Carmen Vidal-Hallett:
Our US American cities are finally starting to focus on pedestrian oriented life as the center of attention for sustainable development. Transforming the car oriented city street landscaping of our cities is a great challenge. More than 10 years ago while working for the City of Chicago Department of Planning and Development I started to look back into sustainability examples to help the Chicago’s Mayor to develop it’s first “green agenda”. The mail goal in my research was to find simple, inexpensive solutions that could be adopted immediately and within a short time frame. Latin America’s great examples of sustainable development became the focus of my attention. In 2004, with a Graham Foundation grant my husband, a photojournalist and I decided to move for a month to Curitiba, Brazil with our 2 kids for a month, in order to research and experience first hand the world wide famous sustainable city. From the BRT (Bus Rapid Transit), to land use regulations, recycling methods and environmental education programs, we found numerous low-budget solutions that provided at the same time historic preservation, affordable house and public open space preservation as well as environmental protection that could not only help in Chicago but many cities around the world to became more sustainable.
Since them and after our hard work spreading the word about simple practices Chicago has adopted many of Curitiba’s lessons. My presentation will focus about the lessons learned from Curitiba and the Chicago sustainability examples that have been inspired by this city as well as other Chicago sustainability examples specially in the latino communities including examples of organizations such as The Resurrection Project in Little Village and Back of the Yards and Interamerican Magnet School with it’s award winning 2008 Sustainable Master Plan.