Posted by giveawayboy on April 21, 2002 at 09:40:25:
In Reply to: Re: see post below on unnamed bird posted by john on April 21, 2002 at 09:02:35:
But this has to take place in the context of a community. That is the trap of our society, by keeping us so individualized we waste resources, thus promoting the consumer culture.
Exactly...this is what first got me into my interest in Curitiba, the city in South Brazil that I have placed on my website. It is by no means the perfect city, but they have in many ways avoided the complications of unbridled individualism. Sometimes if you start talking about community and sharing people want to accuse you of socialism. However, I am very much into the idea. Infact, that is how I survive these days. I do what I can for myself. And, I try to also blend as much as possible w a community. In my case it is made up of friends w similar interests, but the real goal will be eventually to blend w a community of proximity. Anyway, here is a good link on the success of Curitiba, an imperfect model but still a good one:
Brazilian city raising eyebrows worldwide
http://oregonfuture.oregonstate.edu/part4/pf4_03.html
Curitiba, Brazil - "The Best City in the World"
http://www.co-intelligence.org/S-Curitiba.html
here is a description of Bill's work:
Key to Hope, Human and Wild is the belief that human ingenuity, working in tandem with the persistence of nature, can produce what even the disillusioned would call miracles."Nature's grace in the American East offers hope for a world in need of models." Since agriculture moved to the Middle West, forest is replacing pasture, and beaver dams are returning to state-owned wilderness. Perhaps, McKibben speculates, the East may became an expanding frontier of recovery.
Can nature's bounty make growth possible without destruction in the world's poorest places? As journalist and environmental advocate, he presents two Third World case studies that illustrate the ways in which stubborn poverty can be improved within a humane and livable environment that protects the planet. In 1993, McKibben moved with his wife and small child from his home in the rural Adirondacks into an apartment in Curitiba, a city in the State of Parana, in Brazil, with a per capital income of $2500 per year. His
goal was to explore "livability", a concept of pleasure in community, and drawbacks avoided.
Thanks to a lucky political chance, Jaime Lerner, architect and town planner became the new mayor. He recast a previously planned overpass, well known in American cities as a destroyer of neighborhoods, into South America's first pedestrian mall. Money originally intended for flood control was used to dam up rivers into lakes that became the heart of small parks. When floods came, the ducks swam a little higher! Green space increased land values and tax revenues making the town attractive to international companies.
Newly designed speedy buses running on arteries that reflect the major directions of traffic flow carry 300 passengers at top speed in one load, four times as many people as in Rio de Janeiro, with far less cost per kilometer and the bonus of cleaner air.
Lerner, now governor of Parana, has started a system of exchange ingenious in its simplicity. Every dweller of the formerly dangerous rat-infested favela slums receives a bag of food in exchange for a bag of garbage, a down-to-earth method of improving public health, sanitation and public involvement in the life of the city. Lerner believes that local governments can move more quickly, and cities will be more important than nations in solving environmental problems.
Across the world is Kerala, one of India's poorest states. Citizens of
Kerala enjoy an impressive life expectancy of about 70, and 100% literacy. On his visit McKibben saw enough to prevent him from romanticizing poverty. Rural villages had tiny dwellings with no beds, only a few stools and cooking utensils.
Yet Kerala, with a stagnant economy and chronic unemployment, has no beggars, no girl children left out to die, a birth rate of two children per family, and the highest newspaper consumption in India. Streets are filled with neatly dressed children going to school. Religious reform of the caste system, redistribution of land, and subsidized food, have produced the elimination of misery in spite of extreme poverty. McKibben points out that a low-level economy can create a decent life, abundant in the things-- health, education, community--that are most necessary for us all. We can opt for the health of the planet and still create a humane society that permits growth.
In these two extreme cases, problems intractable elsewhere have been resolved by ingenuity and human will. The answer is, as expressed in his title, hopeful for both humanity and nature.
taken from: