Curitiba
Quality of Life.
That’s what Curitiba is all about.
Globally recognized as a great place to work and live, the capital city of the State of Paraná is a world model for modern urbanization, as well as an important cultural, political and economic center. Since the late ‘70s, when its urban plan started to be implemented, its street and public transportation systems were planned and established based on a city growth pattern. Special structural traffic “corridors” with separate lanes for buses, continuous and slow traffic were built, allowing people to go around the city easily and swiftly. At that same time there emerged its structuring into several distinct areas to house polluting and non-polluting industries, and the transformation of the city into being the ecological capital of Brazil: green areas in Curitiba add up to more than three times the recommendation of the UN, per inhabitant, parks were built to protect our springs and ours is the first Brazilian city to take recycling seriously and enact it into law. Air pollution is not a problem and innovative programs have been set up to keep pollution levels low.
Curitiba is well connected to other cities through highways and has an international airport (Afonso Pena), which offers flights to all Brazilian capitals and important cities. Our city is presently the home for several multinational companies’ captive centers. All this, because we have 55 college level institutions, including the Federal University of Paraná, the oldest university in Brazil, and adding up to some 60,000 students enrolled in universities every year. Scientific production in the city grew 111.73% during the last decade, a 50% increase only in the software segment.
In 2010 Curitiba will be one of the 100 wealthiest cities in the world, with a per capita income 86% higher than the Brazilian average, while cost of living is smaller than 11 other Brazilian capitals. Also, it will be among the 50 cities in the world with the greatest global influence. Forbes Magazine has included Curitiba as the third cleverest city in the world. Presently, the population is around 1.8 million inhabitants with a 96% literacy rate.
Offshoring grows at a 40% yearly rate in the world and here there are more than 3,500 companies offering services that include IT infrastructure outsourcing, software development outsourcing, technical support outsourcing, system implementation advisory R&D services and enterprise application services.
Our software clusters include more than 100 companies, some of which are among the Brazilian Top 100 IT providers.
Finally, quality of life implies people trying to do their best and that’s why Curitiba is the most innovating city in Brazil, a true gateway to Mercosur and one of the finest places in the world to search for IT-BPO services.
