A First World City At Third World Prices: Curitiba, Brazil ~ by Kori Crow
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Before we arrived, we read some information that said Curitiba is the 3rd cleanest city in Latin America. Needless to say, we were a bit skeptical. The 3rd cleanest city in Latin America? Seems like a dubious distinction. It would...
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Before we arrived, we read some information that said Curitiba is the 3rd cleanest city in Latin America. Needless to say, we were a bit skeptical. The 3rd cleanest city in Latin America? Seems like a dubious distinction. It would be kind of like holding the record for the most home runs ever…in the minor leagues. A lot of wonderful things come to mind when we think of Latin America, but “clean” is certainly not one of them. Were we ever wrong about that. This city is truly spotless, not by Latin American standards, but by every first world standard. The only thing that can rival Curitiba’s cleanliness is its’ diversity. In the late 1800’s, the government realized that the area around Curitiba would not develop without a major increase in population, so the state began an immigration policy to attract new residents. New immigrants were given land grants, with the best land going to the earliest arrivals. The Italians were the first to take advantage of the program, but later settlers came from Germany, Poland, the Ukraine, France, England, Holland, Japan, Syria, Lebanon and Israel. The influence of European, Middle Eastern and Asian immigrants is apparent at every turn. Almost every park in town has a memorial dedicated to the immigrants from a particular country or region. Usually the park is the focal point of the neighborhood where they settled. Due to the excellent weather and quality of life, Curitiba has been one of the fastest growing cities in Brazil. It has quadrupled its population in the last 40 years to roughly 2.3 million in the metropolitan region and 1.4 million in the city itself. It also seems to have avoided many of the growing pains of other cities around the world by having a very long range plan for handling the growth. They have been practicing “urban planning” for several decades to deal with problems like pollution, sanitation, water supply, housing, etc. In spite of the 3rd world label they are stuck with, this is no 3rd world city. It is impeccably clean, traffic is almost nonexistent, public transportation is efficient, there are parks and green space everywhere and the crime rate is low. In fact, to find a bad part of town, you have to drive for quite a few miles outside of the city center. Unlike so many other places, the heart of the city is safe at all hours of the day or night. During our exploration of the city, we have visited the gorgeous botanical gardens, the opera house (an all-glass structure built in a ravine complete with a waterfall), the Oscar Niemeyer museum of architecture (“The Eye” as the locals call it), the city zoo on the outskirts of town, the main public park with a mini-zoo featuring toucans and other native birds, the 24-hour a day shopping avenue and the old historic quarter. We also went jogging in Barigui Park which is Curitiba’s answer to Central Park. It’s an oasis in the middle of the city with beautiful views of the skyline. There are countless other museums, parks, galleries, shops and restaurants to be explored with the help of the marvelous mass transit system. It is fast, efficient, inexpensive and privately owned. There are several different types of buses around Curitiba, all of which are part of an intricate network. There is no subway, but one of the bus lines functions in the same manner as an above-ground subway. The bus stops are tubular in shape and you pay going into the tube rather than on the bus. This line has dedicated lanes and straight routes throughout the city with less frequent stops. Different lines go around the city to connect various neighborhoods and the suburbs. The complete coverage of the bus lines and the on-time service all but eliminates the need for a car in the metro area. Regardless of your destination, you can easily get within a block or two using the buses. Curitiba is an extremely livable city for anyone coming from the United States. It has every modern convenience of the first world, and in some cases offers things that we can no longer get at home. We have been wracking our brains to come up with things that we enjoy at home that we cannot get here in Curitiba and our subscription to Netflix is the only thing on the list. This small problem can be overcome by visiting one of the many elegant shopping malls in town, all who have movie theaters, all who show first-run American movies in English.
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We also saw some nice fully furnished 2-bedroom apartments in the central city for US$180 – US$250 a month.
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