Urban Planning in Curitiba; March 1996; Scientific American Magazine; by Rabinovitch, Leitman; 8 Page(s)

As late as the end of the 19th century, even a visionary like Jules Verne could not imagine a city with more than a million inhabitants. Yet by the year 2010 over 500 such concentrations will dot the globe, 26 of them with more than 10 million people. Indeed, for the first time in history more people now live in cities than in rural areas.

Most modern cities have developed to meet the demands of the automobile. Private transport has affected the physical layout of cities, the location of housing, commerce and industries, and the patterns of human interaction. Urban planners design around highways, parking structures and rush-hour traffic patterns. And urban engineers attempt to control nature within the confines of the city limits, often at the expense of environmental concerns. Cities traditionally deploy technological solutions to solve a variety of challenges, such as drainage or pollution.