Forbes' list on "The World's Smartest Cities"

Time for happy-faced towns

In the transition for a new year, some cities were given a surprisingly special present: a place on the list of The World's Smartest Cities. As the author of this list says, being smart is not simply a synonym of being green. It requires a three-legged key stool of strong infrastructure, attractive economy and savvy urban planning. Among these ten special god-blessed places, imagine my flabbergasted feeling at breakfast time when I saw my home town at the top


By LUAN GALANI (luan.galani@wavemagazine.net)
from Curitiba, BRAZIL


The American magazine reckoned to be always remembered for its attention-grabbing lists delivered one more. This time Forbes is all about "The World's Smartest Cities". Its author is the widely-published North-American journalist Joel Kotkin, Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University, in California, and Adjunct at the Legatum Institute based in London. The 10 now famous cities chosen by him are:

No.1 - Singapore, Singapore
No.2 - Hong Kong, China
No.3 - Curitiba, Brazil
No.4 - Monterrey, Mexico
No.5 - Amsterdam, the Netherlands
No.6 - Seattle, USA
No.7 - Houston, USA
No.8 - Charleston, USA
No.9 - Huntsville, USA
No.10 - Calgary, Canada

The only remaining question is what a 'smart city' is. Nowadays, a smart city refers to a place with a green sustainable agenda. Yet it has characterized successful cities in the past, now there is other important factors that must be taken into account to label a city as smart. Like a strong infrastructure, an attractive economy and a savvy urban planning.

These criteria exclude straightaway behemoth mega cities like New York, Tokyo, Mexico City or Săo Paulo, which suffer from huge traffic congestion, out-of-control estate prices and expanding income disparities, what in this case leads directly to a seething mass of violence. They are the beholders of what the American urban historian Lewis Mumford calls 'megalopolitan elephantiasis'.

Instead, in Kotkin words, "smart cities tend to be smaller, compact and more efficient". And this seems not to be a one-off new idea. As the North-American journalist wrote, between the 14th and 18th centuries, modest-sized cities like Venice and Antwerp not only created vibrant urban quarters but nurtured modern capitalism. What comes to reinforce the disputable proverb that good things come in small packages.

Small southern package of Brazil

The south Brazilian city of Curitiba, which is in the third place on the Forbes list, is regarded worldwide as an innovator in everything from bus-based rapid transit, used by the majority (75%) of its residents, till its balanced economic development strategy.

According to Kotkin, with a population of 3.5 million citizens Curitiba demonstrates how to achieve the evolving Brazilian dream without the mass violence, transport dysfunction and ubiquitous grinding poverty that plague many other Latin American areas. The city's program of building "Lighthouses of Knowledge" - essentially libraries and art spaces - on the outskirts of the central core of the city for poorer inhabitants has become a model for developing cities. These are among the reasons Reader's Digest recently named Curitiba the best place to live in Brazil.

Speaking to WAVE magazine, the award-winning architect Jaime Lerner - three times mayor of Curitiba, urbanization consultant for the UN and former president of the International Union of Architects based in Paris - was emphatic when remembering the urban revolution he had led. "Curitiba was and always will be an important reference. It shows that a lot of things are possible if there is strong commitment to simplicity and will-power, what guarantees the vanguard position of the city", he says.

Nowadays, 83 cities around the world are using the transport system created by Lerner in Curitiba, like Seul, Mexico City and Los Angeles. Compared to eight other Brazilian cities of its size, Curitiba uses about 30 percent less fuel per capita because of this system, resulting in one of the lowest rates of ambient air pollution in the country. Its bus system plays a large part in making this a livable city. Consequently, Curitiba has one of the most heavily used, yet low-cost, transit systems in the world. It offers many of the features of a subway system - vehicle movements unimpeded by traffic signals and congestion, fare collection prior to boarding, quick passenger loading and unloading - but it is above ground and visible.

Founded in 1693 from a tiny explorers' village, this first Brazilian city to implement a University had become an important trading site that strengthen itself with the arrival of European immigrants - from Germany, Italy, Poland and Japan - in the 19th century. And differently from other cities, in Curitiba there is still enough room to expand, and that is why so many companies have been allured to bring in their business and industries, like Exxon Mobil and HSBC.

But this London-like weather city is not such a colourful paradise as foreign magazines paint. Waves of violence are soaring. Shooting rampages happen like never before in drug-dealing points in favelas (shanty towns). In one neighbourhood named Xaxim nobody gets in or out without the strict permission of the community leader, be it the mailmen or journalists. This easy-going one-eye-blinded man always surrounded by his own armed men that once I got to know makes all the links with both government and drug business. His powerful reign is far from being lessened and this underbelly side seems not to have been included in the analysis of foreign specialists.


(Published: 15.01.2010.)