The 4 commandments of cities - Eduardo Paes

[Music] [Applause] It's a great honor to be here. It's a great honor to be here talking about cities, talking about the future of cities. It's great to be here as a mayor. I really do believe that mayors have the political position to really change people's lives. That's the place to be, and it's great to be here as the Mayor of Rio. Rio is a beautiful city, a vibrant place, a special place. Actually, you look into a guy that has the best job in the world, and I really wanted to share with you a very special moment of my life and the history of the city of Rio.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, the envelope containing the result. I have the honor to announce that the games of the 31st Olympiad are awarded to the city of Rio de Janeiro. Okay, that's very touching, very emotional, but it was not easy to get there. Actually, it was a very hard challenge. We had to beat the European monarchy. This is Juan Carlos, King of Spain. We had to beat the powerful Japanese with all their technology. We had to beat the most powerful man in the world defending his own city. So, it was not easy at all.

And actually, this last guy here said a phrase a few years ago that I think fits perfectly to the situation of Rio winning the Olympic bid. I mean, we really showed that yes, we can. And really, this is the reason I came here tonight. I mean, I came here tonight to show, to tell you that things can be done, that you don't have to always be rich or powerful to get things on the way.

That, C, are a great challenge. It's a difficult task to deal with cities, but with some original ways of getting things done, with some basic commandments, you can really get cities to be a great, great place to live. I want you all to imagine Rio. I mean, you probably will think about a city full of energy, a vibrant city full of green, and nobody showed that better than Carlos Sál last year's Rio.

[Music] This is [Music] [Applause] [Music] Incredible! Okay, some parts of Rio are pretty much like that, but it's not like that everywhere. We like every big city in the world. We got lots of people, pollution, cars, concrete, lots of concrete. These pictures I'm showing here are some pictures from Madura. It's like the heart of the suburb in Rio, and I want to use an example of Rio that we're doing in Madura in this region to see what we should think is our first commandment.

So, every time you see a concrete jungle like that, what you've got to do is find open spaces. If you don't have open spaces, you've got to go there and open spaces. So, go inside these open spaces and make that people can get inside, can use those spaces. This is going to be the third largest park in Rio by June this year. It's going to be a place where people can meet, where you can put nature. The temperature is going to drop 2-3 degrees centigrade. So, the first commandment I want to leave here tonight is: a city of the future has to be environmentally friendly. Every time you think of a city, you've got to think green. You've got to think green and green.

So, moving to our second commandment that I want to show you, let's think that cities are made of people. I mean, lots of people together. Cities are packed with people. So, how do you move these people around when you have 3.5 billion people living in cities? By 2050, it's going to be 6 million people. So, every time you think about moving these people around, think about high-capacity transportation.

But there is a problem. High-capacity transportation means spending lots and lots of money. So, what I'm going to show here is something that was already presented in T by the former mayor of KBA. He created that city in Brazil, Jan, and it's something that we're doing again lots in Rio. It's the BRT, the bus rapid transit. So, you get a bus—it's a simple bus that everybody knows—you transform it inside as a train car. You separate lanes, dedicated lanes. The contractors, they don't like that; you don't have to dig deep down on the ground. You can build nice stations.

This is actually a station that we're doing in Rio again. You don't have to dig deep down on the ground to make a station like that. The station has the same comfort, the same features as a subway station. The kilometer of this costs a tenth of a subway, so spending much less money and doing it much faster can really change the way people move. This is the map of Rio; all the colored lines you see there are our high-capacity transportation network.

At this present time, today, we only carry 18% of our population in high-capacity transportation. With the BRTs we're doing again, a cheapest and fastest way, we're going to move to 63% of the population being carried by high-capacity transportation. So, remember what I said: you don't always have to be rich or powerful to get things done. You can find original ways to get things done.

So, the second commandment I want to leave here tonight is: a city of the future has to deal with mobility and integration of its people. Moving to the third commandment, and this is the most controversial one, has to do with the favelas, the slums, whatever you call it; there are different names all over the world. But the point we want to make here tonight is that favelas are not always a problem. I mean, favelas can sometimes really be a solution if you deal with them if you put public policy inside the favelas.

Let me just show a map of Rio again. Rio has 6.3 million inhabitants; more than 20%, 1.4 million live in the favelas. All these red spots are favelas. So, you see they're spread all over the city. This is a typical view of a favela in Rio. I mean, you see the contrast between the rich and poor. So, I want to make two points here tonight about favelas.

The first one is you can change from what I call a visual circle to a virtual circle, but what you've got to do to get that is you've got to go inside the favelas, bring in the basic services, mainly education and health, with high quality. I'm going to give a fast example here. This was an old building in a favela in Rio, Colônia JMOA, that we just transformed into a primary school. I mean, with high quality. This is a primary assistant in health that we built inside of a favela again, with high quality. We call it a family clinic.

So, the first point is that you bring basic services inside the favelas with high quality. The second point I want to make about the favelas is you’ve got to open spaces in the favela: bring infrastructure to the favelas, to the slums, wherever you are. I mean, Rio has the aim by 2020 to have all its favelas completely urbanized. Another example: this was completely packed with houses, and then we built this, what we call a non-LED square.

This is a place with high technology where the kids that live in a poor house next to this place can go inside and have access to all technology. We even built a theater there—a 3D movie—and this is the kind of change you can get for that. So then, by the end of the day, you get something better than a TED prize, which is this great laugh from a kid that lives in the favela.

So, the third commandment I want to leave here tonight is: a city of the future has to be socially integrated. You cannot deal with a city if it's not socially integrated. But moving to our fourth commandment, I really wouldn't be here tonight. I mean, between November and May, Rio is completely packed. We just had last week Carnival; it was great; it was lots of fun. We have New Year's Eve—it's like 2 million people in Copacabana Beach. We have problems. I mean, we find floods, tropical rains at this time of the year. You can imagine how people get happy with me watching these kinds of scenes.

We have problems with the tropical rains almost every year. We have these landslides, which are terrible. But the reason I could come here is because of that. This was something that we did with IBM, and it's a little bit more than a year old. It's what we call the Operation Center of Rio, and I wanted to show that I can govern my city using technology from here, from Long Beach.

So, I got here last night, and I know everything we're going to speak now to the Operation Center. This is Ozário; he's our Secretary of Urban Affairs. So, Ozário, good to be there with you. I've already told it to people that we have tropical rain this time of the year, so how's the weather in Rio now?

Weather is fine; we had fair weather today. Let me get you our weather satellite radar. You see just a little bit of moisture around the city; absolutely no problem in the city in terms of weather today and in the next few days. Okay, how's the traffic? I mean, with this time of year, we get lots of traffic. People get mad at the mayor, so how's the traffic tonight?

Well, traffic tonight is fine. Let me get you one of our buses, one of our 8,000 buses, a live transmission in downtown Rio for you, Mr. Mayor. You see the streets are clear. Now it's 11:00 p.m. in Rio; nothing of concern in terms of traffic. I'll get to you now the incidents of the day. We had heavy traffic in the early morning and in the rush hour in the afternoon, but nothing of big concern. We are below average in terms of traffic incidents in the city.

Okay, so you're showing our public services. These are the cars? Absolutely, Mr. Mayor. Let me get you the fleet of our waste collection trucks. This is live transmission. We have GPSs in all of our trucks, and you can see them working in all parts of the city, waste collection on time, public services working well.

Okay, Ozário, thank you very much. It was great to have you here. We're going to move so that I can make a [Applause] conclusion. Okay, so no files, displace no paperwork, no distance. 24/7 working. So, the fourth commandment I want to share with you here tonight is: a city of the future has to use technology to be present.

I mean, I don't need to be there anymore to know and to administrate the city. But everything that I said here tonight—the commandments are means, are ways for us to govern cities. I mean, invest in infrastructure, invest in the green, open parks, open spaces, integrate socially, use technology. But by the end of the day, when we talk about cities, we talk about gathering of people, and we cannot see that as a problem.

That is fantastic! If there's 3.5 billion now, it’s going to be 6 billion, then it's going to be 10 billion. That is great; that means that we're going to have 10 billion minds working together, 10 billion talents together. So, a city of the future, I really do believe, is a city that cares about its citizens, integrates socially its citizens. A city of the future is a city that can never let anyone out of this great party, which are cities. Thank you very much. [Applause]