Curitiba: A Global Model For Development

Tuesday, November 8, 2005 CommonDreams.org by Bill McKibben I could see as much green as I could concrete. And green begets green; land values around the new parks have risen sharply, and with them tax revenues. …At the moment, in the center of Novo Bairro, COHAB is building "Technology Street," an avenue of 24 homes, each built using some different construction technique-bamboo covered with plaster, say-so that people can get ideas for the kind of house they might want. The houses are all smaller than most Americans would want to live in, but they all say something about the people who built them. "It's a house built out of love," says the housing chief. "And because of that, people won't leave it behind. They're going to consolidate their lives there, become part of the city." …Hitoshi Nakamura is the city parks commissioner and one of Lerner's longtime collaborators. "We have to have communication with the people of the slums," he said one day as we were talking about the problems posed by settlers invading fragile bottomlands along the rivers. "If we don't, if they start to feel like falvelados, then they will go against the city....If we give them attention, they don't feel abandoned. They feel like citizens." Ed The most vaguest article I have ever read. To deliberate evade an explanation for the existence and perpetuating condition of vagabonds and pauperism and worse the author announces to the worlds Rentiers, 'there's a new crop of wage slaves ripe for the owning via the title to land they inhabit'. To not associate the cause of disparity, dispossession and inequality is an injustice. Instead reporting (pandering) to the speculative interests. Bloody typical. 4,000 word version