Urban design and conflicting city images of Brazil Rio de Janeiro and Curitiba Vicente del Rio 'Cities, like dreams, are made ofdesires and places in which to live and do Imageability of places, cities and fears, even ifthe thread oftheir discourse is business. 2 countries is strongly influenced by secret, their perspectives deceitful, and From the conflicting city realities everything conceals something else' tourist and political portraits in the suggested by images in the media, this media. As human cognition relies on Halo Calvina, Invisible Cities, Harvest, New York, p 44. essay discusses the important rela­ inferential perception and contrasting tionship between urban design, image categories, marketing strategies ex­ People perceive reality through an ac­ building and world p.erception, by ploit partial truths and conflicting city tive cognitive process using an array of addressing the case of two Brazilian images to direct public perceptions. collected and inferred information, cities, Rio de Janeiro and Curitiba. This article addresses the relationship Quite often, they simply construct this between international perception, im­ reality and its objects by contrasting Conflicting city images and urban de­ age building and urban design in the categories - good and bad, pretty and sign in Brazil case of Brazil and the cities of Rio de ugly, hero and villain - without notic­ Since the seminal work of Kevin Janeiro and Curitiba. Their contrast­ ing that their readiness to apply sim­ Lynch, it has been common know­ ing images as exploited by the inter­ plistic inferential categories beyond ledge that the imageability of an urban national media expose only partial the appropriate limits often leads environment is fundamental for its truths. In fact, these images represent them to mistaken judgments. 1 cognition - basically for the formation complementary development contra­ Imageability of places does not de­ of our images, judgements and ex­ dictions that co-exist in any major city pend solely on their intrinsic qualities. pectations concerning that place.3 today. Recently, images of places have also Furthermore, geographers and tour­ been strongly influenced by the way ism experts have showed that urban Vicente del Rio is Associate Professor at they are portrayed in the media. In the design can playa fundamental role in the Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanis­ USA, huge metropolises and indust­ determining a city's and, consequent­ mo, Universidade -Federal do Rio' de 4 Janeiro, and currently is a Visiting Scholar rial cities, such as New York and Los Iy, its country's image abroad. To a at the Center for Urban Design, University Angeles, once referred to as symbols large degree, most urban designers are of Cincinnati. He can be contacted at 3017 of prosperity and modernity - para­ aware of this but, unfortunately, the Clifton Avenue, Cincinatti, OH 45220, digms to be pursued - have become majority of city officials and politi­ USA. examples of chaos and decadence. On cians seem to ignore this fact and its This paper has benefited from comments the other hand, several medium-sized wide repercussions - ranging from its by Ohio's Eminent Scholar in Urban De­ sign David Gosling and from insightful dis­ cities such as Seattle and Saint Louis status as a tourist attraction to the cussions with David Gertner, professor of have topped place rating systems and nation's economic credibility abroad. are promoted by the media as ideal For the last few years Brazil and its major cities have suffered from a poor The perception of Brazilian cities in image and reputation abroad. Those the international media appears to watching US television during the re­ concentrate on two groups of conflict­ cent Mardi Gras were able to see a ing images that concern Rio de short news story on the carnival in Rio Janeiro and Curitiba. The former is de Janeiro. In its three or five minutes the best known and second largest city only about a third showed the samba in Brazil: once praised for its natural schools parade with its beautiful cos­ beauties, today it stands for all the tumes, while the rest explored city malaise related to drug crimes, margi­ violence, street boys and images of nality, poverty and pollution. A city poverty. For Brazilians this was out­ that potential international tourists rageous, the equivalent of using the are advised to avoid - metaphorically major part of the annual Oscar seen as 'The Beast'. Awards transmission to show images However, an interesting phe­ of street gangs, crack dealers and liv­ nomenon has occurred in which the ing conditions of the poor black and same international media recently Hispanic population in any major elected Curitiba as 'The Beauty'. The North American city. capital of the southern state of Parana, As Gertner has pointed out, the it is highly praised for its urban de­ large majority of Brazilians - certainly velopment projects and is regarded as those who can afford to travel to a 'Mecca for urban planners and en­ Miami or any major US city - share an vironmentalists'. In the words of the image of a pleasant, clean, desirable media, Curitiba is the only Third­ and modern USA. They do not know World city that 'works' in the midst of continued marketing at Universidade Federal do Rio about the very different USA revealed generalized urban chaos - 'it does not de Janeiro and a doctorate candidate at by statistics: that more than thirty even look like it is in the Third­ Northwestern University. million people live below the poverty World'.? Unfortunately, the same level, that in Chicago a crime is re­ media ensures it is seen as an excep­ lSee R. Nisbett and L. Ross, Human Infer­ ported to the police every 12 minutes tion to the rule, resulting more from ence: Strategies and Shortcomings of So­ cial Judgment, Prentice Hall, Englewood (60% at gun point); and that in Port­ the work of an inspired politician - its Cliffs, NJ, 1980. land, Oregon one out of 86 cars was mayor - and that it does not stand for 2Some examples of popular place ratings stolen in 1990. By comparing Brazil to the country as a whole, which for them are Rand Mac Nally's Place Rate Almanac such a different country as the USA, continues to epitomise The Beast.8 and other rankings such as those pub­ where income distribution is reversed We are not implying that Rio's past lished by Money, Newsweek, Fortune and Savvy. (80% of the population is poor in images were correct and the present 3Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City, MIT Brazil as opposed to 20% in the USA) ones are incorrect. Neither do we imp­ Press, Cambridge, MA, 1960. only the obvious can be exposed: the ly that Curitiba's images are mis­ 4See, for example, Brian Goodey, Percep­ quality of life is higher and there are guided. We make the point that they tion of the Environment: An Introduction to the Literature, Center for Urban and Re­ more opportunities available in the are all wrong per se while, at the same gional Studies, University of Birmingham, USA. time, they express only partial truths, 1971. Nevertheless, the media helps in a complex and contradictory reality 5David Gertner pursues comparative stu­ forming these pre-conceptions and im­ typical of a Third World nation in dies of country images for tourism for his ages of cities and countries, so that which urban design has an important doctorate in marketing at Northwestern University. See his articles '0 Brasil de most Brazilians only perceive one role to play. Outro Ponto de Vista', Jornal do Brasil, 20 'side' of the truth: we can only see the January 1992 and 'Imagens do Brasil com good side of the USA as opposed to Rio de Janeiro: between Beauty and Z', Visao weekly, 22 January 1992. most foreigners who can only see the Beast 6According to EMBRATUR (Brazil's national tourism authority). quoted in 'Few­ bad side of Brazilian cities. From 1987 The city of Rio de Janeiro is Brazil's er are flying down to Rio', Chicago Tri­ to 1990, the total of visitors to Brazil second largest city with a population bune, Travel Session, 26 April 1992. dropped nearly 50%, and visitors to of over five million. The country's 7This is the tone of international media Rio dropped from 66.4% to 51.1 % of recession-hit economy during the last Coverage of Curitiba. see for example Tho­ these figures. 6 There are a number of decade, together with the somewhat mas Kamm, 'Model city: urban problems yield to innovative spirit of a city in Brazil', reasons why this distorted perception complicated return to democracy, The Wall Street Journal, 10 January 1992 is encouraged. Suffice to say that they added to an explosive situation nor­ and Marc Margolis, 'A Third World city that may range from political (competing mally associated with a large metropo­ works', cover story for the World Monitor, trade policies at governmental level) lis (criminality, pollution, poor living Vol 5, No 3, March 1992. aFor the media, mayor Jaime Lerner is a to economic (tourist industry directing conditions, etc) resulting in a situation city fixer ... (that) tackles with the urban clients to other places) or pure fashion far beyond the control of any normal mess' (see Margolis, ibid). (global cultural trends). planning and urban design process. Figure 1. Special city regulations are being issued to protect natural land­ scapes and view-corridors, such as those around the lakefront in Rio. With the move of the country's codes and specific upgrading for pub­ capital to Brasilia, Rio lost a major lic areas (Figure I). source of public financing. Sao Paulo In the field of low-income housing, has been more effective in attracting city agencies have been upgrading major industrial development since some of the 450 existing squatter set­ the middle of this century and from tlements, with a total population of the 19605 it also started to be prefer­ over a million people, installing basic red for the headquarters of large cor­ services and complementary public porations and financial institutions.