Jaime Lerner: Cities Present Solutions, Not Problems, for Quality of Life, Climate Change

I am very pleased to have the opportunity to share with you some thoughts about the city and sustainability in such a wonderful place...I don't want to focus this speech just on the city. I want to speak about life in a city and how it's possible to change it.

Recently I became a filmmaker. I am doing two movies: one short movie, which will help teach children about sustainability....The second movie is a story about dreams. These dreams are not related only to planning or architecture; they are related to the best lesson I have had in my life. I can't tell you about the movie, not yet, but I can tell you about the end. The movie ends with, "If sometimes you cannot make your dreams happen, don't be frustrated. Be sure, if you dedicate deeply to your dream, this dream will come around again, hit you, and say, ‘Do you remember me? I'm your dream. It's your second chance. Don't throw it away.'"

This is a story about many, many dreams. I had my personal dreams, my professional dreams as a politician-mostly as mayor. My time as mayor was the best time in my life, the three terms I spent as mayor of my city and as Governor. First of all, speaking about cities, you probably ask, "Is it possible to make a city better-to improve its quality of life?" I would say, definitely yes. Every city in the world can improve its quality of life in less than three years. No matter the scale of the cities, no matter the financial conditions or resources you have, all you need is to have a shared dream.

I've met many mayors all over the world, some of them try to say: "My city is so difficult; we have 15 million people." Other mayors say, "My city doesn't have financial resources, it's very hard." It's not a question of scale; it's not a question of money; it's how you can build a good equation of co-responsibility.

If you want to change, of course, you have to have political will. You have to have a strategy. You have to have solidarity. But most important, you have to build an equation of co-responsibility.

I'll give you an example. We didn't have the money to build a system of public transport. We needed $250 million. We couldn't get the money. So, what was the solution, the equation of co-responsibility? We proposed to the private initiative, we told them, "We're going to design the system, and you'll make the investments in the itinerary. You're going to provide the fleet, and we'll pay you by kilometer." That was the whole equation. For a long time, it's been a great public transport system, and there are no subsidies-it pays for itself. When you understand the problems in our countries, where investments in social programs are so important, you cannot afford to provide transport-it would take all the money you have, which you need for schools, for a healthcare system, and care for children. So for this problem we needed to build a really good equation.

The city is not the problem. The city is the solution. I want to speak about strategy-a strategic vision for the city. But first of all, I want to introduce some friends-some characters I have designed for a book for children and teenagers, trying to explain the city to them. The title is the best example of quality of life: Living and Working Together...One character is "Otto"-the automobile. He's very egotistical, because he carries only two or three people. This is the type of guy that you invite to a party, and he never leaves. He drinks a lot, and he coughs a lot. He's a very demanding person-always a new freeway and more public works-he always wants more and more. The car is like a mother-in-law. We have to have good relationships with her, but we cannot let her conduct our life. In other words, if the only woman you have in your life is mother-in-law, you have a problem. Another character is the friendly bus. He can carry 300 people, which shows solidarity...

...When you start to understand the city, you like it better. But to make it happen-many times I am asked, "What makes it happen?" My feeling is that if you want to make it happen, you have to have a scenario, an idea, a project that the large majority will understand is desirable. It's a desirable design. It's a shared dream.

I've watched many discussions for mayors, presidents, and in the many debates I watched, I expected to see a discussion about a design, scenario, an idea. It's always the same. The politicians say, "I'm going to provide 10 million jobs..." Nice story, but there is no scenario. They don't say "How."

In one of the last elections in my country I was asked by one of the candidates to present an idea about urban problems in my country. So my team worked together. We asked, "In a country with 5,000 municipalities, it should be easier to solve. Why?" We started to think and we realized, we have 100 cities with more than 200,000 people. So, there is no problem with municipalities; with 200,000 people it's not difficult to deal with the city's problems. After we realized we have seven cities with more than 500,000. At the end we realized that it's difficult in those seven metropolitan regions. And we started to figure out how much we had to invest in all the municipalities-in schools, in healthcare, in public transit in cities with more than 500,000.

So we came to an incredible conclusion: the amount needed to fix all of our cities was nothing compared to the amount we were losing in the world's "casino" of investments. If it doesn't pay a percentage, why should we do it? Policy makers in countries don't give importance to cities. To them, a city is an externality of the economic problem. It's not. The city is a solution for a country. When we were trying to discuss the main political issues for a country-globalization, solidarity-don't forget that the city is the last refuge of solidarity. It's where we can take care of children, have a better environment, and so on. This century is going to be the century of cities. I'm not speaking about the past-cities like Venice or Barcelona. I'm talking about all the cities.

Now I would like to speak about sustainability. The former vice president of the United States, Al Gore, made an incredible, remarkable work, in which he tried to generate concern about the problem of climate change. So, we are more concerned. He deserves the Nobel Prize. There is more concern, but the people don't know how to change it. They know it's a terrible problem, but it is possible to change.

When we realized that 75 percent of carbon emissions are related to cities, we started to understand-it's on the cities that we have to work. Okay, new materials are important, green buildings are important, new sources of energy are important, reusing and recycling are important. But it's not enough.

The most important thing is working on the concept of the city. I would suggest five commandments for a sustainable city, which is why I am making the movie for children: 1) Use your car less. I'm not saying to not use the car. I'm saying that every city will have to provide a good public transport system. In less than ten years, every important city would have to do it. At least for your routine itinerary, you can handle it with public transport. 2) Separate your garbage. 3) Live closer to work or work closer to home. 4) Understand that there is a multi-use space in a city. Downtown is the best place in a city, and it's empty for sixteen hours-that's not possible anymore. Big arenas are being used ten times a year...An arena could make an incredibly good market in the morning. It could be a university. Use it for more cultural and sporting events. 5) Understand that sustainability is an equation of what you save and what you waste. If you waste zero, your sustainability goes to infinity. If you have a good city, a good quality of life, you have a sustainable city...

...Let's go back to design-land use and density. We cannot be afraid of density-it depends on way you organize it. We have public transit where we have more density and everyone can have their choice-living in high-rise buildings closer to public transit or a few meters more and you have other buildings, but it has a very clear design. It's a structure of growth...

...Let me talk about what I'm doing now. I'm doing urban acupuncture. Planning takes time, but sometimes there are ideas, focal points, that you can help the normal process of planning with a new energy. That's what I call urban acupuncture. You can have this in every city very fast. It's not instead of the normal process of planning; it's to help the process of planning...