We Love The City

Zoning plan? ZDUBE!

Recife is potentially an ideal cycling city: compact and flat. However the amount of public space is small, with the result that different users crowd each other out. The car dominates, leading to permanent congestion and poor air quality. This pressure threatens to spread to the banks of the Capibaribe, Beberibe and Tejipio, the three rivers that converge here.

Andries Geerse has, at the invitation of Mayor Geraldo Julio de Mello Filho, visited the city several times to provide his advice. Brazil's Zoning Plan (Plano Diretor) plays a key role in that. The plan offers the possibility to introduce new land use categories, alongside traditional categories such as Residential or Central Business District zones. The core of Andries' advice is to designate 15% of the urban area as Zona de Desenvolvimento Urbano Baixo Emissao (ZDUBE), the first low-carbon zone in the world. Here, pedestrians, cyclists and public transport take priority in the public space and developers earn a bonus if they take action in the field of sustainable water, energy and recycling.