"Brasilia? But it's a city with no soul", scoff the Pau listes and other coastal residents. Is it? Well, given the images we've seen of the city, you'd be forgiven for wondering. And while there's no doubting the plastic beauty of the place, you might wonder about its urban success. Although Brasilia came into being barely half a century ago, its history goes back a long way. In the eighteenth century, to be precise, when the idea of a capital inland began to germinate. The aim was not only to populate the central plateau, but also to avoid the maritime attacks that constantly threatened Rio. In 1822, the year of independence, the idea reappeared, and the 1891 Constitution already mentioned a rectangle in the state of Goiás, in the heart of the country. In 1922, the first symbolic stone was laid in what is now a satellite city of Brasilia. But everything accelerated in 1956, the year President Juscelino Kubitschek was inaugurated. "From the plateaus of the centre, from this solitude that would soon become the spirit from which the greatest national decisions would be taken, I look once again towards the future of my country, and see the sunrise there, with unshakeable faith and boundless confidence in its grandiose destiny", wrote the visionary president. Admittedly, the city-utopia was built in just a thousand days, as we like to repeat here. But it is the strength of the thoughts directed towards this focal point that gives it its soul, its aura.
Brazilians are acutely aware of this. Others are easily confused by this atypical city, which often confuses them on their first visit. Juliana Lima, the daughter of a diplomat born here when the city was just ten years old, spent her childhood between Brazil and the United States. If I chose to come back and settle permanently in my home town," she explains, "it's because there's no pollution, the skies are always magnificent, and it's the Brazilian city with the most theatres and cinemas per inhabitant". But it's also for the friendly atmosphere that this former editor at Corriero Brasiliense has returned. "People who don't know Brasilia think it's artificial and staid, but others know that, despite appearances, it's a very human city," she says. Often, you arrive here to work, with a bag full of prejudices, and you never leave >>> again. It has to be said that Brasilia is a park-like city that you enter slowly, hostile at first sight: oversized green spaces, wide roads without pavements, a "monumental axis" instead of a main street...
BUTTERFLY CITY EXTENSION
To understand its disconcerting "compartmentalisation", we need to remember that in the early 60s, the separation between things, places and people was a sign of modernity: here the homes and shops, there the hotels, further away the official buildings and workplaces. In fact, the heart of the city (the pilot plan) is populated by only around 400,000 people, whereas it was planned for 500,000 to 750,000. The Federal District, on the other hand, is home to 2.5 million people, or 3.5 million including the surrounding area.
Proof that the "satellite towns" developed quite naturally, in an almost anarchic fashion, around the building-capital, which Lucio Costa, its town planner, thought looked like a butterfly.
It's true that it's still spreading its wings," says Darse Lima, a young Brazilian working for FSB Comunicações. Because everything here is still evolving; everything is so young that we don't even have our own accent," he says with a laugh, "but it's great because there's so much diversity and, basically, for a city that's barely 50 years old and has 2.5 million inhabitants, it's completely crazy." Crazy too is the creative spirit of Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer, the famous architect, who together created the city from scratch and chose to inaugurate it on 21 April, between the equinox and the solstice, to anchor it in an ancestral, almost animistic tradition. Since that day, Brasilia, like other new cities such as Belo Horizonte, has attracted men and women in search of a better life.
"The middle class is predominant here, unlike in the country's other major cities, where the differences between rich and poor are glaring," continues Darse Lima.
COMPANIES ARE SETTING UP
But the government is facing major challenges in the face of an ever-growing population. Ten years ago, Brasilia was still just a political city. Today, commercial activities are expanding and major companies are continuing to set up shop. Infrastructure improvements and housing construction are essential. Recently, an underground railway was built, as well as numerous sports, residential and hotel centres. All of this is expensive. "It's a challenge for the city, but it's also a great success. Brasilia is a success story," concludes Darse Lima.
The town's economy is mainly service-based. There are no polluting industries, but there are pharmaceutical and high-tech groups. Brasilia is even suspected of coveting a role as the "Silicon Valley of Brazil", particularly since the development of a large-scale "digital city" project. Tourism, for its part, puts Brasilia in fifth place among Brazilian tourist cities and accounts for 7.20 % of the Federal District's GDP. The 50th anniversary celebrations will undoubtedly spur on business tourism focused on architecture. To mark the occasion, the major monuments, which are beginning to show their age, should undergo a much-needed refreshment. In Place des Trois-Pouvoirs, weeds are springing up between the dislocated paving stones, and the cathedral is slowly mourning the loss of its former glory. And yet, a year before the festivities, there are still no cranes or workmen on the horizon. "Brasilia is the only modern city to have been awarded World Heritage status by UNESCO in 1987," reassures Claudio Queiroz, an architect who worked with Niemeyer. After various assignments abroad, Mr Queiroz returned home to become the expert on Brasilia's architectural history. "It is also because of this Unesco listing that new construction projects cannot exceed what is known as the Costa scale, i.e. around six storeys for houses and eighteen for towers", he explains.
Yet Brasilia continues to metamorphose. Buildings can be erected and demolished there - not the original ones, of course - and the occupation of space is galloping. The classified area stretches from the lake to the Via Epia, 18 km by 15 km," says the expert. "What can't be changed is the Monumental Axis, but the city is still limited in its growth, because the open spaces are often parks where building is forbidden. The only human being to have the right to touch even a hair of the Monumental Axis, Oscar Niemeyer, despite being 102 years old, returned in December 2008 to the city he had designed half a century earlier. It was when he saw the esplanade of the civic centre cluttered with fir trees and temporary metal structures that he came up with the idea of a "Place of Events" to celebrate 50 years.
PLANS FOR THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY
The governor therefore commissioned him to build a new structure between the National Library and the Museum of the Republic, a sort of shell that could hold up to 10,000 people in the Place du Peuple. For Niemeyer, it was a way of combining the two spaces transversally, with a parterre for celebrations, a museum of the "national representatives" (the presidents) and a 100 m high obelisk pointing eastwards. Even though the governor, José Roberto Arruda, and President Lula were initially enthusiastic," laments Mr Queiroz, "opponents of the project said there was no money. However, the project has not yet been completely ruled out. A whole city is built in a thousand days. A single small project can be completed in a hundred.
