Close to a third of São Paulo city’s 11 million people live in slum-like conditions. The housing in these areas was built without much regard to providing any common areas set aside for public use or for flood protection, and they are quite dense with few recreational amenities. By relocating some residents, such as those who live in a flood plain, the city is able to provide better community public spaces for those who remain:

São Paulo is consciously seeking to recycle city areas left by relocated families into such common spaces as parks, playgrounds, soccer fields and skate parks — ways to help people socialize and build a sense of citizenship for remaining residents.

Here in the U.S., we often talk about providing parks to those living in “underserved” areas. On a global level, this issue is no different, and improvements to the public realm are integral to upgrading slums into livable urban neighborhoods.

wikipedia

The capital of Brazil, Brasilia is a planned city with parks and open spaces  designed at the height of automotive thinking in the late 1950s.

The city was laid out by Lucio Costa and the buildings by famed and still-living centenarian architect Oscar Niemeyer. Many of the buildings are iconic and beautiful in their modern form, but the highways of the city horrificly cut off key public places. Discovering Urbanism provides a great analysis of the city’s equivalence to Washington’s National Mall in showing the “desire paths” of those pedestrians who do venture into this green space.

The analysis “reveals a complex network of activity very different from the plan.” The exercise says much about how planners and designers should consider where people want to go perhaps more than where they themselves want people to go.

It also raises an interesting question about Brasilia and other planned cities: despite the historic nature of this planned city, should modifications be made, such as removing the clover leafs? Or can compromises be reached. For instance, could the integrity of the design be preserved by closing down the clover leafs and on-ramps to cars and making them into people-oriented park features?

Discovering Urbanism

Curitiba, Brazil

One of the most well regarded world cities in terms of urban planning is Curitiba, Brazil — a place known for its efficient and innovative bus rapid transit system. But the city is also known for its parks, in particular using them to increase quality of life and act as green infrastructure to protect against floods.

The city has about 50 square meters of parkland per person (i.e. 12 acres per 1000), most of which were created in the last 30 years under the direction of forward-looking urban planner/former mayor Jaime Lerner. The protected land is complemented by compact housing, as the city of 1.5 million has a population density of 10,750 per square mile (which is around the same as Philadelphia or Washington, D.C.).

Roughly 21 million square meters (5,190 acres) are linear parks along rivers and streams that act as buffers between flood-prone rivers and the city. Legislation set aside certain low-lying areas and river basins as special protection and management areas. The city also used a loan to purchase land at a number of critical sites around the city. Engineers built small damns and created new lakes that act as holding basins when flooding occurs.

In effect, these green spaces are giant stormwater facilities, with the lakes as central features. If rains are heavy, the lake rises over the surrounding parks. And Lerner and parks director Hitochi Nakamura made sure to connect places to one another (as mentioned in the below linked video). Together they helped create over 90 miles of new trails within the city, located in southern Brazil about 250 miles southwest of São Paulo.

Much has been done to document what’s occurred in Curitiba. A nice 15-minute video (YouTube) by Journeyman Productions gives a good overview, and includes interviews with both Lerner and Nakamura. (The segment on parks starts just after the seven-minute mark.) Another good resource on all of the planning efforts and problems that persist in the city is the book, Urban Renewal, Municipal Revitalization: the Case of Curitiba Brazil.

Ciclovia on every Sunday of the year in Rio; bikecalgary.org

Bike sharing in Rio.

In particular, the city has encouraged non-motorized transportation along its beaches. A separated cycle track sits next to the roadway along the beach, and the city also allows residents to participate in the “Samba” bike sharing program. And on every Sunday of the year one side of the beachfront road is closed to automobiles and fills with the city’s residents walking, running and pedaling four-person bike-mobiles.

While we’re on the subject of Rio,  many may not realize that though it is quite dense and compact where housing is built, it is also one of the most verdant cities around, with nearly 40 percent of its land area in green space. Part of this is because of the National park — the Tijuca Forest — within its borders, covering around 3,200 hectares (7,900 acres) and featuring flora and fauna typical of the Brazilian coast.  The park is only a short distance from the city center, and according to the Rio 2016 website, this large green area was reforested in the nineteenth century, after years of deforestation and crop-growing (mainly coffee).