It’s our city. Let’s fix it

Too often, people feel checked out of politics — even at the level of their own city. But urban activist Alessandra Orofino thinks that can change, using a mix of tech and old-fashioned human connection. Sharing examples from her hometown of Rio, she says: "It is up to us to decide whether we want schools or parking lots, recycling projects or construction sites, cars or buses, loneliness or solidarity."

Fifty-four percent of the world's population

lives in our cities.

In developing countries,

one third of that population

is living in slums.

Seventy-five percent of global energy consumption

occurs in our cities,

and 80 percent of gas emissions

that cause global warming

come from our cities.

So things that you and I might think about

as global problems,

like climate change, the energy crisis

or poverty,

are really, in many ways, city problems.

They will not be solved

unless people who live in cities,

like most of us,

actually start doing a better job,

because right now, we are
not doing a very good one.

And that becomes very clear

when we look into three aspects of city life:

first, our citizens' willingness to engage

with democratic institutions;

second, our cities' ability to really include

all of their residents;

and lastly, our own ability

to live fulfilling and happy lives.

When it comes to engagement,

the data is very clear.

Voter turnout around the world

peaked in the late '80s,

and it has been declining at a pace

that we have never seen before,

and if those numbers are bad at the national level,

at the level of our cities,

they are just dismal.

In the last two years,

two of the world's most consolidated,

oldest democracies, the U.S. and France,

held nationwide municipal elections.

In France, voter turnout hit a record low.

Almost 40 percent of voters decided

not to show up.

In the U.S., the numbers were even scarier.

In some American cities,

voter turnout was close to five percent.

I'll let that sink in for a second.

We're talking about democratic cities

in which 95 percent of people

decided that it was not important

to elect their leaders.

The city of L.A., a city of four million people,

elected its mayor with just a bit over 200,000 votes.

That was the lowest turnout the city had seen

in 100 years.

Right here, in my city of Rio,

in spite of mandatory voting,

almost 30 percent of the voting population

chose to either annul their votes

or stay home and pay a fine

in the last mayoral elections.

When it comes to inclusiveness,

our cities are not the best cases of success either,

and again, you don't need to look very far

in order to find proof of that.

The city of Rio is incredibly unequal.

This is Leblon.

Leblon is the city's richest neighborhood.

And this is Complexo do Alemão.

This is where over 70,000

of the city's poorest residents live.

Leblon has an HDI, a Human Development Index,

of .967.

That is higher than Norway, Switzerland

or Sweden.

Complexo do Alemão has an HDI of .711.

It sits somewhere in between the HDI

of Algeria and Gabon.

So Rio, like so many cities across the global South,

is a place where you can go from northern Europe

to sub-Saharan Africa

in the space of 30 minutes.

If you drive, that is.

If you take public transit, it's about two hours.

And lastly, perhaps most importantly,

cities, with the incredible wealth

of relations that they enable,

could be the ideal places for human happiness

to flourish.

We like being around people.

We are social animals.

Instead, countries where urbanization

has already peaked seem to be the very countries

in which cities have stopped making us happy.

The United States population has suffered

from a general decrease in happiness

for the past three decades,

and the main reason is this.

The American way of building cities

has caused good quality public spaces

to virtually disappear in many,

many American cities,

and as a result, they have seen

a decline of relations,

of the things that make us happy.

Many studies show an increase

in solitude and a decrease in solidarity,

honesty, and social and civic participation.

So how do we start building cities

that make us care?

Cities that value their most important asset:

the incredible diversity

of the people who live in them?

Cities that make us happy?

Well, I believe that if we want to change

what our cities look like,

then we really have to change

the decision-making processes

that have given us the results
that we have right now.

We need a participation revolution,

and we need it fast.

The idea of voting as our
only exercise in citizenship

does not make sense anymore.

People are tired of only being treated

as empowered individuals every few years

when it's time to delegate that power

to someone else.

If the protests that swept Brazil

in June 2013 have taught us anything,

it's that every time we try

to exercise our power

outside of an electoral context,

we are beaten up, humiliated or arrested.

And this needs to change,

because when it does,

not only will people re-engage

with the structures of representation,

but also complement these structures

with direct, effective, and
collective decision making,

decision making of the kind

that attacks inequality

by its very inclusive nature,

decision making of the kind

that can change our cities

into better places for us to live.

But there is a catch, obviously:

Enabling widespread participation

and redistributing power

can be a logistical nightmare,

and there's where technology can play

an incredibly helpful role,

by making it easier for people to organize,

communicate and make decisions

without having to be in the same room

at the same time.

Unfortunately for us,

when it comes to fostering democratic processes,

our city governments have not used technology

to its full potential.

So far, most city governments have been effective

at using tech to turn citizens into human sensors

who serve authorities with data on the city:

potholes, fallen trees or broken lamps.

They have also, to a lesser extent,

invited people to participate in improving

the outcome of decisions

that were already made for them,

just like my mom when I was eight

and she told me that I had a choice:

I had to be in bed by 8 p.m.,

but I could choose my pink
pajamas or my blue pajamas.

That's not participation,

and in fact, governments have not been very good

at using technology to enable participation

on what matters —

the way we allocate our budget,

the way we occupy our land,

and the way we manage our natural resources.

Those are the kinds of decisions

that can actually impact global problems

that manifest themselves in our cities.

The good news is,

and I do have good news to share with you,

we don't need to wait for governments to do this.

I have reason to believe

that it's possible for citizens to build

their own structures of participation.

Three years ago, I cofounded an organization

called Meu Rio,

and we make it easier for people in the city of Rio

to organize around causes and places

that they care about in their own city,

and have an impact on those causes and places

every day.

In these past three years, Meu Rio grew

to a network of 160,000 citizens of Rio.

About 40 percent of those
members are young people

aged 20 to 29.

That is one in every 15 young people

of that age in Rio today.

Amongst our members is this adorable little girl,

Bia, to your right,

and Bia was just 11 years old

when she started a campaign using one of our tools

to save her model public school from demolition.

Her school actually ranks among the best

public schools in the country,

and it was going to be demolished

by the Rio de Janeiro state government

to build, I kid you not,

a parking lot for the World Cup

right before the event happened.

Bia started a campaign, and we even watched

her school 24/7 through webcam monitoring,

and many months afterwards,

the government changed their minds.

Bia's school stayed in place.

There's also Jovita.

She's an amazing woman whose daughter

went missing about 10 years ago,

and since then, she has been looking

for her daughter.

In that process, she found out

that first, she was not alone.

In the last year alone, 2013,

6,000 people disappeared

in the state of Rio.

But she also found out that in spite of that,

Rio had no centralized intelligence system

for solving missing persons cases.

In other Brazilian cities, those systems

have helped solve up to 80 percent

of missing persons cases.

She started a campaign,

and after the secretary of
security got 16,000 emails

from people asking him to do this,

he responded, and started to build a police unit

specializing in those cases.

It was open to the public at the end of last month,

and Jovita was there

giving interviews and being very fancy.

And then, there is Leandro.

Leandro is an amazing guy

in a slum in Rio,

and he created a recycling project in the slum.

At the end of last year, December 16,

he received an eviction order

by the Rio de Janeiro state government

giving him two weeks to leave the space

that he had been using for two years.

The plan was to hand it over to a developer,

who planned to turn it into a construction site.

Leandro started a campaign using one of our tools,

the Pressure Cooker,

the same one that Bia and Jovita used,

and the state government changed their minds

before Christmas Eve.

These stories make me happy,

but not just because they have happy endings.

They make me happy because they are

happy beginnings.

The teacher and parent community at Bia's school

is looking for other ways they could improve

that space even further.

Leandro has ambitious plans

to take his model to other
low-income communities in Rio,

and Jovita is volunteering at the police unit

that she helped created.

Bia, Jovita and Leandro

are living examples of something

that citizens and city
governments around the world

need to know:

We are ready.

As citizens, we are ready

to decide on our common destinies,

because we know that the way we distribute power

says a lot about how we actually value everyone,

and because we know

that enabling and participating in local politics

is a sign that we truly care

about our relations to one another,

and we are ready to do this

in cities around the world right now.

With the Our Cities network,

the Meu Rio team

hopes to share what we have learned

with other people who want to create

similar initiatives in their own cities.

We have already started doing it in São Paulo

with incredible results,

and want to take it to cities around the world

through a network of citizen-centric,

citizen-led organizations

that can inspire us,

challenge us, and remind us to demand

real participation in our city lives.

It is up to us

to decide whether we want schools

or parking lots,

community-driven recycling projects

or construction sites,

loneliness or solidarity, cars or buses,

and it is our responsibility to do that now,

for ourselves, for our families,

for the people who make our lives worth living,

and for the incredible creativity,

beauty, and wonder that make our cities,

in spite of all of their problems,

the greatest invention of our time.

Obrigado. Thank you.

(Applause)