Living in an Urban Age
by Darryl D'Monte
In an insightful commentary on the prevalence of urban crime in Latin America, Darryl D’Monte compares poverty and social exclusion in India and Brazil: ‘São Paulo is arguably the most violent city in the world, with 120 murders per 100,000 inhabitants in the poorer areas of the city. Participants at the Urban Age South America conference in São Paulo discussed the problems of crowded urban areas and looked for ways to make these spaces less violent and more inclusive. As Indians, Latin America may, for all practical purposes, be our Area of Darkness, almost another planet. We are hardly aware that we are part of BRIC -- an acronym that includes Russia, ourselves and China as large, emerging economies which will dominate the world in a few decades. For that very reason, we draw our urban knowledge from the West, while Latin American cities have much to teach us. For that matter, we can teach them a thing or two. Read more…
Climate Change and Cities Debate
by Paty Romero Lankao
Paty Romero Lankao reflects on the climate change and cities debate: Global warming has become one of the single most important challenges to our civilization, and cities play an increasingly important role as sources of both transformations in the global climate and innovations to reduce our emissions and make us more resilient. Although the Urban Age South America conference did not only focus on global warming, presenters offered diverse and insightful perspectives that can help us understand the multiple dimensions of the relationships between cities and climate change.
By listening to them, we were able for example, to understand how and why such urban phenomena as the ever-increasing sprawl and the exponential increase in car ownership result in increasing energy consumption and pollution. We could also grasp how policies and strategies to reduce emissions can be constrained – or facilitated – by decentralization and other emerging governance structures; by a growing service economy; and by new forms of political engagement in which NGOs, trans-national networks and civic groups play a relevant role.
Furthermore, urban designers and architects participating in the Urban Age conference presented projects with alternatives and strategies to increase cities’ resilience to climate change, such as efficient and affordable improvements in housing quality and design that can help not only improve the quality of life of poor people, but also allow them better cope with floods, heat-waves and other urban hazards climate change is expected to aggravate. One lesson can be drawn from this conference: only by developing a solid network of individuals that exchanges information, experiences and data, we will be able to understand how urban emissions and vulnerability can be determined by the relationships between investment, design and building, and the economic, environmental, social, political and cultural processes that shape city life.
Taking the Train
by José de Souza Martins
In the beginning of December, I participated in the Urban Age South America Conference, organized by the London School of Economics, in Sala São Paulo. In what was once the ‘hall’ of the ticket windows of the Júlio Prestes train station, with its beautiful stained glass windows presenting an allegorical history of the Sorocabana, was an amphitheatre transformed for the conference. On a raised stage in the hall, alternating specialists analysed poverty, shanty towns, slums, urban chaos, slow traffic, excess of vehicles, and congestion. From where we were seated, every 20 minutes I could see through the wall of glass the passengers of the CPTM embarking or disembarking from trains that had arrived from the suburbs to the platform, right there, in front of our eyes.
Leaving by taxi in the morning, near Cidade Universitária, to go to the conference, I had spent more than one and a half hours, paying more than R$50 (GBP £15) to arrive there. The conference presenters expressed how the city is seen by many only in the confinement of the car. At the end of the afternoon session, I resolved to return back home by train. Since I am older than 60 years, the box office gave me a free ticket so I did not pay for my passage. I made the journey to Osasco in 20 minutes, sitting down, reading a book. From there, I caught a taxi to go to my house and spent around R$ 10 (less than GBP £1). The cars were clean, if a little mistreated. The plate of steel marking the passage to the following car had 17 bullet shots, not a proper invitation to opt for the train.
When Jânio Quadros was mayor, you would have seen green, large executive buses circulating between extreme points of the city and the city’s downtown Centro. They were comfortable, the tariff more expensive than that of regular bus, but they kept a strict schedule and you travelled sitting down. In my trips to Centro, I would leave the car in a parking lot and take the bus to the Largo do Arouche. At least once a month I used to hang around the centre of the city: I invariably visited the Christ Agônico in the São Bento Church, saw moving sculptures of native São Paulo from the 18th century, wandered for some time at the door of the beautiful Casa da Bóia, went to some exhibitions, took pictures, talked with people living on the streets, I learned and I was reborn. The green bus contributed significantly to facilitate my civilized relationship with Centro. Afterwards, I think in the Erundina Administration, those special bus lines disappeared. I returned to the car and the taxi and contributed inappropriately to the urban chaos.
In Milan, I saw women in rich fur coats taking the trolley to go to the concerts in the La Scala theatre. In Rome, a mayor of the Green Party, established lines for tramways and articulated cars that improved and modernized the passenger transport. It does not take a lot of analysis: we should decide between a civilization of public transit and a barbarism of the private car. Civilization is possible.
