Monday, January 29, 2007

"Urban Acupuncture"

Worldchanging
writes on Jaime Lerner, the three-time former mayor of Curitiba, Brazil, a city best known for its innovative Rapid Bus Transit, as calling for what he terms “urban acupuncture” to bring revitalization and sustainability to the world’s metropolitan areas:

Lerner says it is vital that communities seek to adopt urban designs that do not separate the places residents live from where they work, play, and shop. Instead, all these elements should be present in the same area, so people are not as dependent on cars to live their daily lives. Lerner also encourages greater efforts to turn chronic urban problems into innovative solutions. Curitiba, for example, converted an old landfill into the Open University for the Environment, a school that provides environmental education to citizens and policymakers at little-to-no cost. “In the city, there is no frog that can’t be turned into a prince


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