São Paulo – By mid next year the centre of Pedra Branca neighbourhood, in the city of Palhoça, in Santa Catarina, should be complete. This would simply be the completion of another urban project were it not for the differential of the 20 main blocks of the neighbourhood. The site is being erected considering sustainability and is one of the eight enterprises worldwide that is included in Clinton Foundation’s Climate Positive Development Programme. It brings together initiatives that may serve as a sustainability reference for the planet. Pedra Branca is the only participant in South America.
But what is so special about Pedra Branca? Hundreds of details make the difference, starting with the streets, prioritising pedestrians and cyclists. The pavement is between four and eight metres wide, and the paving is adequate for walking, with bicycle lanes are on the edge of the pavement so that the cyclists may be protected. The neighbourhood was planned to have a mix of housing and trade establishments, so that the residents do not have to walk more than 500 metres to work and can also relax and study there.
Sustainability was considered when designing energy, water, information technology and transportation use, as well as the management of solid residues. The units include solar panels for water heating, fibre-optics and reuse of water, among other measures. The real estate company in charge of the project and its development, Pedra Branca S.A., got authorisation for the neighbourhood itself to manage its water and sewage, thus reducing water waste from collection to consumption to 11%, the European level. In the other areas of Brazil, the rate is 50%.
But initiatives there are not just in favour of the environment, but also in benefit of people, explained the president of Pedra Branca real estate company, Valério Gomes. "Our mission is to improve cities for people,” he said. In this line are measures like the absence of walls surrounding buildings in the centre, as a way to bring public spaces closer to houses and to foster the use of common areas. How about security? This movement of people, not hidden behind walls, but seeing each other, should inhibit violence, he believes.
The neighbourhood was also thought out considering new urbanism, which defends that the future is in dense and compact cities. The closeness of sites should, for example, inhibit the use of vehicles. So much so that the real estate company has been authorised to raise buildings of up to 12 storeys. Pedra Branca neighbourhood also includes a university, Unisul, with over 30 courses, and should receive a Swiss hospital, Clinique des Grangettes, to operate in high complexity medicine.
Participation in the Climate Positive Development Programme began in 2009. Since then, Pedra Branca project representatives have been travelling there for annual meetings, for two or three days, putting them in contact with other sustainable enterprises and also with suppliers of material produced in a sustainable manner and thought to generate sustainability. The programme measures the Carbon Footprint of projects it accompanies, and can detect how much each issues in pollutants, with the objective of bringing these emissions to zero. Carbon has already started being measured at Pedra Branca, but a period to nullify it has not yet been defined.
Execution
Pedra Branca real estate developer works with several construction companies and also with a number of offices, architects and urban planners, among them Jaime Lerner (former mayor of Curitiba) and Silvia Lezi. In the area of architecture, however, the project is headed by DPZ Latin America, an American company, and in engineering, by Arup, one of the largest companies in the sector in the world. In the centre, 125 buildings are under construction, and they should be delivered by late this year or mid next year. In the area surrounding the centre, there are houses and buildings, prior to the centre project, which, therefore, do not follow the principles of sustainability.
The idea of the neighbourhood came from Gomes and his family, who owned a farm at the site where they would go on weekends, but who decided to urbanise it. Firstly they started selling plots of land for the establishment of a closed condominium (resulting in some of the houses and buildings there), but Gomes became interested in architecture and started reading books and going to courses on the matter. That is how he got to new urbanism and to sustainability, changing the routes of the initial project.
Nowadays, apart from the Gomes family, Pedra Branca real estate is also owned by Espírito Santo Property Brasil, under the Portuguese Espírito Santo group. The neighbourhood already houses 5,000 people and there are over 1,000 houses and 20 buildings. There are also 5,000 jobs at enterprises in the neighbourhood.
The slum
Currently, apart from its own sustainability project, Pedra Branca has a plan to take sustainability to Frei Damião slum, in the neighbouring areas. To develop it, the real estate developer called on Gustavo Restrepo, who was responsible for humanisation of slums in Colombia and counts on partnerships with NGOs for development. The Palhoça City Hall, the Brazilian Savings Bank and local leaders, among other, are also involved.
*Translated by Mark Ament
