Sustainability_Project

=**Sustainable cities**=

=Curitiba, Brazil=

==

 Almost 3.3 thousand millions of the world’s population lives in urban areas, and this number keeps rising up, what means cities represent the main area where people live and develop their lives, that’s why this is where all their activity is going to be reflected and the necessity of creating plans in order to reduce the impact of humanity on them is essential. Latin America, even though it does not represents a huge problem when talking about co2 emissions in the present, it represents the in developing area most urbanized in the world, and it’s expected to reach an 86% of population living in cities on 2030, what also means huge amounts of co2 emission if the governments and population don’t change their minds and start working on the construction of green cities, designed over the considerations of environmental impact reduction.  This is the reason why is highly recognized the effort of cities such as Curitiba, in the development of the city taking into account the environment and always keeping this like a parameter of construction; located in southern Brazil, Curitiba is the capital of the Paraná state and one of the most important green cities of Latin-America.  Curitiba is one of the cities with highest amount of square meters of green areas per capita, 16 parks, 14 forests and more than 1000 green public spaces are the neighbors of Curitiba’s inhabitants, and the city is regarded as one of the best examples of green urban planning.  At the heart of Curitiba’s urban planning project, there is in fact an ambitious transport policy whose objective is to develop the use of public transport in order to relieve congestion in the urban network. Bus lines cross the city like a gigantic spider web. There are 221 ‘tube’ stations spread across 340 routes. In total, there are more than 11000 km of line, including 60 km of reserved lanes; all this is used by 2000 buses.  This dynamic transport network is part of a wider strategy, aiming to increase the appeal of public transport: shops and public services have been opened near terminals, in what have been called “citizenship streets”.  Since 1989 the city has implemented a recycle program called “Garbage that is not garbage” in order to change the perception of the garbage and to watch it as an opportunity. Childs are taught to separate garbage. what results is that 22% of waste is recycled.  What the world needs right now is the creation or conversion of cities into green cities, and that people understand that they are not a futuristic utopia, they are the present and represent just the optimal performance and utilization of natural resources followed by the collective awareness of the ecology so that we get motivated to nullify our footprint on the passage for the planet.

[|Curitiba]