Sheet n°264 - April 2007
Brasília, from utopian city to urban
agglomeration
rasília, symbol of the 1950s
ideal of the modern, avantgarde city, is celebrating its
50th anniversary. The city was
born of the utopian project of
urban planner Lucio Costa
and architect Oscar Niemeyer.
It illustrates a functionalist
perception that carried with it
principles of social equality.
What remains of that vision
now? In 1987 UNESCO conferred on Brasilia the status of
World Heritage site. However,
the original monumentally
designed city is now engulfed,
at the centre of an agglomeration of 3 million inhabitants.
Fragmented and sprawling, it
suffers certain social and environmental dysfunctions. IRD
geographers and their Brazilian
partners have examined this
unique case which demands a
rethink of the risks associated
with urban development in the
cities of the South, where more
than 50% of populations are
concentrated. They propose,
as a solution for reconciling
conservation of the urban heritage and the city’s sustainable
development, the creation of
a harmonized regional entity.
The integration of the unifying
principles of the original ideal
– access to housing, improved
standard of living – in this new
common urban project should
encourage mobilization of the
inhabitants and thus renew
social cohesion.
© IRD/D. Couret
B
The National Congress building, Brasília
Brasilia is the most complete example
of the form of urban planning prevalent
until the 1970s. Construction took just three
years, from 1957 to 1960, following a
government initiative to create Brazil’s capital, at a time when cities played a prime role
in the construction of national territories,
especially in the countries of the South.
The project’s objective was to improve distribution of the country’s wealth by attracting
population and economic activity to Brazil’s
interior. Up to then people and industries
had been concentrated on two competing
coastal cities, Rio de Janeiro and São
Paulo. Brasília was constructed according
to a precisely laid out urban plan, devised
by Lucio Costa, and the architectural programme designed by Oscar Niemeyer following a socially egalitarian and functional vision of the city. The city gained the
UNESCO status of Historical and Cultural
Heritage of Humanity only 27 years after
its creation and remains the symbol of the
avant-garde, ideal city entirely appropriate
for Brazil at that time.
Fifty years afterwards, the original city
finds itself at the centre of a fragmented,
sprawling agglomeration of 3 million population. It is threatened by several environmental and social dysfunctions: degraded
water resources, inadequate wastewater
management, poverty, inequalities of distribution of urban resources and considerable geographical distances between the
different social classes, potential sources
of conflict. This conurbation takes in 16
satellite towns and extends to the neighbouring district of Goias. The organization
of the Plano Piloto, the initial urban perimeter, classified and preserved in its clearly
demarcated compact structure, contrasts
with an environment that becomes more
and more open, broken up and untidy
towards the city fringes, where the poorest
people are concentrated.
>>
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© IRD/ D. Couret
Sheet n°264 - April 2007
For further intormation
CONTACTS :
DOMINIQUE COURET
IRD UR URBI
+33 (0)1 48 02 79 27
couretdo@bondy.ird.fr
MARCIA DE ANDRADE MATHIEU
IRD UR URBI
+33 (0)1 48 02 56 19
marcia.mathieu@noos.fr
PRESS OFFICE :
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presse@ird.fr
INDIGO BASE, IRD PICTURE LIBRARY
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IRD AUDIOVISUEL
+33 (0)1 48 02 56 24 ;
audiovisuel@bondy.ird.fr
www.audiovisuel.ird.fr/
REFERENCE :
Brasília - ville fermée, environnement ouvert, éditeurs
scientifiques : MARCIA REGINA
DE ANDRADE MATHIEU, IGNEZ
COSTA BARBOSA FERREIRA,
DOMINIQUE COURET. IRD
Editions, collection Latitudes
23, 2006.
KEY-WORDS :
BRASÍLIA, PLANO PILOTO,
URBAN DEVELOPMENT,
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Life in the satellite towns on the periphery of the city
centre
In such a situation, where and how is life in
the community organized? How has a project for a clearly delimited city expanded into
such a diffuse tangle of urbanization, cut off
from the regional environment? IRD geographers and their research partners from the
University of Brasília have been seeking the
reasons for this evolution, examining since
2001 the way the city has developed and
the consequences of this development at
local and regional levels (1). Their approach,
which takes into account the built and natural environment and the social dynamics
at play, brings into relief possible solutions
for conserving the heritage of Brasília while
ensuring the agglomeration’s development
in a sustainable way.
The conservation and closing-off of the
city’s core “monumental” sector has
pushed up property prices and engendered a considerable social cost. People
have continued to flow into Brasília, which
concentrates nearly 80% of the country’s
formal employment, encouraged by their
strong attachment to the image of the ideal
city. The situation has restricted them to
settling on the fringes of the urban centre,
on stretches of land still unoccupied by
this growing agglomeration. Geographical
distancing between the preserved, fixed
“monumental” city and the dense, poorer
outer neighbourhoods is therefore matched
by social distancing.
This kind of urban development goes
against the evolution the initial plan envisaged. The organization laid down was
for a city with a compact structure, around
four sectors harmonized to guarantee the
equilibrium of both the city and the society
destined to live in it: social and residential
(housing), monumental, bucolic (landscape)
and functional (work, services). The way
Brasília has been developing recently indicates an imbalance between these distinctly
defined sectors of the original plan.
The research team used this observation
as a basis for devising a new urban project,
founded on a new reading of the plan and
the founding articles. The new proposal
hinges on a return to equilibrium between
the different sectors – reincorporate local
shops in the districts assigned for services,
for example – but adapted to the real city,
in other words to the whole agglomeration.
This involves conceiving the agglomeration
as a homogeneous delimited regional territory, whose management, inspired from
the founding utopian ideals, would favour
access to housing, job generation and
improved living standards. This new urban
project should reconcile the city’s heritage
conservation and its social and economic
development, and thereby give an impulse
to people’s increased involvement in the
future of their urban environment and, in this
way, improve social cohesion.
Brasília’s future now lies in the hands of
those responsible for urban development
and of its inhabitants. This city remains the
unique case of a total-planning approach,
an end-of-spectrum example valuable as a
reference. Comparison of its development
with that of other cities of the South, largely
or completely unplanned, can in this sense
offer a different perspective on their development and the social and natural risks it can
create, at a time when 50% of the world’s
population is urban.
(1) This research work was conducted jointly by IRD research
unit UR 029 and the University of Brasília. It is part of UR 029’s
programme, co-financed by UNESCO, entitled “Brasília, la
question environnementale urbaine et la préservation du patrimoine de l’humanité”, planned to run from 2005 to 2008.
Marie Guillaume-Signoret – IRD
Translation – Nicholas Flay
Marie Guillaume-Signoret, coordinatrice
Délégation à l’information et à la communication
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