Florianópolis

I'm back in Curitiba after three days in Florianópolis. On day one we took a bus tour across Ilha de Santa Catarina. The island is is very close to the continental mainland and the city of Florianópolis is split into two parts, one on the mainland and one on the island. The city has pressure to urbanize but much of the land is protected, though it doesn't seem that the protection has much legal power behind it.

The second day we had a series of lectures that gave us more information about the island. We were mixed with students from the Federal University of Santa Catarina. The lectures were in Portuguese with interspersed translations for us. This was very difficult.

Day three (today) was a workshop dealing with open space on the island. We were mixed with the UFSC students and split into three groups. My group looked at environmental issues, pressures, conflicts, and opportunities. We tried to find areas that were good for creating corridors of green space and areas that are vulnerable to urbanization, both formal and informal.

Overall, I felt this workshop was weak and I did not get much out of it. It was fun to see the island and some of the information from the lectures was interesting. I'm glad we did it, but it was so difficult to understand even simple things, like what our expected output was for today. I had fun talking to the students. They even got us into the cafeteria for lunch, which was a cool experience! Here is a picture of Group Three, our map is behind us on the wall. Calvin is on the far left, I'm on the far right, Jose is next to me, and the two girls and the other guy are from UFSC and I forget their names.