By Flavio Gut

By the people and for people: this is the intelligence that the urban life calls in the 21st century. In spontaneous movements, characteristic of the network society, the growing certainty that no one can do anything alone.

“Nobody believes in my projects.” The phrase heard at the next table caught the attention of Jair Roberto Cassiani, Secretary of Science and Technology of Pedreira, who has having lunch with the mayor, Hamilton Bernardes Junior, in a restaurant in Campinas. The teacher Leonardo de Souza Mendes, coordinator of the Laboratory for Communication Networks at Campinas University, the author of the outburst, regretted not had found yet a city which supported his idea of deploying a network of free data for the whole city.

Interested in the subject, the secretary and the mayor began a conversation, and with this meeting was born the Infovia of Pedreira (Infovia de Pedreira), the first Brazilian community network that allows open access of population to the Internet and other services. It is a project that nowadays connects 5,000 of 13,000 homes in the town of 41,000 inhabitants and enabled the creation of Knowledge Connection project, a network through students and teachers exchange information.

This simple story is an example of a great movement of connection and exchange of information that is underway in Brazil and around the World. A movement that gradually changes how the life in cities is organized and developed.

The idea of a public data network emerged in 2001 Morungaba, at the hands of journalist José Aparecido Miguel, but died for lack of political will and interest of the population. And it reborn few years after as a great solution to the neighboring Pedreira — classified in the ranking of National Institute of Educational Studies and Research of the Ministry of Education as the first among the 19 cities in the metropolitan region of Campinas, although it is only the 16th in revenue.

The meeting between the Secretary Cassiani, Mayor Bernardes and Professor Mendes can be seen as mere chance, but perhaps it is best to use the understanding of the Swiss psychiatrist and founder of analytical psychology Carl Gustav Jung, for whom there are no coincidences. After all, what is the reason for the project not move forward in Morungaba and bloom in Pedreira as a result of an informal conversation in a restaurant?

Because the community needs to appropriate the idea for it to work, responds to an economist and administrator Ana Carla Fonseca Reis, author of several books, including Creative Cities – Perspectives. By deploying its Infovia, Pedreira not only appropriated the idea but also managed to make the connection between local and global, one of the conditions outlined by Ana Carla for a city to be able to generate creativity and reinvent itself.

There are several terms that try to explain this process of urban renaissance: smart cities, creative cities, innovative towns, sustainable cities, among others. The architect Pedro Rivera, from Studio-X, a global network of research that explores the future of cities, prefer a more straightforward one: cities that work. Cities which can provide quality of life for those who live in them. “What makes a city intelligent are smart people”, says.

But there’s more to think about: it also need articulation, the joint action by the government, the private sector and society all together searching for solutions. It is obvious, believes Ana Carla Fonseca, that none of the actors is able to promote change alone. The key is work in network, as stated by Augusto de Franco, founder of the School Network (Escola de Redes) and organizer of the International Conference on Innovative Cities that took place in Curitiba this year. For him, cities need to be connected, agile and with local systems of governance.

The Athens square

We’re not just living through an “age of change.” We’re experiencing a change of age: the most profound inflection point in human history since the Enlightenment, observes Franco, quoting a phrase coined by Eamonn Kelly partner at the consulting Monitor Group, in his book Powerful Times: Rising to the challenge of our uncertain world. And it is not easy to understand when you’re in the midst of this change. In fact the humanity realized that in practice, 193 nation-states are not sufficient to meet the needs of nearly 7 billion people, 50% of whom live in cities. The world have governments too much centralized to understand the needs of who, for example, ride a bus every day.

As a result, in recent decades social changes are creating favorable conditions for the autonomy of cities, from the standpoint of its development. A trend that dates back to Athens from 509 to 322 BC, where for the first time the city is no longer the state to become community. In Athens, the decisions were taken democratically in the public square, so the solutions emerged by people to people. A path to think the city of the 21st Century, in the vision of Mr. Franco, is to return to the root of Athens.

The difference is that nowadays we have a global connected community that exchange information via the Internet in real time, allowing the dissemination of ideas and solutions worldwide. The Athens square is nowadays a global network of interconnected conversations. “And the way you connect to other people is what determines the collective behavior,” explains Mr. Franco.

Cloning

This global conversation allows the reproduction of a typical pattern of nature, cloning, Mr. Franco teaches. “Everything that is alive grows by cloning”. And so solutions found in a particular part of the world are successfully recreated thousands of miles away. This was how the architect Jaime Lerner, as mayor of Curitiba in the 70′s, has created the Bus Rapid Transport, a rapid transport system for buses in exclusive lanes and this model has been replicated successfully in over 80 countries.

This year, the Chinese version of BRT won the Sustainable Transport Award 2011. Implanted in Guangzhou, the original design was refined, incorporating other global idea: hire bicycles in bus terminals, as has already done Paris and London, to name just two cities.

According to an article publishe by Fast Company magazine The Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) released a preliminary report examining the successes of Guangzhou’s bus corridor along Zhongshan Avenue, which now has 805,000 daily boardings–giving it the title of most-used bus corridor in Asia–and an increase in the bus speed of 29% compared to the previous bus system in the area.

Replicate good ideas can be the fastest way to in the next 40 years, the world find out how to accommodate 70% of its population in cities, as estimated data of the United Nations. But what is a forecast for the world is already a reality in Brazil. The 2010 Census showed that 84% of the Brazilian population lives in cities. For the architect Rivera, the country already has a clear dimension of what will be the global challenge post-2050. “We already know the size of the problem.”

As a genuine carioca, Rivera is deeply involved into rethinking the city of Rio de Janeiro. He is one of the creators of the Cultural District of Lapa (Distrito Cultural da Lapa), the Integrated Centres of Culture (Centros Integrados de Cultura) and several housing projects in downtown Rio. He agrees with Augusto de Franco and gives examples of how cloning can be used to improve life in cities.

“The cable car is a technology known for many years and it was rediscovered as an alternative transport in areas of difficult access. Medellin and Bogota, Colombia, recently deployed its systems and this year was the turn of the Rio de Janeiro, where the Pão de Açucar cable car works since 1912, inaugurates the Alemão cabe car — a set of 152 cabins with capacity for 10 passengers each, linking the various slums of the Morro do Alemão.

“This is one way of thinking about public transportation in an unconventional manner and give a new creative use an existing technology,” says Rivera. Some of the stations got colored panels depicting the life of the community, one of them created by the artist Romero Britto, internationally recognized for his work with bright colors and great humor.

In Colombia, the interventions have been even more radical, with the construction of public works of high social and architectural value in sites with lower HDI, the Human Development Index, completely transforming the perception of the city for those areas previously spurned by the local community. “It creates a space power capable of changing relations between people and the city,” says Rivera.

According to him, the same is happening in Rio de Janeiro with the Pacification Police Units (UPP), which gradually regained spaces before forgotten by the government. “Public space is space diversity. Integrate and understand the powers of informality is to realize the intelligence of the city, “he says.

These actions in Colombia and Rio are not to much different from the other one put into practice in Sao Paulo, when Marta Suplicy was the mayor: the construction of the Unified Educational Center (CEUs). Or, in the same perspective, the revitalization project in the central region of Santos. Jaime Lerner calls these examples as urban acupuncture, or an isolated action which can bring new energy flow for a given region. Actions that can come from both the government as organized groups – or not – of society.

Do it yoursefl

The characteristic of this movement is that many people already operates independently and does not expect more for permits or the initiative of governments to enact the changes that the city needs. There is a do-it-yourself revival with people promoting interventions in the urban landscape, something that has been called by wiki urbanism.

In Guadalajara, Mexico, for example, a group of cyclists decided to make a bike path on their own. Tired of waiting for the government actions, the group picked up traffic signs and other stuff and went to fight. The initiative was documented by a video on YouTube.

These interventions may not always be called smart or considered tasteful by all, says Douglas Gordon, sociologist at the University of Chicago. But it shows an interest in the resumption of public spaces for people. In his blog, Douglas show many of these initiatives. In the United States, many people are installing furniture public as bench at bus stops, potted plants and giving new uses to old phone booths.

Other people, beyond not wait for government initiatives, decide to transform into law their own world view. This is the case of the economist Ana Domingues, founder of the NGO Foundation Ecoverde, from Maringá, Paraná. Outraged by the huge amount of plastic bags used in supermarkets, Ana has created a bill prohibiting its use and released it ??via Internet.

The idea spread and ended up in Jundiaí, São Paulo, where an agreement between the City and traders, with massive public support, abolished the use of plastic bags in supermarkets. But not everything is perfect. Ana criticizes the fact Jundiaí and other cities that have adopted the measure to allow the use of one type of bag made ??of biodegradable starch. “Starch is food. We’re using food to make bags, when the idea is to use reusable bags, “he laments.

In the same line do-it-yourself, Marci McGuire has convinced 10 000 workers to leave their cars at home daily and go by bus to an office park in San Ramon, 68 km from San Francisco, California. Marci, who is the transportation manager of the park, focused her action not only on the environmental aspect, but in changing the culture. “It became cool to have a bus pass,” she says.

Faster than bureaucracy

What does the program work, says journalist Lisa Margonelli, transport expert, is the Marci’s action itself, who daily runs the place with his team trying to bring more fans to the system. One of the innovations of the buses that serve the park is a bicycle rack.

Marci McGuire’s action is the catalysts which explains the success, says Ana Carla, the author of Creative Cities. It is the glue that binds the private, public and civil society in a transformative project. This is also how Bage, Rio Grande do Sul, won buses with bike racks.

The manager of the bus company StadtBus, Maiquel Frandoloso, brought the idea of ??a trip to Europe and he returned to Brazil, quickly put the service in operation. “We like innovation,” he explains. The same company has internet and TV on their bus. Frandoloso used one of the keys to the transformation of cities, such as Jaime Lerner says: quickly put into practice good ideas so they do not get lost in the state bureaucracy. In Curitiba, the Opera de Arame, a concert hall designed by Brazilian architect Dominic Bongestabs, was built in just 75 days.

Good ideas travel at the speed of social networks, reproducing the mouth-to-mouth model globally. A large number of private networks, governmental and nongovernmental, are dedicated to the discussion of best practices for the new world of cities. The Global Network of Innovative Cities is one of them. His proposal is to add people that are innovative. If the city reflects the characteristics of its inhabitants, there is no innovative city without innovative citizens.

The Observatory of Metropolis is another example. It is a Brazilian group that brings together 200 researchers from 51 academic institutions that produces and disseminates knowledge. In the a global perspective the United Nations Human Settlements Programme, UN-HABITAT, is mandated by the UN General Assembly to promote socially and environmentally sustainable towns and cities with the goal of providing adequate shelter for all.

These are some of the tools that society today has to face the challenge of a world that is increasingly organized in networks. A global network of interconnected cities, as emphasized by Augusto de Franco. “There is no a global solution. All solutions are glo-cal. ”

It is a challenge, especially for governments also organized hierarchically, as shown by Our São Paulo Network, a group with more and more political representation capable of imposing a mandatory plan targets for the city of São Paulo and now works for approval of a Proposed Constitutional Amendment, taking the same plane for all instances of the Brazilian government.

Mental geography

The city as public space is the representation of diversity. In this space all actors in the transformation are acting and upgrading its communities, each one with a map of its own mental and emotional territory. The more it expand its emotional maps, more it will be integrating our cities, believes Peter Rivera.

Sao Paulo for the architect and urban planner Jorge Wilheim, for example, begins in Campinas and ends in Santos. And also begins in Sorocaba and ends in São José dos Campos, a vast area where 1 million people daily exchange its city to live, work and study. it is a mega polis with mega problems but also mega solutions. “São Paulo has a tension. But that’s not all bad. It is a tension created by the people. It is creativity”, he says.

George Wilhelm, former Secretary of Planning of São Paulo, author of several books, including Sao Paulo, an Interpretation has an optimistic vision of the future of cities, even the complicated and congested São Paulo. “We all know what the solution is what we need is political will to put into practice.” And put into practice means working together government and society.

That’s what made ??the secretary and the mayor Cassiani Bernardes in Pedreira. They took the journalist’s idea developed by professor Miguel Mendes and put it into practice. Today, the initiative serves as an inspiration to other cities around world, and so the wheel spins. “We were visited by more than 100 cities who want to learn more about our project,” he says, satisfied, Cassiani.