Mario Carrier

Understanding continuity in sustainable transport planning in Curitiba

The Brazilian city of Curitiba has long been recognised as an exemplary success in urban planning, particularly its sustainable urban transport, with modal splits strongly favouring public transit. Its success was achieved principally through rigorous and detailed planning, beginning in the 1970s, using policy tools that have been described, and sometimes criticised, as technocratic. After 40 years of a quite successful experience in transport planning and implementation, Curitiba, like many world cities, faces new challenges, particularly in the form of metropolitanisation and increased aspirations for citizen participation. In this paper we investigate which policy tools are being used to face these emerging challenges in Curitiba, whether they are the same as those used in the past and which led the city to be a recognised urban transport success case, or different, more flexible and participative tools presumed to be more in tune with the emerging context of metropolitanisation and increased demands for participation. The answer, coming from interviews within Curitiba transport representatives, current literature review and limited comparisons with other successful transport cities of the Americas, suggests a continuation of Curitiba’s proactive format, one which has led to its past successes, with some modest overtures to more interactive and participatory policy tools.

Informal institutions and path dependence in urban planning: The case of Curitiba, Brazil

A process is recognized as collaborative when it demonstrates the involvement of multiple stakeholders who are mobilized to interact and negotiate horizontally in order to achieve common objectives...

Institutional Arrangements and Political Shifts in Curitiba, Brazil: A Comparative Analysis of the 2004 and 2014 Master Plans

In theory, shifts in institutional arrangements result in new public policies. This articles focuses on Curitiba, Brazil, an international flagship city of urban planning recognized for its technocratic government. The 2012 municipal elections and the 2013 nationwide political upheaval led to a change in the citys institutional arrangement. As a consequence, the 2014 Master Plan was conceived with the tagline of more public participation. This paper analyzes whether the changes in institutional arrangements influenced the citys planning process and the Master Plan.

Three Cities of the Americas: Policies and Instruments in Seattle, Montreal, and Curitiba

This chapter traces the urban transport history of Seattle, Montreal, and Curitiba based on the respondents’ recount of the policies and instruments used by successive governments. If the three cities have historically been successful in setting the conditions for high transit ridership and active modes of transport, they are now at different stages of political and policy development. In Seattle, a strong local economy, combined with a progressive political environment, is supporting a virtuous cycle of policies and investments, creating the perfect conditions for people to choose transit and active modes. In the meantime, Montreal is experiencing a true paradigm change with a new governance structure, policy framework, cycle of investment and political makeup, which are setting the ground for an urban renaissance. As for Curitiba, policymakers facing an unfavorable political and economic environment have not been able to maintain the level of innovations and investments necessary for the BRT system to grow, contributing to its depreciation.

Conclusion on the Data

Mercier and his colleagues draw from the data on instrument use of the preceding chapter to offer some unusual and possibly innovative thoughts on the interaction between government and governance modes, two policy configurations usually seen as opposites. These two presumably opposing procedures are in fact tied together in a complex and back and forth movement of policy evolution, so that governance can even be seen as preparing and enhancing the process of proactive government. The authors then call upon notions of social sciences and economics to better understand their overall results. They find that continuity in transport policy is illuminated by the sociological notions of path dependency, historic and cognitive institutionalism, and culture, while the notion of isomorphism, the tendency to imitate successful organizations, can be called upon to explain some of the changes occurring in this policy area. The authors refrain from a prematurely normative-prescriptive position, by calling upon institutional economics to draw our attention to the transactions costs involved in the much-praised governance configuration of policy.

The Context of Sustainable Urban Transport

In this chapter, the authors look at the three main challenges that cities and metropolitan areas face in dealing with the challenge of sustainable transport. In the context of increasing liberal values and privatization policies, they face a planning challenge, at a time when government intervention is seen as lacking in efficiency. Second, the cities face an extending urban landscape, with a fragmenting spatial configuration that is not conducive to public transport. Third, cities face a public policy challenge, due to the fact that an increasing variety and number of stakeholders demand that their point of view be heard and considered. Drawing from public policy and political studies literature, Mercier and his colleagues then identify two policy configurations to deal with these challenges, the government (more top-down) mode, and the governance (more horizontal, participative) mode. Building on the differences between these two styles of public policy, the authors then propose a model of policy instruments which can be helpful in ascertaining the contribution of these two policy configuration in attaining sustainable urban transport.