Jaime Lerner fondly remembers the street where he lived as a boy. He remembers keeping time by the clock of the nearby train station or the factory whistle. He recalls the smells of the Railroad Cafe, where he’d stop for coffee after a hard evening of study; of the cigar shop where he bought his comic books; and of the lacquer of the cabinet maker. His soundtrack was composed of the clank of the trolley, the hiss of the irons at the tailor’s workshop, and the whiz of the newspaper’s printing press. “It had everything,” he says.
Such memories might be written off as mere nostalgia had Lerner not dedicated his professional life to recreating the human-scale urban environment he enjoyed as a youth in Curitiba of the 1940s and 1950s. “Most of the world’s cities lost their human element when they began to modify three fundamental spaces – the river, the street and the square,” he wrote in his book for children “The Neighbor: Relative on the Street’s Side,” recently released in Portuguese.
Lerner would grow up to serve three terms as mayor of his hometown, Brazil’s seventh largest city (population 1.7 million by the 2000 census) and capital of Paraná state, before moving over to the statehouse for two terms as governor. During more than two decades in politics, he developed a style of urban planning that has been proposed as a model for the rebuilding of Kabul and now New Orleans. Curitiba’s rapid transit bus system, with its trademark clear tubes for same level preboarding, is simultaneously efficient, affordable and solvent. Bogotá and Seoul have borrowed from the concept. Los Angeles and Detroit envy it.
Quoting Mário Soares, former president and prime minister of Portugal, Lerner defends the “globalization of solidarity.” And he believes that change is most likely to come at the municipal level. “The city is the last refuge of solidarity,” he says. “I’m not expecting much from central governments. This is going to be the century of the city.” Many global problems, like the depletion of the ozone layer, can be addressed in large part by the widespread adoption of policies at the local level to reduce automobile use and encourage recycling, Lerner argues.
Lerner’s approach to the revitalization of cities depends on the relative agility of local policymakers. He calls it “urban acupuncture.” As the name suggests, it involves pinpointed interventions that can be accomplished quickly to release energy and create a positive ripple effect. His recent book by the same name provides sundry examples of successful urban acupunctures from the demolition of San Francisco’s Embarcadero Freeway to the renewal of Puerto Madera in Buenos Aires and the construction of Curitiba’s Opera de Arame theater at the site of an abandoned rock quarry. Urban acupuncture need not be limited to physical interventions. Policies to reduce noise pollution or that encourage nightlife in otherwise desolate areas also qualify.
Having just stepped down after a three-year term as president of the International Union of Architects, Lerner is taking urban acupuncture to the streets of cities the world over, from London to Oaxaca, as a roving consultant. “We work with local teams to develop two or three ideas,” he says.
In recent years Brazilian pundits have tabbed Lerner as a potentially viable presidential candidate. Elections loom in 2006, but Lerner’s denial seems sincere - especially given his thoughts on the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of central governments. “I have ended my political career,” he says.
Books by Jaime Lerner (in Portuguese)
O Vizinho
Acupuntura Urbana
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