Free public transportation and other blind spots of the Brazilian left.

The undeniable progress of the last decade – economic growth with income distribution and political stability, among others – is being tested, and why not say, threatened by the protests that have swept the country in recent days. And it's good that it's this way, after all, a little discomfort can be good for Brazilian leaders, whether they are leaders of the three branches of government, the press, unions, or the business community.

The autumn of 2013, and here I would extend the time frame slightly to include the conflicts related to Belo Monte, the demarcation of indigenous lands, and the Human Rights Commission of the National Congress, marks a turning point that reveals the exhaustion of the neo-developmentalist project as a solution to all ills. More specifically, I perceive three blind spots in the current government: environmental policy, public security policy, and urban policy. All of them effectively linked to the issue of land ownership, control, and exploitation, this evil that has afflicted us since the Hereditary Captaincies.

The Brazilian left, to which I humbly belong, urgently needs a new environmental policy project and some kind of public security project. I will not venture to write about these two subjects, offering only opinions, as is the case with any well-informed Brazilian.

Therefore, in this text I will focus on the urban planning that concerns me as a professional and as a researcher: what is truly urgent is rethinking the cities where 85% of Brazilians live. That is what I hear coming from the streets in the most varied forms.

The current model prioritizes automobiles and urban sprawl in search of cheap land. We've reached a point where construction is almost irrelevant; only buying and selling land matters. The "Minha Casa Minha Vida" program, for example, transforms cheap land on the most remote fringes of any metropolitan area into expensive land, with the houses built above contributing little to the project's profit.

This model comes loaded with problems: it subjects residents to hours and hours on crowded buses and epic traffic jams; it isolates the poorest from the infrastructure that is still concentrated in central areas; and it confuses urban quality of life with property ownership. Try the market test: compare the rental prices of houses in the "Minha Casa Minha Vida" program with the rental prices in favelas in central areas of any Brazilian city, and you will see where life is better.

In the long term, the process is even more perverse. Vicente Fox promised to build 5 million homes when he took office in Mexico in 2000 with a program called INFONAVIT, which closely resembles the MCMV (Minha Casa, Minha Vida - My House, My Life program). This goal was met during the term of his successor, Felipe Calderón. After 12 years of land subdivisions in the most distant peripheries of Monterrey, Chihuahua, Ciudad Juarez, Guadalajara, and Tijuana, almost 40% of these houses are abandoned, and any connection to the alarming rate of violence is not mere coincidence. In the Brazilian case, we have Cidade de Deus (City of God) as an example, and Fernando Meirelles' film showed the world what can happen when a community is removed to areas completely isolated from the rest of the city.

The protests for free public transportation have the merit of bringing the problem to the national debate. While writing these lines (June 19th), I read that several Brazilian cities anticipated this and reduced the costs of public transportation. The city and state of São Paulo followed the same path last night because the pressure was immense and there was no shortage of money to pay this emergency bill (and because nobody knows how much it might end up costing to resist). It was certainly too little, and far too late.

A genuine improvement in public transportation, whether through a significant reduction in costs or an improvement in quality, would have a transformative effect on the urban structure because it would affect land values. With good and affordable transportation, the outskirts of the city instantly appreciate in value. This equates to a revolutionary income transfer and an even greater impact on the quality of life for millions of Brazilians. It's worth noting that the only way to increase the average speed on our congested roads is through investment in public transportation. As someone recently said, widening streets to solve the traffic problem is like loosening your belt to solve the obesity problem.

But unfortunately, the developmentalist obsession that took hold of the PT in the federal government and is accentuated as a hallmark of Dilma's government continues to pour more asphalt and more concrete as a solution to all problems [read another text of mine here]. The asphalt paradigmWhile on one hand we are improving in areas such as accessibility and sanitation in villages and favelas, on the other hand we are spending billions to subsidize automobiles when we should be thinking about transportation in 2050, not in 1950. Popular pressure is in the streets and only it, on this scale, has enough force to counter the lobbies of car manufacturers, asphalt companies, heavy construction companies and others.

We need to radically rethink urban policies, and it is urgent to do this from within the left before, as Pedro I said, "another adventurer does it."