Rio Photo

View from hotel.

Rio

Rio de Janeiro has be amazing so far. Yesterday we went to the Niteroi Museum. Had to take a ferry across Guanabara Bay which was really fun. Cloudy and rainy; saw the Christ in the clouds. The museum contains an unimpressive contemporary art collection, the real draw is the building itself. Right on the water and offers some great views that I'm sure are even greater when it is clear.




















At night we headed to Lapa, the happening place at night, and went to Estrela da Lapa to see the samba group Bateria da Mangueira. About 10 guys on percussion and one singing/playing ukulele; simply amazing.

Today was spent wandering around and tomorrow we will head to either Ipanema or Christ the Redeemer.

The Past Week: Trailor

This is one of my many photos from Parque Tanguá, which is where I spent most of today - my last full day here in Curitiba.

Our project is done and the presentation went pretty good.

More on the end of our workshop and my day about the city to come....

***Photo page updated: http://picasaweb.google.com/aaronnbland/BrazilBlogSupplementalPhotos?feat=directlink

Photos

I have created a photo album so I can put more pictures up in one place. I'll still put the most interesting and relevant photos on here with posts, but for those who want more - and to save the frustration of putting multiple photos on the blog one at a time - I'll post many to the album. Location of each will be in the caption.

Link:
http://picasaweb.google.com/aaronnbland/BrazilBlogSupplementalPhotos?feat=directlink

Workshop Info

For the past few days we've been heading to Universidade Positivo in the afternoons to work on our workshop goings-ons. My group has been organizing the data that is relevant to us into a cohesive (single) spreadsheet, collecting bits of information from various electronic documents and printed maps and matching names with lot numbers. It has been time consuming but today we finally started crunching some of our agolmerated numbers.

Also today, I started working with a GIS shapefile of the lots in Vila Nova. I organized the individual lots into our various "Sectors" (about 40) and our "Supersectors" (6) so that we could visually represent our measures of socioeconomic status. The map pictured below is our sectors, which are organized based on street frontage and access. We had to make the Supersectors becuase we had so few surveys completed and many sectors had less than 3 surveys from them, and therefore not enough data to draw any decent conclusions.

Out of about 850 lots we had around 140 surveys, which were sorted into the sectors that they came from via a fun process of matching the address (and possibly a name) on the paper survey to a spreadsheet on a computer that had addresses paired with lot numbers. Then the lot was found on the colorful map and the sector number was put on the survey and the survey into the appropriate pile. It felt like CSI: Urban Planning.





































Our workspace at the university.

Field Work In Matinhos

We spent Sunday in the coastal town of Matinhos doing research in two informal settlements, Vila Progresso and Vila Nova. Vila Nova has been going through the regularization process for some years, while Vila Progresso is about to start. Below are some photos from Vila Progresso.

In Vila Nova my group had a certain area, about 6 blocks, to look for signs of recent improvement (fresh paint on houses for example) and we interviewed 5 households. "We" is a loose term, I certainly didn't do much speaking in Portuguese with the people, besides greeting and asking permission to take photos, as I was the photographer of the group. Since my photos from Vila Nova are all of fences and roofs, I deemed them too boring for the blog, and all the ones below are from Vila Progresso.

Today we went to Universidade Positivo to put all our information in one place, so I downloaded all my photos to the main drive. Thursday we begin working again on the actual meat of the project, Sunday was just data gathering/updating. I'll be mapping socio-economic data in Vila Nova. I might also be helping another student who is working independently but alongside us in updating the geo-spatial data for the areas, using GPS points she took on Sunday to make the GIS maps of the two settlements more accurate.

More to come as we progress!
















My team was looking at environmental aspects of Vila Progresso, such as rivers and virgin forests. Here we are out and about, probably marking the location of some pictures I just took, while another group passes by.





















One of the younger residents. She was very shy and I took this photo blind, holding the camera down inconspicuously. Very lucky to get such a good shot.
















Your standard fence in Vila Progresso, though many have creative security measures like shards of broken glass along the top, and nearly all contain very protective dogs.





















These guys were playing a Brazilian adapted game of cricket in the street. We saw other groups playing soccer of course; I especially liked the one kid playing goalie with his shoes on his hands for protection in place of gloves.




















This would be from inside our bus back to Curitiba, and the lights are the tow truck pulling our butts off the freeway with us inside!!! The clutch blew out going up the mountain and we had to wait nearly 2 hours for another bus to arrive. Quite the day.

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.

Sunday Photos

These are from Sunday, our main day on Ilha do Mel. Be sure to see the photos from Saturday and the story below, in seperate posts!

And thank you to everyone for reading and commenting! I enjoy knowing that people actually see this!!





















The lighthouse, or Farol das Conchas. Built in 1872, it still guides navigatiors into Paranagua Bay.





















Sunrise.





















Ponta do Joaquim. We rock hopped our way around this point, out of view in this photo.





















Fish in a tide pool. Any ideas?




















The Portuguese fort, looking back to the lighthouse.

Saturday Photos

These are from Saturday, the trip to Ilha do Mel.















The Serra Verde Express train through the Serra do Mar mountains.










Serra do Mar

Along the ride.















Our room. Besides the rest of the beds, this is it.















I document the day in the indoor/outdoor room named Paraiso, which means paradise.

Unilivre

So today we went to Universidade Livre do Meio Ambiente, the Open University of the Environment, or Unilivre, which is in a city park. The building is an amazing structure, in style of Swiss Family Robinson, with separate rooms and a spiral ramp walkway to an observation deck where you can look down on the quarry lake or see a distant view of the city’s skyline. The decking is made of old power/phone line poles. It is a remarkable, if drafty, place.

We had a lecture from Reinaldo Piloto, a civil engineer, about the city of Curitiba’s parques e praças (parks and plazas). There are a lot of parks in Curitiba, so it lasted a while. The main goal of most of the parks is to help the environmental integrity of the rivers. Many informal settlements are near rivers and parks can help prevent these from popping back up after the people are moved to housing projects by putting things like soccer fields and basketball courts where the houses would be. I thought it interesting that the main point sources for water pollution that they worry about here is residential, when in America we worry about more industrial or commercial polluters. Others provide flood mitigation with detention ponds, with no water level controls; the floods here are all flash floods.

We took the Linha Turismo to the Torre Panorâmica. The 360° views of the city were amazing! You could really see the lines of transit-oriented development and how the zoning around the bus BRT lines is so distinct; there are not many mid-rise buildings.

Dinner was awesome. We were approached by a few drifting hippie types, one of whom we have spoken to a few times before. We ended up inviting them to sit with us as they had the drink that Calvin bought for them as payment for a necklace. We all talked in a mixture of Portuguese and Spanish for a while until they finished the drink and moved on.

It’s actually getting cold now. I like it, but our sliding glass window doesn’t really shut 100% so we have to leave it cracked or the wind will howl through it, so I guess we’ll be getting all bundled and cozy in our beds from now on. We’re heading to Ilha do Mel for the weekend, so I won’t be able to post again until Sunday. The train ride is supposed to be amazing and vertigo-inducing and the island is an ecological preserve that you need to take a ferry to. Should be awesome.






















A self-portrait on the spiral walkway up to the observation deck at Unilivre.















People participating in the program Lixo Que Não é Lixo, or trash that is not trash, in which 70% of the city's trash is recycled by its residents, who sort recyclables and exchange them for food.
















View from the observation tower. 110 meters up (360 feet) and about 100 meters below the flight paths of planes landing at CWB! You can see the high density development along the transit axis here. It is amazing how it just stops, as the ares between the BRT (bus rapid transit) and the fast car lanes are what is zoned for such height.

I took 155 pictures today...here's 4 (for now)

Today was a great day in Curitiba. I'm about to head to dinner, but I'll add some info about the day and add more photos and captions later tonight.
















Walkway into Unilivre.

Below are several photos of the super cool building.

More Photos From Around Curitiba

This is the neighborhood surrounding the hotel. Shot through a gap in the wall on the roof.
















More tube-action!
















Wall of pedestrain walkway under a busy road.

Curitiba Photos

Here is a TUBE! These things are awesome. You pay to enter the tube so when the bus comes you just walk right on, "sheltered from the rains and heats" as the video shown to us said.















This is a biarticulated bus. These red buses are the "Express" routes, but there are other "speedy" buses that go faster and only stop every 3km. These red ones have dedicated lanes, which people use for biking (those that bike) despite the fact that signs tell them it is illegal, but the transportation authority had no legal power to fine them. You can see a tube down the left side of the road.















A shot of Alameda Júlia da Costa, the road our hotel is on. This was taken from our hotel's roof, (which is where the pool is!) about 10 stories up.

Photos

Me showing a little land use love to Curitiba's zoning map at IPPUC (see last link on the right). I would have bought one if they sold them.

















During the walk back to the flat. Looking up towards Centro Histórico, with Igreja Presbiteriana Independente and Igreja do Rosário standing tall at the end of the road.

The Tubes!!

Here is a shot of Curitiba's transportation amazingness. These two lanes in the middle are for buses only. There are several kinds of buses, distinguished by color; different buses travel at different speeds, stop more or less frequently, and go to different places.

You can see a bus in the distance at the bottom of this hill, these buses are the poster-children of Curitiba's public transit. They have these dedicated lanes and arrive very frequently, but don't make a ton of stops, and go fast. The stops are the famous "tubes." You step up and pay your fare, then enter the tube, the bus comes and a ramp lowers from the side of the bus as the doors open and you walk out of the tube and onto the bus. I'll have to get a good photo of some tube-action tomorrow.

The cars travel on the outside lanes. Some of the bigger boulevards (the lifelines of Curitiba's radial density growth) are arranged even cooler: there is the dedicated bus lane in either direction in the middle, then just outside of that is a lane for local car traffic, then outside of that more lanes for faster car traffic. The areas around these superhighways are zoned for the maximum density and taper off as you get away. So a 3D overhead of the city would show all the tall buildings in lines following these roads. No one who lives here is more than 500 meters from a bus line. It is absolutely tunning, and people use it!

Tomorrow we will go to the transportation agency; I'm curious to ask about bike use and planning. Not too many people here ride bikes. I'm the most excited person on the trip about all this transportation/land use business. I was all smiles while we were in that tube!

It is neat that I'm here long enough to need to go to the grocery store. I was psyched to buy some carrots! Also, bananas, apples, yogurt, and some amazing Brazilian granola/cereal bars.

A Few São Paulo Photos

This was my lunch yesterday in São Paulo, the traditional sausage sandwich, calabresa com queijo. Very tasty and well spiced, and the bread is so good too. Doesn't come with a lot of flair, but for around US$2 what do you expect?





A view of São Paulo from the air as my flight to Curitiba takes off. This isn't even looking at the main downtown area with the really big buildings and high density. The city is just so damn expansive! I can't get over how big it is. We joked when looking at a view from the tallest building in the city that everyone in my hometown would fit in one building here.

Some Photos

Catedral Metropolitana na Praça da Sé.
The cathedral holds 8,000 and the square (praça) is a huge concrete expanse with fountains and a few sculptures (complete with Jesus spraypainted on them). It took about 50 years to build the cathedral, replacing the 18th century one, which was demolished in 1920.






A pretty good example of an informal economy. Notice the smoke filtering in at the end of the street. A real-life residential fire from off to the right, too bad emergency vehicles in São Paulo can't get anywhere...











Here is a photo of some buildings in a large square in downtown São Paulo. Notice the helipad on top of the building at the far right. Helicopters are very big in São Paulo; reminds me of living next to the UNC hospital.