Jaime Lerner: Sings of the city

According to this research:

Advantages of Public Transport: Various transport methods.
Disadvantage of Public Transport: There are too many "machines", are not environmental friendly.
Possible Outcome: A poster that display different vehicles with detailed technical data and specs on it so people could see what the impact of different vehicles to the environment.

Format of Outcome: A poster/book/moving image.

Research needed: Detailed technical data and specs of various vehicles(thinks big, the vehicle could be rocket, aircraft carrier, tank, etc).

Possible Outcome looks like:

Research Content: 

http://www.ted.com/talks/jaime_lerner_sings_of_the_city.html

So to start, I want to introduce some characters from a book I made for teenagers. The best example of quality of life is the turtle because the turtle is an example of living and working together. And when you realize that the casque of the turtle looks like an urban tessitura, and can we imagine, if we cut the casque of the turtle, how sad she's going to be? And that's what we're doing in our cities: living here, working here, having leisure here. And most of the people are leaving the city and living outside of the city.

So, the other character is Otto, the automobile. He is invited for a party -- he never wants to leave. The chairs are on the tables and still drinking, and he drinks a lot. (Laughter) And he coughs a lot. Very egotistical: he carries only one or two people and he asks always for more infrastructure. Freeways. He's a very demanding person. 

And on the other hand, Accordion, the friendly bus, he carries 300 people -- 275 in Sweden; 300 Brazilians. (Laughter)

Speaking about the design: every city has its own design. Curitiba, my city: three million in the metropolitan area, 1,800,000 people in the city itself. Curitiba, Rio: it's like two birds kissing themselves. Oaxaca, San Francisco -- it's very easy: Market Street, Van Ness and the waterfront. And every city has its own design. But to make it happen, sometimes you have to propose a scenario and to propose a design -- an idea that everyone, or the large majority, will help you to make it happen. And that's the structure of the city of Curitiba.

What I'm trying to say is the major contribution on carbon emissions are from the cars -- more than 50 percent -- so when we depend only on cars, it's ... -- that's why when we're talking about sustainability, it's not enough, green buildings. It's not enough, a new materials. It's not enough, new sources of energy. It's the concept of the city, the design of the city, that's also important, too. And also, how to teach the children. I'll speak on this later on.

Our idea of mobility is trying to make the connections between all the systems. We started in '83, proposing for the city of Rio how to connect the subway with the bus. The subway was against, of course. And 23 years after, they called us to develop -- we're developing this idea. And you can understand how different it's going to be, the image of Rio with the system -- one-minute frequency. And it's not Shanghai, it's not being colored during the day, only at night it will look this way.

And coming back to the car, I always used to say that the car is like your mother-in-law: you have to have good relationship with her, but she cannot command your life. So, when the only woman in your life is your mother-in-law, you have a problem. (Laughter) 

So, all the ideas about how to transform through design -- old quarries and open universities and botanic garden -- all of it's related to how we teach the children. And the children, we teach during six months how to separate their garbage. And after, the children teach their parents. And now we have 70 percent -- since 20 years, it's the highest rate of separation of garbage in the world. Seven zero. (Applause) So teach the children.