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The History of BRASILIA Part IV

Topics:

The History of Brasilia	Photos of the Construction
"Did you know?" Other planned cities Extreme Detail Curios about Brasilia Mayors and Governors FAQs	A little about: Juscelino Kubitschek Lucio Costa Oscar Niemeyer Israel Pinheiro And also...
Historical Documents	Related links and Bibliography

Please read this before copying
our texts to other web sites.

The purpose of these pages is presenting the abridged, albeit useful and accurate, history of our city. If you happen to have any additional information you'd like to e-mail us or if you know of any related web sites which might be of interest, please contact us!

FAQ's about Brasilia

Please note that the answers only convey the author's (Augusto Areal) point of view, and are in no way "official".

1. After all, what is "Brasilia"? Would it be only the Plano Piloto or the satellite towns too?

   The word "Brasília" can mean many different things:
   
   

   1. Administratively, Brasilia is the name of only one of the Administrative Regions of the Federal District. "Asa Sul" (Southern Wing), "Asa Norte" (Northern Wing) and the downtown area of "Plano Piloto" (Pilot Plan) are parts of it. For more details about the division of the Federal District into Administrative Regions, click here.
   2. To some, Brasilia corresponds to the areas shown in the first maps of the main city. Nowadays that is divided into three administrative regions: "Brasilia" (as above), "Lago Sul" (South Lake) and "Lago Norte" (North Lake).
   3. For many of the Federal District's inhabitants, Brasilia would include all of the above, plus at least two more administrative regions: "Sudoeste e Octogonal" and "Cruzeiro".
   4. Finally, "Brasilia" is also used to mean both the area of the original Pilot Plan and all the "satellite cities" of the Federal District. In this case, the urban nuclei of all the Administrative Regions of the Federal District would be included.
   
   Notes: 
   (a) When one wants to show Brasilia as a big and important city, it is common to say it has "more than two million inhabitants". In this case, definition 4 is in mind. However, when someone talks about qualities such as "the large green areas" (which are not present in many satellite cities) he has in mind definition 1 or 2. One can easily see that the meaning of the word Brasilia is dependent upon the person using it and the context.
   (b) To see pictures of all the places mentioned above, click here. 
   
   

2. Why was Brasilia built?

   Shifting the capital from Rio de Janeiro to the heartland was actually quite an old idea. Hipolito Jose da Costa was supportive of it at the turn of the previous century. Jose Bonifacio presented a bill to the Constitutional Assembly of 1823, which was to be dissolved by Dom Pedro I (Emperor of Brazil). All Constitutional Assemblies held after the Republic (1891, 1934, 1937 and 1946) had provisions for the change.

   There were several reasons why such a measure should be taken:

   • Fear of invasions. Brazil had been systematically invaded in the past (by the French, the Dutch and even by the Portuguese, after Independence). Having the capital (Rio de Janeiro) by the sea made it very vulnerable.
   • Helping develop the heartland.
   • Security reasons. A smaller city would be easier to control in the event of riots or the like. Also, popular demand would be of lesser extent.

   In the end, Brasilia came to be as a result of one man's will to take this cause with all his heart, after being asked if he would do so by a common citizen in a small town rally. But would that stand correct?

3. Can Brasilia be considered one of the indirect causes of the 1964 Military Coup?

   Indeed its construction had its toll on the public deficit and the inflation. These factors did contribute to the instability of the Jango (João Goulart) Administration and the military coup.

4. Hadn't the 1964 coup taken place, would the capital have gone back to Rio?

   During the two following Administrations (Jânio Quadros and João Goulart) the construction was practically brought to a standstill. There was a lot of pressure to transfer the capital back to Rio. Brasilia had quite a few inhabitants. It was in the Administration of Castelo Branco (first military President after the coup) that the city was consolidated as the de facto capital.

5. Is Brasilia truly a city made for the automobile?

   We could answer "no" for two reasons: (1) not enough parking places and (2) narrow streets.

   The oldest "superquadras" had quite a few parking spaces, when you think about the number of apartments there were in each. In many of them parking lots had to be built at the expense of the open spaces, and even so people have to park alongside the curb (not permitted) because there aren't enough spaces. In a time when the domestic auto industry was booming and the income was growing, wouldn't it have been easy to figure that in the near future there were going to be many more cars per family?

   It surprises us when we read about the "broad streets". Many two-way streets have only one lane in each direction. Only Eixo Monumental and Eixo Rodoviario can really be considered "broad".

6. Has Brasilia "isolated the government from the people" or "isolated the rulers from the real world" or "made it more difficult for the people to put pressure on the government"?

   You can answer that by making new questions: (1) Were things better in Brazil when Rio was the capital? (2) Are things better in other Latin countries whose capitals are set in big cities, in contact with the "real world"?

7. I have read that "Brasilia is not thought of very highly by either its own inhabitants or other Brazilians". Is this true?

   The affirmation that the people of Brasilia do not like their city is not supported by any inquiry or any real numbers. The real surveys whose results we have read (published in local newspapers) tell the opposite: Brasilia is well considered by most of its inhabitants.

   Many people from the rest of Brazil do have a not very good impression about Brasilia, even though most of them never visited it. Reasons for this include: (1) some of them associate the city with all the problems they might see in the Federal Government (inefficiency, corruption, and so on); (2) others still repeat concepts from many years ago, when Brasilia was an empty city with all the problems related to this fact (those problems are detailed on this table).

8. Overall, was Brasilia a failure or a success?

   This question deserves a more complete answer, but for now we would like to say that:
   
   

   • As all the objectives referred in question number 2 were achieved, it can be considered that the construction of a new capital for Brazil was a success.
   
   
   • The specific urban plan of "Plano Piloto" was a failure in some aspects, as it is further detailed in the following parts of this page.

From the utopia of the past
to the reality of the present days

You may find some comments that talk about a "Brasilia" that no longer exists - the city changed a lot in the last decades. Some old texts described Brasilia as an utopian city with almost no imperfections. By the other side, there were some texts that just criticized it, forgetting that a city inaugurated in 1960 could not be complete from night to day.

The problem is that some of these old texts can still be found all around, including at Internet. What was true 10 or 20 years ago might be totally untrue today.

If you find somewhere the comments we reproduced on the left column of the following table, you may be reading oudated information. Note: the left column was collected from various texts; the middle and right columns were written by us.

Don't miss to read the text about the four different meanings the word "Brasilia" has.

We have found a

Tourist Guide's text about Brasilia which is so distant from reality that we are still in doubt weather they have ever visited our city. Maybe they are still using a text that has been written more than 20 years ago... We have e-mailed them twice (telling them what we consider to be mistakes) and we hope we can eventually discuss our opinions.

Information must be fresh, especially concerning a city like Brasilia, which came to existence less than 4 decades ago, and whose population and facilities have been growing so fast.

Some current problems

• The number of cars in the street grows at a high rate, as do gridlocks and the lack of parking spaces.
  
  
• Even though many are forced to live far from Plano Piloto (and therefore far from their working places), there still are lots of as yet unbuilt residential buildings. Some North Wing superquadras are still almost totally uninhabited.
  
  
• The newest residential area, "Sudoeste" (Southwest), still uses the residential conception of the original "superquadras". Even today, those who want to live close to downtown area have just two  living choices: (1) to live in a house or (2) to live in an apartment in a "superquadra" (where buildings can only be 3- or 6-stories high).
  
  
• The preservation of the city as decreed by UNESCO in 1987 was a mixed blessing. On one hand it helps preserve the quality of life; on the other hand, it makes very difficult for the city to adapt new urban concepts. There is a risk that the "Capital of the Third Millenium" might turn into the "Petrified Capital of the Sixties".
  
  
• The newest satellite towns are very short on open spaces and greens, as opposed to the older satellite towns and Plano Piloto itself.
  
  

© Augusto Cesar B. Areal, 1997-2007.

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