Dietmar Starke talks about smart cities in an interview with Emag

In constant search for smart solutions for cities, the architect and urban planner from Santa Catarina based in Rio de Janeiro, Dietmar Starke, knows in practice the concepts of architecture as social inclusion.

They are almost 30 years dedicated to projects and studies, in Brazil and worldwide, that seek to improve the quality of life of the population as a whole. His work earned Starke the international Architizer A + Awards for the best public building in the world.

In an exclusive interview with Emag, the architect details ideas and paths for better urbanism.

Photo Roberta Dietrich

Emag: How do you define the concept of Smart Cities (CI)?

Strength: How to think of a smart city, where opportunities and access to technologies are extremely uneven? It is not smart for a city to keep a large part of its population excluded from basic health goods and services, education, culture and art, and investing fortunes in public and private security policies.

The Smart City concept was born before the emergence of information technologies (in)training and communication - ICTs. I think that ICTs can be used to make inclusion policies viable, empowerment and separation of social inequalities.

By the way, technologies in general can, if there is political will. We can see this in the Knowledge Ships, where favela populations have access to the latest in architecture and urbanism, the latest in digital technologies.

Photos Joana Bragança

Emag: What are the challenges for today's cities?

Strength: The world has two major challenges for the coming decades. One is the social struggle for the survival of several poor human groups, that are increasing and agglomerating in degraded areas of the city, without any perseverance of life.

The other is the fight against the extinction of the planet of the human race, as well as all forms of life threatened by radical climatic changes caused by global warming.

The idea is to connect the two problems, and create a creative response, so that these two mega challenges can be overcome. But the question is: we are interested in making profound changes, that change our view of the world?

We want to get rid of living prisoners in closed condominiums and armored cars in the name of ending hunger, the violence, corruption in the country? We need to think about an eco-friendly perspective that involves the economy, the environment and man to really have a change in the relationship that man establishes with the economy, with the environment and with other men.

Photos Joana Bragança

Emag: What is the role of the architect and urban planner in this context?

Strength: It plays a central role in making a revolution in inclusion policies through Architecture and Urbanism permeated by new technologies, for sustainability, always focused on the quality of life of the population.

And when we talk about quality of life we ​​are encompassing all. There is no quality of life with social exclusion. Either we think cities for everyone or there will be no sustainability and quality of life.

Check out the complete interview by Dietmar Starke on smart cities by downloading his digital edition of our magazine Emag on here.