Even the cathedral has a drive-in entrance

Someone is Nuts about Brasilia.

Born at a time when fuel was cheap and plentiful, Brasilia is a city where the car is king and pedestrians regularly have to cross six-lane highways. Monumental avenues spin off into seamless slipways shaped like four-leaf clover, deeming traffic lights unnecessary. My car didn't stop once on the journey from airport to hotel. Even the cathedral has a drive-in entrance. In the Palácio do Itamaraty, built in 1962 for Brazil's Foreign Ministry, there is an exclusive internal ramp that allows top brass to motor right up to offices on the upper floor.

The 1950s were a bad time to build a new city.

This is a residential superblock:

I guess I will have to see it for myself.

Comments

[Randy Paul]

I have been to Brasilia once and though I plan to retire to Brazil in a few years, I hope not to have to return to Brasilia if I can possibly avoid it.

It is a truly cold and impersonal city; cold to the point that it appears that people do not even live there. Yes, there are some interesting buildings, including the cathedral, but on balance it is devoid of feeling IMHO. What I also find so appalling is that Juscelino Kubitschek, the president under whose auspices it was built, came from a lovely and charming city, Diamantina.

Brasilia should have never been built IMHO. It wasted money (helicopters were used to bring in building materials because the roads were not yet built) and it instilled in Brazilian society the notion that these Pharaonic projects were a good thing. Instead, the military dictatorship that ran Brazil from 1964 to 1985 virtually bankrupted the country and saddled their successors with hyperinflation.

[David Sucher]

Randy,
Can you suggest some good readings (essays, books, links etc.) on Brasilia? Either here or at your blog?
I dimly remember reading a terrific piece in the NYer many years ago but I can't remember either its title or author.
I don't doubt that I would not want to live in Brasilia but I would love to visit.

[Randy Paul]

I would recommend Alex Shoumatoff's The Capital of Hope, although it may be out of print.. It's a bit more positive than I would be, but that may be because he met one of his wive's there.

[Jesse McCann]

I can't wait to visit Brazil. Curitiba is the darling of city planners everywhere, Brasilia is Corbusierian craziness, Sao Paolo is a chaotic megalopolis, and Rio is pretty yet highly dysfunctional. In addition, there are beaches.

[Randy Paul]

That about sums it up, Jesse. Curitiba must be a great place to live. I loved it. Rio has character. Visit some of the historical cities like Tiradentes, Diamantina, Petropolis and Ouro Preto.

[Chip Morningstar]

David, a fascinating account of how and why Brasilia unfolded the way it did can be found in The Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of Brasilia by James Holston.

[JRoth]

Brasilia was one of the best day trips of my life. Shortly after college, I had tagged along with my father to Rio and Buenos Aires, so I hopped on a plane and spent the day there. Blessedly non-humid on the first day of fall (although hot as blazes - Denver-like sun), it's a fascinating place for anyone interested in architecture and cities.

The thing is, it's been forced to come to terms with actual life: although it was designed so as to render streetlights superfluous, they were installed (in a few places) in the early 90s; street markets with buckets of shrimp sit incongruously under Modern overhangs; commerce has moved in, with the center of its famous bow-and-arrow street grid now occupied by a big mall (I don't recall what Marx & Niemeyer envisioned for that spot). Meanwhile, the airport is amazing: it's open air. When I stepped onto the sidewalk, I realized I had not passed through a single door (security gate, sim, weathertight door, não). On the other hand, I never got close to the cathedral because it just seemed too far to cross 2 highways and the (inhumanely broad) grassy mall.

I guess what I'm saying is that it's worth visiting in a positive way, not just in a rubberneck-at-a-monstrosity way.

[Randy Paul]

JRoth,

I'd agree that it's a great place to see - once. As for non-humid, no kidding. In the summer sometimes it's like the Sahara.

There's no sense of community there. The residential areas seemed downright Stalinist.

[Kevin Harris]

Some misconceptions here, I think, especially about the lack of sense of community. There was a clear and clumsy attempt to design-out 'community' (Brasilia is hardly unique in that respect) - but of course it's grown up in all sorts of places like an irrepressible wild plant. Taking a superficial approach to informal social relations isn't smart - sometimes you have to look for it. The superquadra are built on stilts so they'e permeable at ground level which is very important. Also important was the way the store-owners turned the shops back-to-front to create street life - see Holston on this.

One key thing to understand in my opinion is the distorted demographics, the socio-eoncomic class divide which acentuates the wretched citizenship divide across Brasil: in Brasilia it's very striking because the poor who service the city centre cannot afford to live there and commute in and out - in many cases a considerable distance, from the satellite cities. So you can't understand Brasilia without understanding the role of the satellite cities, some of which are pretty disturbed places and sprawling rapidly. As for the wealthy professional classes, in the past I believe it was generally the case that a high proportion would desert the city on a friday and fly off to their home cities for the weekend. Now this happens less I'm told. But in some ways Brasilia is a bit like Washington DC - it's a big posh village for the elite. One other thing: you can have fun getting the opinions of Brasilians in other cities about Brasilia. Most I spoke to think it's dreadful because it offends their sense of what it means to be Brasilian. Those who'd actually been there for any length of time, I found, were less emphatic, more mellow about it.

Holston's book is a must. You might be interested in the following posts on the neighbourhoods blog, especially the first one: I draw your attention to the comment of Tim Ireland, an englishman living and working there. The last post listed here mentions another book you might be interested in.

http://neighbourhoods.typepad.com/neighbourhoods/2004/10/brasilia_at_las.html
http://neighbourhoods.typepad.com/neighbourhoods/2004/11/brasilia_postsc.html
http://neighbourhoods.typepad.com/neighbourhoods/2004/11/100_dimensao.html
http://neighbourhoods.typepad.com/neighbourhoods/2006/03/neighbourhood_d_1.html

So David, you definitely should get there if you can, and try to keep an open mind!

regards

kevin

[Randy Paul]

Kevin,

Have you ever been to Curitiba?

[Kevin Harris]

Yes, I've stayed in Curitiba a few years back, it is a remarkable city - the scale is important, it sill feels small and very liveable. But once I understood the massive citizenship divide in Brasil, and the difference between north and south, I found it difficult to enjoy. The southern states are white-dominated, more wealthy and more european. The systematic exclusion and poverty of so much of the population is disguised in Curitiba and Porto Alegre, but once you know it's there, and you appreciate how hard it is to address, for me it changed the experience profoundly. At least in the north east (I've spent a little time in Joao Pessoa and Recife) there's a sense of the authentic Brasil without the stressed social contrasts.
k

[Randy Paul]

Well, the leadership in Curitiba was pretty remarkable and innovative. Because it is difficult to remove garbage in the favelas, the city government made an arrangement with the people living in the favelas: if they brought in a bag of garbage they received a bag of groceries in exchange. This was a win for everybody: people got fed, diseases like leptospirosis were controlled as the rats found the favelas less desireable and the garbage was disposed of.

I love the Northeast and have spent time in Recife, João Pessoa, Salvador and much of the coast of Bahia. I have to disagree with you, though: the social contrasts in the Northeast may in fact be more pronounced. The middle class is small and the coronel mentality still exists. You will more rich, corrupt and seedy characters like Antônio Carlos Magalhães and the Collor family in the Northeast than in many other places in Brazil.

FWIW I love the whole country.