CIAO DATE: 06/2014
Winter 2014
Extreme Sustainable City Makeover: New York (PDF)
Michael Sorkin
Most of us are familiar with the concept of the “ecological footprint.” Originally developed by Canadian academics Matthis Wackernagel and William Rees, the idea embodies a series of algorithms (numerous versions are available on the web) that convert a wide variety of consumption inputs into a single quantity: area. Using this model, one can compare how much of the Earth’s surface is required to build a car, heat a house, produce a meal, sink the carbon from a coal-burning power plant, etc. The information yielded by the calculations is revelatory, and sometimes shocking. For example, some simple footprinting produces the scary conclusion that if everyone on Earth were to consume at the rate at which we do in the U.S., the surface area of an additional three or four planets would be required to support us all! This vividly begs the questions both of the equitable distribution of resources globally and throws the matter of self-sufficiency into high relief at the local level.
National to City, Diagnosis to Funding (PDF)
Ellis J. Juan
For too long, Latin America’s urbanization has been haphazard and chaotic. As a result, the world’s most urbanized region (with over 80 percent of its population living in cities) became associated with sprawl, waste, inefficiency, pollution, and increasing vulnerability to climate change. But a new approach to this challenge emerged on the sidelines of the turmoil-filled 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, when Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) President Luis Alberto Moreno and a few advisors came up with the idea of helping small and midsize cities witnessing rapid growth avoid errors made by their big-city brethren. “We all know what happened in Latin America when we combined rapid growth with poor planning, lack of financing for infrastructure and little regard for environmental and climate issues,” Moreno said in early 2012. “No one wants today’s emerging cities to become tomorrow’s crowded and unhealthy megacities.”
From "Make-Sicko" back to Mexico City: The Greening of Mexico's Distrito Federal (PDF)
Marcelo Ebrard
Mexico City has one of the world’s most complex concentrations of people. In the early sixteenth century, Mexico City already had 200,000 inhabitants, and the Valley of Mexico almost half a million—which is to say, it has always been one of the world’s largest cities. Due to its longstanding position as Mexico’s capital city, industrial development in the twentieth century, and particularly the rapid demographic growth in the 1970s and 1980s, the city’s air quality was suffering by the early 1990s. Mexico City became known internationally as the most polluted city in the world. In the past 20 years, the federal, state and city governments have carried out an ambitious program to improve air quality in the Valley of Mexico. The effort was one of the most efficient public policies ever developed in our country, where public policy planning, follow-up across different levels of government in different administrations, and critical and science-based policy evaluation are not very common.
A Tale of Two Cities: Bogotá (PDF)
Sibylla Brodzinsky
From his modest home in Ciudad Bolívar, high in the hills of Bogotá’s poor southwestern edge, Alexdy Torres, 41, can see the city of 7.5 million people spread out before him. Far to the north, he can make out the wealthy districts of Bogotá and a small cluster of skyscrapers that mark the city center. It’s a world away from his own neighborhood—a maze of winding roads and precariously built houses clinging to the hillsides. Except for a few neglected parks, public space is limited to trash-strewn, windswept lots. Only a few sclerotic trees manage to survive in one of the most densely populated areas of Colombia’s capital. But the magnificent view also contains some features in Bogotá’s urban landscape that have changed how Torres thinks about his city—and his family’s future. A wide boulevard nearby leads to Parque Metropolitano El Tunal (El Tunal Metropolitan Park), once one of the city’s most derelict and crime-infested areas and now a broad green patch of soccer fields and tennis courts circled by bicycle lanes. The park is flanked on one side by a well-stocked public library and on the other by the terminal for the city’s iconic TransMilenio bus rapid transit system (BRT).
A Tale of Two Cities: Curitiba (PDF)
Flora Charner
It’s nine a.m. in the Nossa Senhora de Aparecida vila (shantytown) in Curitiba, Brazil, and dozens of people have formed a line at the top of a small hill. Despite a slight drizzle and the brisk cold of the morning, people stand patiently with filled wheelbarrows and carts. Two trucks pull up to the front of the queue and open their tailgates. The green one is practically empty, with the exception of a large scale. The white one is full of produce. The first woman in line wheels a beaten-looking washing machine onto the scale. The uniformed workers check the weight: 26 kilograms (57 pounds). A man with a clipboard hands her a ticket, and she walks over to the other truck, parked in front. Within minutes, she has six kilos of oranges in her cart. “For every four kilos of recyclable material, we exchange one kilo of food,” says Gilberto Hangi, the public sanitation controller for Curitiba’s environmental agency. It’s all part of Curitiba’s Câmbio Verde (Green Change) program, created in 1991 to eliminate trash in some of Curitiba’s poorest and least accessible areas and to help local farmers who had a surplus of cabbage going to waste.
How Do We Make Sustainable Cities Sustainable Policies? (PDF)
Hannah Thonet
Several of the region’s high-profile mayors who championed sustainability during their administrations have recently left—or will soon leave—office. This raises an important question: what will happen to the policies and programs they left behind? Incoming mayors have their own agendas and policy preferences, and sustainability initiatives—unlike crime or education policy—are not yet sufficiently embedded in the public consciousness or established in municipal bureaucracies to guarantee their survival from one municipal administration to the next. Even mayors who understand the value of sustainability may de-emphasize existing initiatives in an effort to put their stamp on their own sustainability projects. And yet among municipal governments, the ideas and policies associated with sustainability are slowly maturing from pet project status to status quo, as local leaders recognize they cannot wait for global or national leadership to take action on climate change.
Rethinking Buildings (PDF)
Bruce Schlein
Cities are concentrations of people, buildings and activity. Infrastructure helps knit all of the pieces together and delivers essential services. The traditional infrastructure that supplies many of these services consists of a centralized, fixed-point service facility and a delivery network. Think energy (power plant and transmission wires), water (reservoir and pipes) and sewers (wastewater treatment plant and more pipes). Buildings and their occupants have largely been passive service recipients and end users at the ends of these spokes. The rising need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prepare cities to manage the challenges of extreme weather is beginning to turn this historical construct on its head. Technological developments, such as advances in photovoltaics and big data, offer a way to address environmental concerns by thinking of buildings as energy producers or stormwater managers. When applied in the aggregate across the urban landscape, they are potentially not only a more environmentally friendly substitute for some modes of traditional infrastructure, but a more economical one as well. A case in point is Philadelphia. The city’s storm- water system, like many systems around the U.S., is conjoined with sewage. In other words, rainfall and sewage are collected together and the resulting mix is channeled to a sewage treatment plant. More intense rainfalls mean more water entering the system, potentially overwhelming the capacity of the sewage treatment plant...
Safe Streets, Safe Cities (PDF)
Dr. Nancy E. Brune
Discussions of sustainable cities tend to focus on environmental goals such as developing eco-friendly architecture, recycling, and improving the resiliency of urban infrastructure systems. But public or citizen security is an equally important aspect of building a sustainable city. Often, it is the issue that tops the list of citizens’ concerns—and with good reason. Violent drug cartels, extreme poverty and inequality, high unemployment rates for young men, and the illegal trafficking of small arms and light weapons have kept Latin America one of the most violent regions in the world. Discussions of sustainable cities tend to focus on environmental goals such as developing eco-friendly architecture, recycling, and improving the resiliency of urban infrastructure systems. But public or citizen security is an equally important aspect of building a sustainable city. Often, it is the issue that tops the list of citizens’ concerns—and with good reason...
NAFTA @20: Where We Go From Here (PDF)
Ernesto Zadillo Ponce de Leon
Has the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) fulfilled its promise? I believe it has. NAFTA was conceived first and foremost as an instrument to promote trade and investment integration among Mexico, Canada and the United States—on the premise that integration would enhance growth, employment and competitiveness in the three countries. On that front, NAFTA certainly has led to more intense and closer integration. Annual trade among the three partners has increased fourfold, and intraregional investment almost fivefold since NAFTA came into effect in 1994. The NAFTA countries trade within the region more than with the rest of the world; in fact, their exports to Asia and to Europe are, respectively, one-half and one-third of their total intraregional exports. The goods traded within NAFTA are more value-added than those traded with any other countries. For example, 40 percent of U.S. imports from Mexico consist of goods that were partly assembled or produced in the U.S., employing U.S. workers. In contrast, U.S. imports from China have only 4 percent U.S. content.
Inroads or Detours in the Drug Debate? (PDF)
Bernardo J. Rico
In June, 15 gunmen traveling in three vehicles attacked a police station in the small town of Salcaja in the northern Guatemalan highlands. By the time the shooting ended, eight policemen were dead—and one, the station’s deputy inspector, was kidnapped. The motive was initially unclear, but the government’s subsequent investigation revealed that the deputy inspector and a few of the police who were murdered had heisted $740,000 from the leader of a local narco-trafficking organization connected to Mexico’s notorious Gulf Cartel. Adding special poignancy to the attack, only a week earlier, the General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS) gathered in Antigua, Guatemala and expressed its concern over the spread of violence in the region. Central American delegates in particular were acutely aware that the escalating murder rate in the isthmus could be attributed to Mexican cartels infiltrating and taking over drug trafficking in Guatemala and Honduras. Mexican cartels started taking their business operations and cocaine transit routes to Central America after 2006, when former President Felipe Calderón (with U.S. support) began breaking up criminal syndicates and interdicting the flow of narcotics to the U.S. border. Violence soon followed; today Guatemala and Honduras face the same levels of crime and insecurity that have plagued Mexico for a decade. The Guatemalan and Honduran governments have stepped up interdiction efforts, with U.S. support, but have stopped short of officially declaring war on the cartels. Both governments lack the resources and state capacity to follow the example of Mexico, and the violence and bloodshed in Mexico since 2006 (with over 70,000 dead) are hardly a positive example of how to tackle the issue. As a result, government officials and organizations like the OAS have started to call for new strategies to solve the region’s drug problem and—more critically—reduce the violence.
Ask the Experts: Sustainable Cities (PDF)
Sergio Fajaldo Valderrama, Sergio Cabral, Dr. Fran Tonkiss, Anne Palmer
Cities must trade in their paternalistic and overprotective orientation for a more independent mentality. Government helps, but citizens do not depend on it completely. We must invest in education so that citizens can be the agents of their own progress. In parallel to this, we must set in motion comprehensive social programs to further protect citizens’ rights and to expand economic, social, cultural, political, and territorial rights, which benefit their well-being, development and empowerment. Investing in education is a political decision. When I came to office as mayor of Medellín in 2004 and later as governor of the state of Antioquia in 2012, we pledged to transform the society through education. In the broadest sense, this includes science, technology, innovation, entrepreneurship, and culture. In the government of Antioquia, we devote half of the budget to education, one of the most important things we could do for the state. Another crucial component for reducing poverty is fighting corruption. To me, corruption is a criminal business no less difficult to combat than gangs and guerrillas. The corrupt line their pockets, reducing opportunities for everyone and leaving just crumbs for the poorest in our society.
DISPATCHES FROM THE FIELD: XALTIANGUIS, MEXICO
Nathaniel Parish Flannery
Dispatches: Xaltianguis, Mexico BY NATHANIEL PARISH FLANNERY How armed housewives in the hills of Mexico are fighting back against narcotraffickers—without the state. View a slideshow from Xaltianguis, Mexico below. Angelica Romero, a middle-aged mother of two, views her reflection in the bedroom mirror. She tucks her blue T-shirt into her jeans, pulls her hair back in a ponytail, and slips a tan baseball cap onto her head. In black letters across the brim, it reads: “Citizen Police.” Only a few months earlier, residents of Romero’s town, Xaltianguis, located in the verdant hills outside Acapulco, had been paralyzed by fear of kidnapping gangs, armed robbers and extortionists. But since the townspeople banded together to form a militia this summer, the crime wave has come to an end.
Hard Talk: Gabriel Marcella and William McIlhenny debate: Should the U.S. spy on its allies?
Gabriel Marcella, William McIlhenny
Leaders' reactions to the revelations are really about domestic politics. Everybody spies, even on allies. BY GABRIEL MARCELLA Should the U.S. spy on its allies? Yes The reported snooping by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) on world leaders is a rich teachable moment. It shows the underside of international relations. Spying on other governments—including friendly ones—is a pillar of modern foreign policy and a vital tool to protect against modern security threats like international crime, terrorism, cyber-attacks, drug trafficking, climate change, and stealing technology. As the saying goes, friends today may be foes tomorrow. We really don’t know what information was gathered, but it caused an upheaval in various capitals friendly to the United States. Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff cancelled a long-awaited state visit to the U.S. because of the Edward Snowden revelations, claiming that the NSA spying was an attack “on the sovereignty and the rights of the people” of Brazil.1 Similarly, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was upset by reports that the U.S. was listening to her cell phone communications; she, in turn, demanded a no-spying agreement with the United States.2
Arts Innovator: Luis Antonio Vilchez, Peru Watch a video of Luis Antonio Vilchez dancing in Times Square below. Passing through New York’s Times Square one winter day in 2010, Lima native Luis Antonio Vilchez noticed a group of street percussionists playing a familiar Afro-Peruvian rhythm—and immediately decided to join them. Soon, a large crowd gathered as Vilchez, wearing a button-down shirt and a winter coat, burst into a dance performance that was so impressive even the drummers watched in awe. The same kind of impromptu creativity dominates Adú Proyecto Universal (Adú Universal Project), a nonprofit arts organization Vilchez founded four years ago to re-imagine Peruvian identity through dance, theater and percussion. Financed by money the group earns from its performances, Adú (which means “friend” in limeña slang) encourages its 20 members—all dancers—to combine different dance and music genres, crossing back and forth between tradition and modernity.
Cuba's bid for foreign investment — The Pacto por México — The Canada-EU Trade Agreement.
Duncan Wood, Marc Frank, John Parisella
Cuba: Port Upgrades and Free-Trade Zones BY MARC FRANK When Latin American and Caribbean heads of state gather in Cuba in January 2014 for the Comunidad de Estados Latinoamericanos y Caribeños (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States— CELAC) summit, the agenda will include a side trip to Mariel Bay. There, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and Cuban President Raúl Castro will cut the ribbon on a brand new container terminal that Cuba hopes will replace Havana as the country’s principal port. Brazil financed more than two-thirds of the $900 million project, built in partnership with Brazilian construction company Odebrecht over six years—providing $670 million in loans for terminal construction and infrastructure development such as rail and road. The facility, with an initial capacity of 850,000 to 1 million containers, will be operated by Singaporean port operator PSA International. The Mariel Bay facility, located 28 miles (45 kilometers) west of the capital on the northern coast, was built to attract traffic from the larger container ships expected to traverse the Panama Canal in 2015. It could also serve as a major transfer point for cargo heading to other destinations. But the competition is already fierce. The Dominican Republic, Jamaica, the Bahamas, and Panama are all rushing to improve their port facilities.
Richard Andre
Graphicanos View a slideshow of Graphicanos prints below. Indiana is better known for the Indy 500 and sports teams than for a thriving art culture, so most art lovers would be surprised to stumble upon the cutting-edge exhibit of serigraphic prints—a contemporary art form that uses block-size ink stencils to print images onto canvas—on display this winter at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art. Charles Shepard, the museum’s executive director and curator of the groundbreaking exhibit—Graphicanos: Contemporary Latino Prints from the Serie Project—likes to point out that there is a thriving art world beyond the traditional centers of New York and San Francisco. And he believes presenting often-ignored contributions of Latino artists in the American “heartland”—not usually seen as a center of Latino culture—reflects the rich diversity of U.S. society today. “Every part of our diverse culture is making art in some form,” Shepard says. “And as a museum, we should be looking at that.” The museum hosts an annual Día de los Muertos celebration every November, which attracts about 2,000 visitors from a variety of cultural backgrounds. The event became so popular that it inspired him to collaborate with the late Sam Coronado, a Mexican-American serigraphic print artist, for the Graphicanos exhibit.
Albert Fishlow, Alejandro Garro, Matt Aho
Breves narrativas diplomáticas by Celso Amorim BY ALBERT FISHLOW Brazil featured early in the international crisis that erupted from Edward Snowden’s disclosures of U.S. access to telephone conversations of more than 30 foreign leaders over the past decade, when Rio de Janeiro-based journalist Glenn Greenwald provided information about U.S. spying in Brazil to O Globo’s television program, Fantástico. In response, President Dilma Rousseff took the unusual and unprecedented step of canceling her scheduled state visit to the United States. (That cancellation had some positive consequences for President Barack Obama; at least he did not have to worry about holding a state meeting during the Congress-imposed shutdown of U.S. government spending.) The Snowden disclosures increase the relevance of Celso Amorim’s new book, Breves narrativas diplomáticas (Brief Diplomatic Narratives). Amorim, who served as Brazilian minister of foreign relations under two administrations of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and is now minister of defense in the Rousseff government, presents—as he had done in an earlier volume Conversas com jovens diplomatas (Conversations with Young Diplomats)—some highlights of his service as foreign minister. The emphasis in this book is on his first years as foreign minister, and gives the reader a window into Brazil’s shift in foreign policy after 2003.