Urban Acupuncture by Jaime Lerner

Author:Jaime Lerner
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Island Press
Published: 2014-06-12T16:00:00+00:00

Mamam by Louise Bourgeois. In front of the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao. Photo by Vicente Villamón, Flickr. Creative Commons BY-SA 2.0.

SELF-ESTEEM IS GOOD ACUPUNCTURE

How much do you like your city? Generally, you like your city because you were born there. But what do you really think of your city? Do you know it, feel part of it? Or have the naysayers convinced you that there’s no solution, and you’re sure that your city has the worst infrastructure, is the most violent and unfair? And it’s worse if it’s a big city, where the problems are just as big and it’s easy to justify your frustration by scale.

But scale has nothing to do with the fact that a proposal may be unviable, nor the lack of funds. What is important is the correct vision, and a competent set-up of a “corespon-sibility equation.” What’s needed is a scenario, or an idea, a desirable concept. And all of the people—or most—will help bring it to fruition. It’s precisely at the moment of execution that a people’s self-esteem helps a city move forward.

The city of Joinville, in the state of Santa Catarina in Brazil, decided to become a center of excellence in ballet. The mayor joined a campaign by choreographer Jô Braska Negrão to create a branch school of Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet, and the entire city worked to make it happen.

Claude Nobis led a campaign to make Montreux, Switzerland, the host of one of the world’s most important jazz festivals, and the whole city is reaping its benefits.

Nova Jerusalem, in the poor Brazilian state of Pernambuco, annually stages the Passion of Christ at Easter time in areas throughout the town, and the spectacle has raised the self-esteem of the city—and of all Brazilian people.

To stimulate self-esteem is fundamental acupuncture. That’s what happened with urban transport and solutions for waste disposal in Curitiba. It’s what happened in Bilbao with the Guggenheim Museum and all its other recent conquests.

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