Revealing Curitiba's flawed sustainability: How discourse can prevent institutional change

Martínez, Joyde Giacomini; Boas, Ingrid; Lenhart, Jennifer; Mol, A.P.J.

doi:10.1016/j.habitatint.2015.12.007

Cited by 18 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 15 publications

(15 reference statements)

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“…While no articles assessed change over time, they nevertheless highlighted the importance of considering sufficiently long time periods, intergenerational timescales in policy and the durability needed for transformational innovations, as well as other aspects related to time. Many articles measuring or describing transformations naturally focused on the past (e.g., Ernst et al , 2016; Martínez et al , 2016), although there was also a view that transformation is ongoing (Burns, 2011).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

How to assess sustainability transformations: a review

Salomaa

Juhola

2020

Glob. Sustain.

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Non-technical summary There is a call to change societies to become more sustainable. We examine how the concept of sustainability transformation has been used and find that it has been defined in many ways. The concept is still used without many real-world examples – we found only four studies that had assessed whether a multi-sectoral sustainability transformation had taken place. There is a need to further clarify what sustainability transformation means and how it can be assessed.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

How to assess sustainability transformations: a review

Salomaa

Juhola

2020

Glob. Sustain.

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“…Curitiba is the capital city of the state of Paraná (Figure 3). Although the initial urban planning dates to the 1960s, incorporation of sustainable development into their planning model was not recognized until recently [46]. Curitiba initiated more steps in improving waste management in the 1990s when it grew in population as a result of a massive influx of migrants [47].…”

Section: Curitiba Brazilmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…recognized until recently [46]. Curitiba initiated more steps in improving waste management in the 1990s when it grew in population as a result of a massive influx of migrants [47].…”

Section: Curitiba Brazilmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Collective Action in Waste Management: A Comparative Study of Recycling and Recovery Initiatives from Brazil, Indonesia, and Nigeria Using the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework

Hettiarachchi

2020

Recycling

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Recycling and recovery provide not only a sustainable option to decrease the volume of waste that needs final disposal, but also a blueprint to a circular economy. However, rates of recycling/recovery still remain very low on a global scale. While it is important to look for technology-based solutions to improve recycling/recovery activities, such solutions might not be necessarily affordable in many countries. A solution that involves the active participation of the population, on the other hand, has the potential to succeed in any country. The challenge is to attract and unite people to achieve such common goals. The theory of collective action and the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework, that have been originally used in resource management, are two concepts that can be adapted to organize recycling/recovery initiatives. This manuscript discusses what recycling/recovery programs can learn from the theory of collective action and the IAD framework, through a qualitative comparative study of such initiatives from three different cities. They are; Curitiba in Brazil, Padang in Indonesia, and Akure in Nigeria. The cases show the potential benefits of both concepts, not only in formulating and implementing recycling/recovery programs but also in making corrective measures for continuous improvements. All cases also showed the importance of increasing awareness-raising to change public perception towards waste from being a nuisance to a valuable resource.The above situation warrants a discussion on what strategies we should employ to enhance recycling/recovery activities. While developed or high-income countries can look for high-end technological solutions, developing and low-income countries may not have the ability to afford such solutions [7]. On the other hand, solutions that involve active participation of people (city residents and/or communities) have the potential to be sustainable in all countries irrespective of their economic development, although the return it may bring will be more substantial in the developing countries for several reasons. First, the economic benefits and employment prospects brought by selling recyclables (such as paper, plastics, glass, etc.) or other recoverables (e.g., nutrients through composting, energy through incineration of biogas production) can be significant to developing countries. In addition, active participation of people in such recovery activities also gives another avenue to raise much needed awareness in sustainable waste management.It is convenient to assume that the logic of economic gains through recycling can attract public attention for such activities. The reality is often a lot more complicated, making it a chicken or the egg type of a dilemma. Public participation supports recycling/recovery activities to prosper, but a prosperous, already-running program is also often needed to convince the hesitant public. Where should we begin? This made us think about cross-disciplinary pollination of ideas and bring two relatively established concep...

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“…Curitiba's success story unfortunately is compromised by newly arising social exclusion, water pollution, and problematic public transport planning, partially enabled by the predominant narrative of its sustainable transport case, preventing institutional change(Martínez et al 2016).6 This might suggest a neglect of the three-dimensional aspect of cities, yet compactness and density must not be confused here. While compactness measures, among other things, the ratio between builtup space and non-built-up space, density metrics measure the number of inhabitants or jobs per unit area; higher density is usually achieved by both reduced area per person, and higher buildings.…”

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confidence: 99%

Star-shaped cities alleviate trade-off between climate change mitigation and adaptation

Pierer

Creutzig

2019

Environ. Res. Lett.

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To deal with climate change, cities must reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and at the same time mitigate climate impacts associated with the physical infrastructure of the built environment. One strand of literature demonstrates that compact cities of sufficient density result in lower GHG emissions in the transport and the buildings sectors compared to sprawled cities. Another strand of literature, however, reveals that compactness hinders climate adaptation by amplifying the urban heat island (UHI) effect. As a result, mitigation and adaptation objectives of cities appear to contradict each other. Here, we develop a geometrical optimization framework and model of a three-dimensional city that minimizes this conflict. It makes use of the observation that low-carbon efficient transport can be realized via linear public transport axes, and that GHG emissions and UHI effects scale differently with varying geometric properties, thus enabling design that reflects both the economics and the climate of cities. We find that star-shaped cities, in contrast to radially symmetric cities, are well suited to alleviate the problematic trade-off. We also demonstrate that urban design considerations depend on transport fuel prices. The results are of particular importance for city planners of rapidly urbanizing cities in Asia and Africa who still have the potential to shape urban layout.

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Revealing Curitiba's flawed sustainability: How discourse can prevent institutional change

Cited by 18 publications

References 15 publications

How to assess sustainability transformations: a review

How to assess sustainability transformations: a review

Collective Action in Waste Management: A Comparative Study of Recycling and Recovery Initiatives from Brazil, Indonesia, and Nigeria Using the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework

Star-shaped cities alleviate trade-off between climate change mitigation and adaptation

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