Location: Chicago, IL
Venue: Metropolitan Planning Council
Date: October 21, 2014
Time: 5:00-7:00 pm
Please join the Metropolitan Planning Council and City Lit Books for an evening with Jaime Lerner, former mayor of Curitiba, Brazil, renowned architect and urban planner, and author of the new book Urban Acupuncture. As mayor, Lerner championed a number of solutions familiar to metropolitan Chicago, including bus rapid transit, large-scale green infrastructure and Placemaking. Lerner describes that latter as “urban acupuncture,” small-scale interventions that have a ripple effect, creating vibrant communities.
Come and enjoy great company, refreshments and lively conversation, as we explore these issues and more. The program will begin at 5:30 p.m., with time to mingle before and after. Books will be for sale through City Lit Books.
This event is made possible with the support of The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and The Center for the Living City. Beer, wine and snacks will be provided. MPC thanks Goose Island Beer Company for libations. Space is limited, so RSVP today for only $15!
For 80 years, the Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC) has made the Chicago region a better place to live and work by partnering with businesses, communities and governments to address the area’s toughest planning and development challenges. MPC works to solve today's urgent problems while consistently thinking ahead to prepare the region for the needs of tomorrow.
During his three terms as mayor of Curitiba, Brazil in the 1970s and ‘80s, architect and urbanist Jaime Lerner transformed his city into a global model of the sustainable and livable community. From the pioneering Bus Rapid Transit system to parks designed to catch runoff and reduce flooding and the creation of pedestrian-only zones, Lerner has been the driving force behind a host of innovative urban projects. In more than forty years of work in cities around the globe, Lerner has found that changes to a community don’t need to be large-scale and expensive to have a transformative impact—in fact, one block, park, or a single person can have an outsized effect on life in the surrounding city.
In Urban Acupuncture, Lerner celebrates these “pinpricks” of urbanism—projects, people, and initiatives from around the world that ripple through their communities to uplift city life. With meditative and descriptive prose, Lerner brings readers around the world to streets and neighborhoods where urban acupuncture has been practiced best, from the bustling La Boqueria market in Barcelona to the revitalization of the Cheonggyecheon River in Seoul, South Korea. Through this journey, Lerner invites us to re-examine the true building blocks of vibrant communities—the tree-lined avenues, night vendors, and songs and traditions that connect us to our cities and to one another.
Urban Acupuncture is the first of Jaime Lerner’s visionary work to be published in English. It is a love letter to the elements that make a street hum with life or a neighborhood feel like home, penned by one of the world’s most successful advocates for sustainable and livable urbanism.