By Christina MacCulloch

But rather than see this incident as a setback, Jaime Lerner decided to use it as an object lesson in community ownership. He invited these same children to take responsibility for the garden. As a result, the garden was replanted and diligently maintained by the youths, who were now proud of a space they considered their own.

Latin America’s largest cities are often used as cautionary tales by urban planners, illustrations of how their pollution, congestion and crime could have been prevented with better planning and infrastructure. But are any of today’s medium-sized cities—the major urban centers of tomorrow—paying heed to these lessons?

Curitiba, for one, is recognized internationally for its enlightened approach to urban problems. Now other cities in the state of Paraná, bordering on Argentina and Paraguay, are following suit with the help of an innovative urban development program partly financed by a $249 million IDB loan approved in 1996. Called ParanáUrbano, the program will help to encourage economic growth and a rational process of urbanization while avoiding many of the problems that hobble Latin American cities elsewhere.

A conference held in June at the IDB’s Washington, D.C., headquarters attended by urban specialists from prominent international organizations, including the World Bank and the United Nations, examined how Paraná’s approach might be replicated elsewhere.

“The next decade will be the decade of the cities, and the Paraná-Urbano program anticipates this fact,” said Lerner, now Paraná’s governor, at the conference’s opening.

Other speakers at the conference described how the Paraná-Urbano program can serve as a model for other cities in the same way that the experience of Curitiba is being expanded to the state level.

When Lerner was Curitiba’s mayor in the 1970s, that city became famous for its innovative approach to development and its philosophy of rapidly addressing problems. Land use management and transportation systems were developed in tandem so that even low-income residents would have affordable access to public services. Maintenance of city parks was made the responsibility of groups from the neighborhoods that use them.

The ParanáUrbano program extends Curitiba’s approach to the state’s other cities through the use of a revolving fund for municipal development activities managed by an independent non-profit organization called Paranacidade. The program also has created municipal agencies capable of long-term planning, associations to facilitate collaboration among municipalities, and independent project information, monitoring and evaluation mechanisms.

Although primarily an agricultural state, Paraná is taking steps to diversify its economy. It has energetically wooed industries, offering three major incentives: high quality of life, a good labor force, and well developed infrastructure.

Each of these cities will have access to the major international commercial centers of Foz do Iguazu, on the border with Argentina and Paraguay, and Paranaguá, an Atlantic port. In addition, the roads will provide all people in the state with access to high quality health care and educational facilities within two hours of where they live.

But such an approach to interurban transportation can function only if the transportation models in the cities themselves are sound. The IDB is working with Paraná to devise such models, which will seek to avoid the negative impacts of urban growth, such as air pollution and traffic safety congestion.

The IDB loan portfolio for urban development totals about $6 billion.