Spotlight on Sustainable Cities: Curitiba

Okay, new plan. Instead of whining about my exams every day, I'm just going to tell you stuff I'm studying. I win: by blogging about this stuff, I'm reviewing it. You win: you get to read about some cool stuff. So here is my first installment in my potentially ongoing series on sustainable cities.

Curitiba, Brazil. Population: 1.6 million


Many of you may be familiar with Bogota, a city now famous for its rapid bus transit system. But in fact, Curitiba was the inspiration for Bogota's bus system.

Back in the 1960s, Curitiba's planners decided to develop a city that would service the bulk of the city's transport needs. So instead of building the city for cars, which would only service the minority of the population that could afford a car, they decided to design the city for efficient bus transit. Thus, the city was designed to promote equity. Buses were chosen for a simple reason: they're cheaper. (Los Angeles, take note.) The designers of Curitiba recognized that they could build an efficient, well-designed bus system at a fraction of the price of a subway system.

The bus system was designed and refined over the years so that there are now three different types of buses. The rapid transit buses, the inter-district buses which run the long haul trips, and the local feeder buses that feed into the rapid transit and inter-district buses. Everyone pays a single fare which includes transfers. This means that the poorer people who often live on the edges of the city are not forced to pay more than the richer people who might be able to afford to live within the city center.

Now, you may think that the bus system alone is enough to make Curitiba awesome. And it is. By the 1990s, two-thirds of Curitiba's population used public transit!

But public transit isn't the only area that Curitiba excels in. It's also won two awards from the United Nations Environment Programme for waste management. Curitiba has come up with an innovative solution for dealing with sanitation issues in the favelas, or squatter settlements. The government instituted a program that allowed residents of favelas to turn in their trash in exchange for bus tickets or food. This greatly improves the quality of life for the urban poor. And the program doesn't cost anymore than it would cost the government to hire out a private contractor to collect the trash.

Curitiba also boasts an amazing rate of recycling: approximately 2/3 of the city's waste is recycled! The money that the government makes from the recycling gets funnelled into social programs for low-income sectors, including environmental education for children. Children learn how to recycle and grow vegetables. The teenagers can use their gardening skills to earn money for their neighborhood associations.

Think this sounds great, but what about the parks? Well, Curitiba has loads of those too! And not only are the parks there for recreation and green space, but they also serve a vital need. Many of the parks contain artificial lakes, and these lakes serve as flood control for the city.

Now, certainly, every major city has its problems, and Curitiba is no exception. It's not a perfect city. But it is an example of innovative and inexpensive urban design. It's an example of a city that has learned to harmonize environmental sustainability with people's welfare. In short, it's an example well worth emulating.

Picture courtesy of flickr user xander76

Fear and Self-Loathing in London

Exams are coming up (boy are you guys going to get sick of hearing about THAT) and that means that competitive studying is on!

You know what I mean ... it's when your friend Z spends the whole day studying and you feel like a failure because you slacked off and played Lexulous on Facebook all afternoon and clearly Z is so hard working and going to kick ass on finals whereas you are only barely going to pass IF you pass at all, so the next day you study like a maniac and Z freaks out because today she's been looking at places to travel to on her next holiday. And so on. Vicious cycle of fear, self-loathing, and manic studying. Bear with me, I have a point.

And that point is that, many of us, for better or worse, are really into the comparison game. I for one, am not immune to this game. In this game, you say things like say....

Crunchy Chicken is better than me because well she's a super hot chica who makes her own butter and fancy soaps and freezes her buns off without even swearing about it.

Or...

Chile is better than me because she can make anything from scratch, including fancy pants condiments and chocolate truffles. And also she uses hand powered blenders and other non-electric things for everything. And she bikes around everywhere. Basically, she's like an Amish vegan superhero!

Or...

Beany is better than me because she RODE A BIKE CROSS COUNTRY. I mean who does that? Aside from Beany?

Or...

Green Bean is better than me because she consistently produces delicious food porn while simultaneously saving her son's school singlehandedly. (Try saying that five times.)

Or...

Melinda is better than me because she brings boatloads of passion to her environmental practices. How she has that much passion never fails to amaze me.

My point is that I'm surrounded by super-heroes and they're all better than I could ever hope to be. So basically, I should probably just eat worms and die.

No, I'm kidding! That's not my point.

Are these women super-heroes? Yes. Are they better than me? Uh, probably. Should I eat worms and die?

No. Partly because, well, I'm trying to be a vegetarian most days, and that wouldn't be very vegetarian of me.

And partly because comparing yourself to others is just ... missing the point.

Living a sustainable life isn't about trying to outdo one another in a bid to be the greenest of them all. It is, fundamentally, about trying to achieve balance. Balance in your life. Balance between you, society, and our environment. Balance between what you really need and what's kind of superfluous.

After all, you can only be living sustainably if you can, in fact, sustain it.

So, lately, I've had to come to terms with the fact that I am not the superest greenest superhero. Instead, I'm just a gal with a lot of s**t on my plate who does the best she can.

And while there are a lot of people out there who are way better than me, that's okay. Because at some point, you have to let go, and stop comparing yourself to others, and just focus on yourself.

But meanwhile my mythical friend Z has probably read 150 pages while I wrote a blog post, so, back to my routine of fear and loathing.

It's the Little Things In Life

This afternoon, I forced myself to do my first of (hopefully many) mock exam questions. I sat down, timed myself, and by the end, I realized that, frankly, I had done a pretty decent job. No, not perfect, I kind of got a little lost when I was trying to explain what happened to social housing in Britain under the Thatcher administration, but overall, I think I did okay.

I also discussed a research proposal I'm mulling over with a friend of mine, and she didn't laugh at me and tell me that it was an impossible topic.

Then this evening, I picked up a beer from the off license, the cashier asked me if I was old enough to buy beer, and I came home, cooked some spaghetti and lazed around reading an old L.M. Montgomery book.

My stress level is considerably reduced.

I think I'm going to make it after all.

Getting Myself Through Exams

Yesterday, my friend B told me that she really liked my vegetarianism because I just try to do the best I can.

It's true. In the weeks since my six week vegetarian experiment ended, I have eaten meat about once a week to once every two weeks. And it's been great. Flexible vegetarianism, or as its called, flexitarianism, has allowed me to stay mainly vegetarian, but still enjoy a few pieces of sushi, or try a friend's famous burgers at a barbecue. I feel healthy, I have less guilt, I'm eating significantly less meat, but I don't feel deprived. Good for me, good for the planet.

As you might have guessed from my personal challenges followed by my great wave of soda drinking, I tend to be an all or nothing kind of girl. I'm either fully committed or not. And it's hard, sometimes for me to accept compromises and find balance.

But I'm trying.

Lately my eating habits (aside from the lack of meat) have been a total disaster. I feel like I have no time to cook or shop, but I also feel like I can't give up on cooking from scratch or buying from the bulk food store. Thus I continue to order my organic veg delivery which then sits on my counter and rots as I put off going to the bulk food store for the other ingredients I would need. The end result is that my vegetables rot, I eat Subway all the time because when push comes to shove, I have to eat something from somewhere, I spend more money than I need, and I throw away a ton of garbage. Bad for me, bad for the planet.

Today I was at a coffee shop studying, and I decided to pop into the grocery store and pick up some milk. As I walked into the store, something clicked. I grabbed a cart, ganked some plastic bags from the store's recycle bin (don't you love that trick when you don't have any bags handy?), and started loading up my cart. Cereal, trail mix, dates, hummus, crackers, bread, peanut butter, jelly, pasta, sauce, stuff I can drum up in a matter of minutes.

I mean, look. In a perfect world, I wouldn't have bought pasta in plastic, but would have managed a trip to the bulk food store. In a perfect world I might make my own hummus. But I'm not perfect, neither is life, and I have to get myself through the next month and a half in one piece. Is the organic Green and Black version of Nutella that I bought the healthiest thing for me or the planet? Probably not, but it beats buying chocolate bars at three in the morning from the vending machine.

On Monday I'm cancelling my veg delivery until exams end. I'm disappointed that I can't make myself cook these days, but I recognize that feeling guilty, beating myself up, and then continuing in the same cycle of bad habits isn't a particularly good strategy. I can't make the perfect the enemy of the good enough for now.

Man, I can't wait for exams to be over.

There I go again...

Living up to my moniker by stirring up trouble once again.

So, today one of my classmates commented about how it was interesting that whereas fair labor practices for say ... tennis shoes have really taken off and it's now viewed that companies must practice fair labor practices or risk protest, fair trade is still a niche market, and companies aren't really called into question if their food isn't fair trade.

It's a weird double standard, isn't it? And yet, I think her comment is right on, considering a recent debate I've been having with a colleague: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.

Now, I appreciate enthusiastic debate, and this one was no exception. I thoroughly appreciated all of Jeff's comments. But I have to admit, I do think it's a little bit weird and also slightly depressing that calling a company out for claiming to be socially responsible while not practicing fair trade is enough to get you labeled as a "puritanical scold."

The funny thing is that in the past I've praised, among other things, Clorox Green Works, Starbucks, and In N Out here and on other blog sites. For heaven's sake, I just admitted my soda and junk food addiction. I'm hardly some sort of ethical purist.

But ... okay ... let's say a corporation, let's call them Shmike for the sake of this argument, let's say Shmike was producing I don't know ... shoes that made you fall down a lot. Now for me, that wouldn't be any different from any other shoes, but, let's imagine that these shoes made even vaguely graceful people fall down a lot. So these shoes cause people to fall which is not particularly healthy. Let's say these shoes are also made by children in sweatshop conditions.

Now let's say Shmike reacts to some of the bad press surrounding their shoes that make people fall down a lot. And even though there are plenty of people who still are buying the shoes (because even though they make you fall down, they are pretty cool) they decide to listen to the growing clamor of parents and podiatrists and decide to get out of the business of making shoes that cause people to fall down. So they make new shoes that don't make people fall down, but in fact cause people to walk normal ... you know ... like shoes are SUPPOSED to do. But they still use child labor.

Given this case, would you say that Shmike was really being socially responsible? Would you applaud Shmike for no longer making shoes that cause people to fall down? Or would you say, "Well, that's nice that your shoes no longer make people fall down, but uh, how about you stop with the sweatshops, mkay?"

The truth is that the real "Shmike" has enacted much better labor practices because of international advocacy. Again, look, I am all for kids eating more fruits and vegetables and all the other things that Michael Pollan loves. But if we can agree that sweatshops are bad, can't we also agree that sweatshop-shop like conditions for agricultural workers are also bad? Can't we agree that while no one wants to be a puritanical scold, we can't really call a company "socially responsible" if they are not engaging in fair labor practices?

Or are we really so desperate for kids in the North to eat a frickin apple, that we are willing to sell out poor laborers in the South?

Off the Wagon

So once upon a time, I learned about how soda was bad for you and the environment for a multitude of reasons. There was the high fructose corn syrup, there was the manufacturing of the soda, there are lots and lots of reasons.

So I quit soda. Mind you, at the time, I was working in an office where there was abundant soda located in a fridge next to my desk. But I quit fairly successfully, only occasionally resorting to a Jones soda. Mmmm Jones.

Then I came to school.

I now drink soda every day.

It's funny how bad habits are hard to break, and easy to fall back into.

As my exams approach, I feel like I am breaking down, physically and mentally. My brain is over-taxed. I have tendinitis in my wrist. My room looks like it's been hit by an 8.0 earthquake.

And somehow, the only way I've managed to cope is through copious amounts of chocolate and caffeine administered at regular intervals.

I know there's got to be a healthier and better way. But is there a healthier way that also involves no time preparation?

What do you do when you're jammed to the wall, stressed, and literally cannot take 20 minutes out of your day without feeling guilty? How do you cope?

At Long Last, the Carnival You've All Been Waiting For

I am a terrible blogger/person. Here I go, take a two week vacation, and when I come back? I promptly go AWOL again, and don't put up the fracking APLS Carnival.

So, first of all, to all of those that participated, I am extremely sorry. Please feel free to hurl tomatoes at me. I suck. I suck. I know, I suck.

But better late than never, right? So here we go:

Does Earth Day Matter?

Beany votes no, writing about a disappointing Earth Day event in San Diego. I still don't get why all Earth Day festivities don't have compost bins. Though, Beany, you should have expected the annoying music given your experience with annoying musicians at farmers markets.

On the other hand, Erin writes an eloquent post about how the month of April makes her thankful for the Earth. I have to concur. I spent seven years in Los Angeles where every month seems the same as the last. But living in London, where you actually get to witness a change of seasons, makes me remember the beauty of spring.

Heather points out another important benefit of Earth Day: creating awareness. She spent her Earth Day talking to people about the importance of local, sustainably grown food. Way to go, Heather.

The Budget Ecoist also believes that Earth Day is an important awareness builder. She focuses on Earth Day's potential to inform consumers of how to separate the green from the wash. She writes, "Earth Day is a good reminder to all of us that preserving our environment might provide companies yet another way to market their products — and that’s fine — but it’s our job as consumers to decide how we want to spend our hard-earned dollars."

Finally, a man's view! (Why are there so few men blogging about sustainable issues?) Rob vows to continue his green lifestyle, and discusses the importance of leading by example. Thanks for the post, Rob and good luck in your quest to get the Bulgarian electrician to switch to solar!

Abbie offers some family-friendly suggestions for celebrating the Earth any day of the year. I particularly like her suggestion to make water conservation a family experiment. I think when kids see the difference their conservationist practices make, they are more likely to be enthusiastic about conserving than if turning off the tap when you brush your teeth is merely a dictum from mom and dad.

Steph also comes down in favor of Earth Day, writing, "I love my husband every day but our anniversary provides us a special opportunity to review our relationship, be proud of the accomplishments we have made, and re-dedicate ourselves to our future. Among the crush of everyday life, we need a reminder to think about how we care for the earth." Well spoken.

And lastly, if you like inane waffling, you can check out my post on Earth Day. But really don't. Because, come on. Inane waffling.

Anyway, there you have it folks. Sorry again for it being so late.

And with that I am announcing that the APLS Carnival is looking for another administrator or two other administrators. It's only two hours of work a month; it's just two hours that frankly I know I won't get to right now. If you are interested, please leave a comment or email me at arduousblog (at) gmail (dot) com. I really want to keep this carnival going, but I just can't commit to the maintenance right now.

Finally, I apologize for the lack of posting lately. I wish I could say I'm going to get better about it, but, in all likelihood posting is going to continue to be spotty until my exams end on June 22nd. So, ya know, Google reader, all that. I apologize. But, hey! In four short months, I will be all done with this course!