Curitiba: a model of green urban planning

Often cited as an international model of sustainable urban planning, Curitiba combines a rapid bus system copied in dozens of cities worldwide with an artistic heritage tied to European immigration.

The historic center and main parks are easily reached via the city's bus system.

The Botanical Garden, with its Art Nouveau-inspired greenhouse modeled on the London Crystal Palace, houses a tropical botanical garden inside and a small museum dedicated to local botany.

The Opera de Arame, a theater with a tubular steel structure and transparent covering, was built in 1992 inside a disused stone quarry, with a small artificial lake separating it from the public.

The Rua das Flores, the first pedestrian shopping street in Brazil when closed to traffic in 1972, remains still today the commercial heart of the historic center, flowering year-round thanks to an automatic irrigation system.

The Ukrainian Memorial, in Parque Tingui, commemorates with a replica wooden church the arrival of thousands of Ukrainian immigrants in the late nineteenth century, still today one of the most numerous ethnic communities in the city.

The rapid bus system copied around the world and the Ukrainian Memorial tell two faces of the same Curitiba: the one that plans the future and the one that preserves the memory of those who built it.

The Ópera de Arame, suspended between a disused quarry and a small lake, perhaps synthesizes better than any other place this ability to turn a constraint into an opportunity.