Training Log Archive: blairtrewinIn the 1 days ending Oct 29, 2014:
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Wednesday Oct 29, 2014 #
9 AM
Run 1:01:00 [3] 11.3 km (5:24 / km)
In Curitiba. Not having anywhere to go today, I stayed in bed a bit later than I might have otherwise and decided to do my running after peak hour; thought it might have been warm (not that that is a bad thing in the context of being ready for next week), but it didn't warm up as quickly as I thought it might in a subtropical city. Lots of road crossings in the first kilometre but then picked up a nice bike track parallel to a railway line to the botanical gardens. I wasn't sure if it was allowed to run in the gardens themselves, but once it was obvious that others were doing it I happily joined in (and enjoyed it enough that I did two laps rather than swinging a bit wide on the return as I'd originally envisaged). First half a bit iffy but second half pretty good.
One of the reasons Curitiba interested me is that it has a reputation for highly innovative urban planning - it stuck in my mind from our studying it in geography in Year 10 or thereabouts (at which point a lot of what was being done was quite new). It has one of the world's more effective bus systems (complete with express routes which run every couple of minutes where there are "stations" in elevated tubes by the roadside, and the bus doors open level with these), which may be why I haven't seen a traffic jam of any consequence here yet. Less obviously, there's also been strong encouragement to develop near main transport routes and not elsewhere, lots of parkland - it probably helps that there wasn't the pressure of people moving from poor parts of the rural north that meant that most bits of spare land in places like Rio and Sao Paulo became favelas - and such a focus on recycling that it's sometimes hard to find a bin for ordinary rubbish. I would imagine it probably has the highest standard of living for the average person of any city in Brazil, and probably Latin America (Rio and Sao Paulo have higher per capita GDP but I'm guessing the distribution of wealth is much more uneven there). In general it comes across as a place where things work.
I'm conscious that up until now I've been existing in a bit of a bubble (particularly in Sao Paulo). Curitiba itself is a bit of a bubble in the context of a country with vast regional differences in wealth, so may not be the most representative of samples, but I did walk through a fair slice of the city todaay, including its city centre and inner northern suburbs.
One of the reasons Curitiba interested me is that it has a reputation for highly innovative urban planning - it stuck in my mind from our studying it in geography in Year 10 or thereabouts (at which point a lot of what was being done was quite new). It has one of the world's more effective bus systems (complete with express routes which run every couple of minutes where there are "stations" in elevated tubes by the roadside, and the bus doors open level with these), which may be why I haven't seen a traffic jam of any consequence here yet. Less obviously, there's also been strong encouragement to develop near main transport routes and not elsewhere, lots of parkland - it probably helps that there wasn't the pressure of people moving from poor parts of the rural north that meant that most bits of spare land in places like Rio and Sao Paulo became favelas - and such a focus on recycling that it's sometimes hard to find a bin for ordinary rubbish. I would imagine it probably has the highest standard of living for the average person of any city in Brazil, and probably Latin America (Rio and Sao Paulo have higher per capita GDP but I'm guessing the distribution of wealth is much more uneven there). In general it comes across as a place where things work.
I'm conscious that up until now I've been existing in a bit of a bubble (particularly in Sao Paulo). Curitiba itself is a bit of a bubble in the context of a country with vast regional differences in wealth, so may not be the most representative of samples, but I did walk through a fair slice of the city todaay, including its city centre and inner northern suburbs.