gmail.com, Executive Director of Bridges & Dialogues Brazil.