ifda dossier 74 - Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation

The Afcgac~n l'rogratnine: Citizenship, Techni)!op
and the Qiiulity of Urban Life groups
I variety of cxperinients in rethinking the
url\in context, to discover, test and public17c
alternatives. Today's cities are in a state
ot permanent crisis, especially the megacities
of the Third World. caught between
a tlood of migration from the countryside
and the bankruptcy of the standard remedies
diiting from the last century. The tools
of urban daily life have clearly not kept
pace with technological progress and demand
for change. From items as specific as
the elevators, through to those as general
as urhiin fiicilities and technological processes
- from water and waste treatment
plants, terms of transport. road systems,
through to rctuse collection and disposal
services - the solutions are sustained by the
inertia oftecli~~n-bureaucracies and pressure
from v:irious sectors of the economy and in-
dust~y Sanitation and transport contractors'
lobbies, for example, ensure inflated costs,
inelficiency, waste, unnecessary environmcn-
t:il disruption and extreme centraliz,ation.
mc;~nv.hilc reinforcing the citizens' depen-
di~ice.
As our major cities set the cultural pattern
for the rest of the country, it is hoped that
solutions encountered there will spread and
he adopted to local situations in smaller
cities. A number of projects, either pliinncd
or under way. aim to reinvent these tools
of urban life, with particular reference to
Rio dc Janeiro and S20 Paulo. Specific
projects in this programme are: urban
transport and the quality of life: basic
sanitation; selective refuse collection and
refusecornposting; environmental education:
leisure, ecology and citi~cnship.
In order to make more information available
to the public, a number ol schemes are
I'ieing run to monitor and produce expert
findings on urban conditions. These include:
n~onitoring sea water pollution levels on
Rio's he~iehcs: veterinary epidemiological
vigilance and n~onitoring of animal slaughte-
ring in Rio de Janeiro; booklet on informa-
tion systems for social movements: electron-
ic media for social movement; booklet on
agricultural pesticides.
ITC and public opinion
How to get ITC's product across to the
public via major media, which do so much
to shape public opinion, is a strategic issue.
The traditional approach introduces sys-
tematic distortion into news of scientific and
technical progress. The academic world
exchanges and publishes its know-how in the
form of papers and congresses for consunip-
lion exclusively by the so-called scientific
community. I-ay audiences are usually
addressed by "science programmes" which
have no ongoing role as responses to social
needs. On the other hand, when the scien-
tific and technical institutions of the govern-
ment and private enterprise decide to
address the general public they do so
through what have come to be known as
"public relations" channels.
It is ITC policy not to broadcast informa-
tion to the general public in the same way
as the scientific media and public relations
department. Space must be found in the
major press, independently of the traditional
science-oriented lobbies.
With these aims in mind. a permanent press
office is being set up, so as to channel
'
strategic information systematically to
journalists of the major press whose professional
ethic includes social responsibility.
For Bra~il, this is certainly breaking new
ground, since the intentions are not scientific
and technical propaganda, but to
provide the mass of information necessary
to the exercise of contemporary citizenship.
(Ricardo NeveslEtnitio Eigenheer, Itis~ituio
de
Tecnologia para o Cidadao ITC, CP 68569,
2194.5 Rio & Janeiro IV, Brazil)