Three-Time Mayor of Distinction

No, it's not Jim Garlick, Coldstream's recently acclaimed third-time mayor.

The mayor of distinction was one hell of a mayor, intent on taking a zero from the budget, quickly declaring that "sustainability starts when you take two zeros from your budget." 

At a time when mayors all over the province of British Columbia are increasingly chastised by taxpayers for spending, spending, spending--with no relief in sight--he turned his city into the world's greenest.

He is Jamie Lerner, the three-time mayor of the city of Curitiba, the eighth most populous city in Brazil.  Its three million inhabitants are the benefactors of Mr. Lerner's creativity and ambition and common sense.  So is Mother Earth.  After three terms as mayor, he twice became governor of the state of Parana, Brazil.

"You have to keep things simple, and just start working.

You have a lot of complexity-sellers in this life.

We should beat them, beat them with a slipper."

Jamie Lerner

Curitiba, Brazil?
Yes...one of the host cities for last year's FIFA World Cup, the city in 2010 was awarded the Global Sustainable City Award, given to cities and municipalities that excel in sustainable urban development.

Aerial view of two neighbourhoods of Curitiba, Brazel (Wikipedia)

He brought credentials to the mayor's job, being an architect and urban planner.  But it's his common sense that led to world-wide acclaim:  a number of major awards for his transportation, design, and environmental work, including the United Nations Environment Award; the Prince Claus Award, given by the Netherlands; Urban Heroes Principal Award, and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture in 1997, given by the University of Virginia. In 2002, Lerner was elected president of the International Union of Architects, Child and Peace Award from UNICEF (1996), the 2001 World Technology Award for Transportation, and the 2002 Sir Robert Mathew Prize for the Improvement of Quality of Human Settlements.

In 2010 Lerner was nominated among the 25 most influential thinkers in the world by the Time magazine and in 2011, in recognition for his leadership, vision and contribution in the field or sustainable urban mobility, he received the Leadership in Transport Award, granted by the International Transport Forum at the OECD.  His firm Jamie Lerner Associated Architects develops projects for the public and private sectors for cities in Brazil and abroad, such as Porto Alegre, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Brasília, Florianópolis, Recife, Luanda (Angola), David (Panama), Durango, Oaxaca, Mazatlán (Mexico) and Santiago de Los Caballeros (Dominican Republic).

In Curitiba, Mr. Lerner's leadership built parks instead of canals to reduce flooding; used parks to make the city more liveable; pedestrianised the downtown area, where no cars are allowed; invented and built Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), a bus system whose 6-minute intervals assure ridership on articulating buses.  It works like a light rail system but is 10 times cheaper and it carries six million riders daily.  He began a massive recycling scheme that included giving people bus tokens in return for waste.  Under Mr. Lerner, the city purchased a block of land that would house 50,000 lower income people, all of whom would construct their own houses following a free one-hour meeting with an architect.

Wikipedia sums up Brazil's political system at the time Mr. Lerner became mayor:  "In the days before free, direct elections, mayors were political appointees who were no more than pawns in the game of power politics and were subject to replacement at any time. For an idealistic young architect like Lerner, retaining the mayor's office was particularly precarious. Those holding the reins of power at the time were under the mistaken impression that Lerner's youth would make him easy to control. As it turned out, he was no milquetoast, and subsequently set about enthusiastically pursuing reform."

Recycling in Curitiba was a challenge, and results under Jamie Lerner proved to be a radical, but successful, reform.  Compare that to the abject abandonment by North Okanagan politicians when residents recently complained of our area's new recycling program that now requires numerous automobile trips to various community depots which still accept recyclables that the new recycling company (unaffectionately termed Mini-Material B.C.) will not!

"I've often equated automobiles with mothers-in-law.

We have to get along with our mother-in-law,

but not let them run our lives."

Jamie Lerner

What did Lerner do?  In 1989, nearby slum residents were dumping their trash in rivers and fields, as there were no collections from their narrow streets. Lerner arranged for a truck to visit the slum at fixed times each week, and residents' rubbish was exchanged for bus tickets, football tickets and shows. Soon, the locals were cleaning the rivers and fields of old rubbish to sell. Schoolchildren were given new plastic toys for old bottles and bags in a scheme called "Garbage that's not garbage".  Separation of organic and non-organic waste improved efficiencies further.  Local homeless people and alcoholics were employed at the recycling plant, where they also retrained on computers they rescued from the city's bins. Curitiba's fishermen were even paid to fish for rubbish.

He says that cities can be the solution to climate change, not the problem, if handled correctly.  And it wasn't to borrow more money (another region borrowed $800 million from the World Bank), and Lerner stated emphatically that pollution is changed through mentality, not loans, not money.  He got the people on side through common sense.

Mr. Lerner's reputation is now known world-wide, and his firm Jamie Lerner Associated Architects has urban planning projects that are innovative and productive. 

Sao Paulo elevated parks project (JLAA photo)

"portable streets" allow vendors to set up virtually anywhere in a town.  (JLAA photo)

The best 30 minutes of a mayor's day, or an urban planner's day, is this 15-minute video of Jamie Lerner speaking at a TED.com symposium, followed by the 15-minute video of Curitiba's successful transformation here at YouTube.

"Any chance Jamie Lerner would like to retire...to the North Okanagan? muses Kia.

...where there are a lot of "complexity sellers", most of whom are bureaucrats.

Jamie Lerner would "see" through all that, yet our elected (and acclaimed) officials do not.