REPORTER: Giovana Vitola
I'm about to get on a bus, no ordinary bus, but one that has helped revolutionise public transport worldwide and it is at the heart of what makes this city so special. The first of its kind, Curitiba's famous bus network criss-crosses the city with 80km of dedicated bus routes. It has no timetable, and it is designed for buss to arrive every 60 seconds. It's cheap, effective, and has been adopted by hundreds of cities worldwide. I've come to meet the man who pioneered the system. More than 30 years ago.
WOMAN (Translation): Are you... you?
JAIME LERNER (Translation): Yes.
WOMAN (Translation): How are you?
JAIME LERNER (Translation): Fine. How are you?
WOMAN (Translation): Fine. Missing you.
Jaime Lerner is a legend here.
WOMAN (Translation): Let me say hi, great governor, how are you?"
He's an architect and urban planner and a former state governor and served three terms as Mayor of Curitiba.
MAN (Translation): How are you. Are you coming back?
JAIME LERNER (Translation): No, I'm out of politics.
MAN (Translation): Come back!
Jaime Lerner entered politics in the 1970s. Years ahead of his time, he proposed a radical plan to transform the sprawling and polluted Curitiba into a sustainable, eco-friendly city.
JAIME LERNER: When we're talking about sustainability, it's not enough green buildings. It's not enough new materials. It's not enough new sources of energy. It's the concept of the city, the design of the city and that's also important, too.
Today Curitiba leads the way with its high environmental standards. In the 76-year-old urban design guru is in demand worldwide.
JAIME LERNER: The city is not the problem, it's the solution.
Curitiba boasts more green space per resident than any city in the world. Under Jaime Lerner, waste dumps were turned into gardens, empty land into natural floodplain. Mowing the lawn the old fashioned way, the city's shepherds move their flock from park to park.
CITY SHEPERD (Translation): These sheep save on the cost of having to hire private companies to cut the grass. They're also an attraction in the park.
JAIME LERNER: So, all the ideas about how to transform through design all of it is related to how we teach the children.
In this old quarry, the free university of the environment, teaching Lerner's philosophy of urban sustainability.
CHILD (Translation): We can transform the city into a better place, modern, without jeopardizing nature nor the well-being of others, for future generations.
Here on the site of another abandoned quarry is The Opera de Arame. It is a theatre he and his team completed in only eight weeks. I wanted to know why other cities struggle to build what this city produces in only a matter of weeks.
JAIME LERNER (Translation): The truth is, people complicate things. A city isn't as complex as the sellers of complexity want to make us believe. And the world is full of sellers of complexity.
The Arena de Baixada is where the Socceroos will play next Monday.
SOCCER FANS: Australia is going all the way. Australia!
But the man who believes design and development should benefit the people says the resources devoted to the World Cup could have been better spent.
JAIME LERNER (Translation): I love football. What Brazilian doesn't? But what happened in relation to this World Cup was a brutal waste of resources, a totally misguided vision, because if there's one thing that's not in short supply in Brazil, it's stadiums.
Lerner's motto is "keep it simple" and in one of his most effective initiatives, is the city's garbage exchange program. Rachel comes every two weeks to swap her household rubbish for fresh fruit and vegetables.
RACHEL (Translation): Every four kilos of garbage you get one kilo of produce. They mix them all here, all together.
Curitiba's residents are conscientious recyclers.
JAIME LERNER: Teach the children and the children will teach during six months how to separate the garbage. After the children, they teach their parents. Now we have 70% - since 20 years it's the highest rate of separation of garbage in the world. 70.
As you would expect, Jaime Lerner's house reflects many of his principles.
JAIME LERNER (Translation): I designed this house when I was studying architecture. I was 22, 23 years old. At that time, sustainability wasn't being talked about. But this house, which is now around 50 years old, already had a few of its elements, for example, the roof, with its soil and grass.
Today he runs his architecture business from here.
WOMAN (Translation): Good morning. How are you?
JAIME LERNER (Translation): I'm fine.
But for all his success and invasion, the city isn't without its critics.
COMMUNITY LEADER (Translation): We can already smell it.
REPORTER (Translation): It's like this every morning?
COMMUNITY LEADER (Translation): The smell? It's 24/7. And sometimes it's worse. Sometimes it smells of carrion, remains of batteries, many things.
This is CIC, Curitiba's biggest suburbs. It's home to a massive landfill dump.
COMMUNITY LEADER (Translation): Practically half of the water for Curitiba and the metropolitan region comes from here and this dump is by the side, which can contaminate the groundwater table. There are many issues here, not just the stink.
These community leaders are unhappy.
COMMUNITY LEADER (Translation): We can't deny that Curitiba has beautiful parks, that it's a model, with a public transport that's a bit better than in other capitals, but it's not some wonderland as portrayed in the television for many and many years.
They've watched Curitiba become a world renowned example of urban planning, but think they have benefitted very little.
COMMUNITY LEADER (Translation): I consider Jaime Lerner the executioner of this city and there is some who say "no, he did the express bus lines". It's the only good thing he did but everything else... he didn't really consider the poor.
JAIME LERNER (Translation): No, that's not true. It's not true. In Curitiba, the issue of... of housing...has been very well resolved for all income levels. People at all income levels have access to the transport system, to education, to health, to childcare.
12 years since leaving office, Jaime Lerner might be about to face the greatest challenge to his pioneering urban innovation. His bus network is under efficiency review and the government is considering replacing it with a subway. He admits that the bus system isn't what it was.
JAIME LERNER (Translation): This system has everything but needs to be improved, it used to be much better. It has to keep innovating.
Jaime Lerner no longer controls what goes on in Curitiba. But he's always thinking of ways to improve life in this city.
Reporter/Camera
GIOVANA VITOLA
Producer
VICTORIA STROBL
Translations/Subtitling
BEATRIZ WAGNER
Editors
DAVID POTTS
SIMON PHEGAN
TED Talk courtesy of TED