Creative Curitiba - the urban design of Curitiba, Brazil

Architectural Review, The, May, 1999 by Lucien Kroll

'The dream of a better town lives firstly in the heads of people' is another of his sayings. All the mayor has to do is to draw strength from these dreams. What he can do is limited by his electors. Strangely, Lerner has invented nothing; no action of his is a critical discovery. His genius was to undertake everything at once and coordinate activity over a long, continuous period. It is a truly architectural work.

Curitiba created and set up Unilivre, the Open University for the Environment, which trains professionals and citizens, teachers, educationalists, administrators and official managers of property, concierges and police. It was instituted in an old quarry in a park.

Curitiba is today regarded as the world ecological capital, but is strangely little known in Europe, particularly among those whose ecology is somewhat literary.