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So I haven't written since arriving here in Curitiba. My stay has been much more academically oriented than all previous stops on this trip, partially because two of my three finals were yesterday and today and I have a business plan due next week in Sao Paulo. Regardless, I've seen some of Curitiba and have enjoyed what I've seen.
I started out my week with a trip on the tourist bus line, a special route created to take travellers past all of the landmarks and tourist spots in the city, parks, opera halls, gardens, museums etc. You can get on and off of the train five times without paying an additional fee. I visited the Oscar Niemeyer Museum, also known as the "Eye Museum" and spent a couple of hours looking at Brazilian modern art and modern art from around the world. My favorite exhibit was one of works by the Brazilian painter (also a Curitibano) Cicero Dios. His oils and pastels were very bright, floral, reminiscient of tropical climates but with a slight disjarring effect in that all his figures were cartoon-esque and very cubic. A beautiful exhibit. Also on display was an exhibit about Fluxus, an annual "happening"
of sorts in Germany that started in the 1960s. Why this was on display in Curitiba I can't quite fathom. The best I can decide is that the middle class Curitibanos, very proud of their diverse, European heritage, want to feel that they too belong to the society of eliticism that currently surrounds the music and art of such contemporary artists. That, or maybe they just thought it looked like a neat thing to display in their museum. Regardless, it was an odd experience being in Brazil and looking at artwork and music that reminds me predominantly of my childhood and my mother (a professional musician whose ensamble specialized in the performance of modern music).
I also visited two of the parks in Curitiba, which in and of themselves are wonderful examples of the power of urban planning and urban renewal. One park I visited was formerlly a rock quarry and dump area of town. The city has since transformed it into a lake with a waterfall, large playing field, small cafe, fountains etc. This sort of thing happens frequently here in Curitiba. The botanical gardens, for example, are built atop of a former garbage dump. Within the past
Curitiba Skyline
In this photo you can see one of the main traffic corridors outlined by all of the tall buildings, thanks to strict zoning codes. forty years the face of Curitiba has changed so much, and so much for the better, that it is used as a model city for city planners and urban architects everywhere. The transportation system here is interesting--it's an above ground subway system, in essence, formed by bi-articulated busses.
When this city was re-designed by Jamie Lerner and company during the military dictatorship of the 1960s, they used the new concept of integrating corridors to the city, main traffic lines that instead of all converging in the city center and creating chaos, bipass the city center and carry on to the suberbs. These main corridors consist of two lanes strictly for bus traffic in the middle, two lanes on one side for traffic in one direction, and two lanes on the other side for traffic in the other direction. Remarkably efficient, these corridors facilitate commutes such that there is seemingly never a rush hour here in Curitiba. Another design of the corridors and bus system is the flat fee. All riders pay a flat fee upon entering the bus (fees are paid in these circular, clear tube platforms before boarding) so that those who have further to commute and must change busses frequently (the poorer people) have their fares subsidized by those who must only travel short, inner city distances (typically the wealthier). From the top of a tower that I climbed you could clearly see the corridors along which Curitiba was designed.
Another highlight of my week was going to a Brazilian Popular Music (BMP) concert in a theater that was formerally a gunpowder aersenal for the city. A beautiful, beautiful building and a very neat performance space, this event was so popular that they sold out the show and then some. The steps were all filled with people as was the floor infront of the musicians. The music was lively with hints of flavor from all over the world: a bit of african, a bit of greek, a bit of german, a bit of spanish etc. A beautiful concert and a beautiful evening.
The rest of my week was filled with studying and site visits to various city planning groups and industries around the city. One day I visited the business federation for Parana (the state Curitiba is in). This group is a private organization subsidized by government taxes. They provide assistance for all sorts of businesses in the region in attracting investment and encouraging development and providing skills and tools to become internationally competetive. Obviously the group is doing something very well because the percapita GDP of Curitiba is double that of Brazil as a whole.
I also visited the Positivo Group's new university near Curitiba. The educational system here has a very, very long way to go still, but little steps like this are good. The way the education system works in Brazil is that the majority of the government spending (based on tax revenues) goes to public universities and some of it goes to primary education. The irony is that public primary education is so poor that its graduates (the lucky few who can stay in school and get a diploma) have no shot at making it into a public university and cannot afford to attend a private university. What happens instead is that the families with money send their children to private primary schools, then send them to a cursino to prepare for the entry exams to the public universities (you must take an exam specific to the school and the major in which you apply at each university you are considering attending). So everyone in Brazil is paying for the wealthy students in Brazil to attend public universities for free. That's pretty messed up.
I visited the Volvo Truck plant in the Industrial City of Curitiba and got to watch Swedish robots build massive trucks... that was pretty neat. It was also particularly interesting to watch Import Substitution Industrialization, the policy of most of latin America in the 1960s and 1970s at work in Brazil and working successfully in the automobile industry. Before going to Volvo though, I visited a business incubator also based in the Industrial City where small entreprenuers can apply to have space for up to two years to develop an idea into a product, find funding and sponsors, and potentially become internationally competetive. There were some fascinating groups working on projects in the incubator and the success rates the incubator can boast in her past ten years of existance is amazing. One group that originated there has gone international and has an income of near 250 million USD a year. Incredible.
My final site visit was to the Atletico football stadium, the most modern stadium in all of Latin America. It was very impressive. The management of this club, formerally a third division loosing team struggling with incredible debts, is equally impressive. With the sponsorship of a Japanese firm, they built a brand new stadium that is women friendly, family friendly, and geriatric friendly, over night adding 300 percent more attendees to games. They have turned their team into a brand name that has been very successful not just in Curitiba but in the region. It was a good experience and I wish that the world cup weren't going on so that I could attend a club match there... but alas... it is World Cup season... and Brazil plays France today.
Aside from all of that, I've had a flu bug that's been exacerbated by the cold weather and the hotel turning on its heating system that spits junk out into my room directly above my bed... not fun... not fun at all... but hopefully this will all clear up before heading to Sao Paulo on Sunday.
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