My wife Nancy and I deeply love Porto Alegre, and we really miss all of you! We’ve been actively working with Porto Alegre for the past 15 years, beginning in 2011, and as many of you know, Nancy and I lived in Porto Alegre starting in 2013, until we finally moved back to the US in 2021. For those eight years we lived at José Bonifácio 529 (in apartamento 51, and later on, in 51a), right across the street from Redenção, in front of the oldest and largest weekly organic farmer’s market in Brasil, and directly across Parque Farroupilha from UFRGS, where I served as an International Visiting Professor from 2017 to 2021. During 2013-2015 I served as an International Visiting Professor at Unisinos, when Global Urban Development was working with the RS State Government to develop GUD’s 2015 World Bank-funded Leapfrog Economic Strategy for Rio Grande do Sul to become the most sustainable and innovative place in Latin America by 2030.
Global Urban Development began working in Brasil immediately after GUD’s official founding in Washington, DC during September 2001. In October and November 2001, I participated in a one-month UN-Habitat mission to Brasil which included visits to São Paulo, Curitiba, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, Brasília, and Florianópolis. Over the following decade GUD worked with São Paulo’s ABC Region, with the cities of Curitiba, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Belo Horizonte, with the states of Minas Gerais, Paraná, and São Paulo, and with the Federal Government in Brasília. GUD helped organize and lead the world’s first international conference on Sustainable Economic Development, hosted by the Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas (ECPA) during June 2011 in Curitiba.
I first came to Porto Alegre in November 2011 to speak at the US-Brazil Innovation Learning Laboratory, and I later also spoke at the US-Brazil Innovation Summit in Rio de Janeiro In 2012, I returned to Porto Alegre to speak at the FIERGS International Innovation Conference and coordinate a major consulting project for AGDI and FIERGS.
Beginning in 2015, after the completion of the RS Leapfrog Economic Strategy, GUD began organizing ZISPOA, the “Zona de Inovação Sustentável de Porto Alegre”. ZISPOA turned out to be an amazing success, especially from 2015 to 2020. ZISPOA, through GUD’s ZISProf university faculty group and especially its ZISPOA-initiated Sustainable Innovation Professional (SIP) Program created by UFRGS Professors and GUD Senior Fellows Angela Danilevicz, Luis Felipe Nascimento, Fabian Domingues, and Luiz Carlos Pinto da Silva Filho, has continued making significant impacts, including UFRGS becoming internationally ranked in 2021 as one of the best universities for Sustainability in Latin America. In 2022 the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) published a global report on Operationalizing Sustainable Development to Benefit People and the Planet, with a major case study of Porto Alegre focusing on ZISPOA as an international best practice. Recently ZISProf’s Solarizing ZISPOA project obtained a large federal grant to install solar panels and improve energy efficiency at UFRGS Escola de Administração.
In 2023 I published a detailed case study chapter about the history of ZISPOA, entitled “The Porto Alegre Sustainable Innovation Zone (ZISPOA): Circular Economy, Climate Resilience, Sustainable Innovation, Participatory Community Transformation, and Inclusive Prosperity”, and I strongly encourage everyone to please read it thoroughly. Muito obrigado!
Even after Nancy and I returned to the US in 2021 and I became a Visiting Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where we also established GUD’s Berkeley office, I have continued to actively support ZISPOA and Porto Alegre. In particular, during 2024 GUD collaborated with the RS State Government’s Secretariat of Innovation, Science, and Technology (SICT) and FAPERGS to organize an international meeting in October at Tecnopuc on “Building a Climate-Resilient Future for Rio Grande do Sul”, where I gave a keynote speech, together with two expert speakers that I invited from the US State Department and NASEM to provide vital advice and technical assistance for sustainable recovery efforts in Porto Alegre after the disastrous RS statewide flooding earlier that year.
Nancy and I will always love Porto Alegre, and we carry you deep in our hearts! As honorary gaúchos and portoalegrenses (when we lived in Porto Alegre they called me the “Gringo da Bonfa”), we are sending everyone at POA Inquieta very big Brasilian hugs!
Marc A. Weiss is Chairman and CEO of Global Urban Development (GUD), an international policy organization and professional network of 1,000 leaders and experts in 66 countries, including a very large network in Porto Alegre, where he also served as International Visiting Professor at UFRGS and Unisinos. More recently he has been serving as a Visiting Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and as an Affiliated Scholar in the Department of Strategic Sustainable Development at Blekinge Institute of Technology in Karlskrona, Sweden. Dr. Weiss previously served as Special Assistant to the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and HUD Liaison to the President’s Council on Sustainable Development in the Clinton-Gore Administration, as Associate Professor and Director of the Real Estate Development Research Center at Columbia University, and as Deputy Director of the California Commission on Industrial Innovation. He graduated with honors from Stanford University in 1972, and earned his Ph.D. in 1985 from the University of California, Berkeley. 
