The construction of Brasília is a significant achievement in history and architecture. The Brazilian modernist movement definitively established Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer as their representatives. It led the modernist city to be tested as the new urban order. Nevertheless, the city did not emerge alone, nor was it completely utopic, modern, or modernizing. Alongside the new capital, planned and organic neighboring cities were built.
While a competition was being planned to define the architectural proposal for the upcoming capital in 1956, the number of migrants arriving on the plateau in search of employment and better living conditions was growing fast. Without an urban structure to receive them, the so-called "candangos" built makeshift and irregular camps around construction sites. The Cidade Livre, a complex of commerce and services approximately 12 kilometers from where the Plano Piloto would be, served as a support for Braslia construction and began to grow organically and rapidly with the region's demographic increase.
In 1958, one year after the competition, the urbanization company Novacap began resettling families from Cidade Livre to Taguatinga, the first official satellite city. Located 25 kilometers from Brasília, it was planned, but construction was expedited due to population urgency. The justification for relocation was to provide those who built the capital with land ownership, ensuring social well-being and more dignified housing conditions. Thus, even before Braslia, the city of Taguatinga was established in a precarious, improvised, and swift manner.
There were those lands that Novacap sold at affordable prices and installments for the most impoverished purses so that their buyers could have what they would never obtain otherwise: a piece of Brazilian land for the stability and security of their families. [1]
The underlying logic of this operation is secular: it separates a certain portion of the population from the Plano Piloto and refuses the mix of social classes in the city and its public spaces. The 25-kilometer distance implies a hindered journey to the so-called "center" and becomes a disincentive for a portion of the population to frequent certain places in the city. This implies the supremacy of the dominant order, which privileges similar groups. Furthermore, the construction of Taguatinga occurred simultaneously with the project development, without an attempt to bring design and production closer together. That is, the "top-down" logic was maintained, instead of joint adaptation and creation between designers and builders.
From 1958 to 1971, the main satellite cities of the capital were created from similar operations of removal and resettlement of families: Sobradinho (1959), Gama (1960), Núcleo Bandeirante (1961) - the former Cidade Livre, Guará (1968), and Ceilândia (1971), which is the most populous city in the Federal District. Beyond known problems of marginalization of certain neighborhoods or localities, it is possible to explore some aspects of these cities that counterpoint the noble Plano Piloto.
The image of these cities in the common imagination refers to disorder, as they have a more traditional city aspect. However, there were urban plans for them with modernist standards, such as sectorization or residential organization in superblocks. This hybrid urbanism opens up two perspectives. In one sense, these cities mock Brasilia's premises, using modernism without its aesthetic or ethical qualities. By contrast, the population's performance flexibleizes the planned modern layout, overcoming some of its perceived disadvantages.
The case of Núcleo Bandeirante is an example of the resistance of its occupants. Cidade Livre was supposed to be demolished after Brasília's inauguration, but residents and merchants demanded its regularization and permanence. Arguments indicated displacement relative to the periphery and center duo. Established in 1956, the Cidade Livre had services and logistics in place longer than Braslia. Thus, part of the "central" needs depended on "peripheral" services. The institutional center was not the real center.
Mutual cooperation was reinforced by the granting of lots in the upcoming cities. Possession had a provisional character until Novacap's regularization, so ensuring the land was through occupation. Thus, precarious constructions such as shacks continued to occur, albeit far from the eyes of the Plano Piloto's first residents.
It is possible to make a parallel between distance from the center and social valorizing. The city of Guará was planned to receive employees transferred from Rio de Janeiro. It is geographically closer to Brasília than cities intended for manual laborers.
This unruly and autonomous operation does not follow the principles of the modern city, although this does not mean it is disorderly. Cities adjacent to Brasilia were planned, but the reality was relatively self-produced. Residents removed from the capital, with insufficient support from authorities for the construction of their newly created contexts, began to help each other form these cities. It is a type of fissure in modern projects. The “disorder” of the uses and spaces of these places is much more similar to urbanity than the anodyne and controlled landscape of "listed heritage”.
City disputes, contributions to the metropolitan complex, influence and dominance will continue to exist, and the means of doing so are often considered harmless. The naming of these areas clues to their diminutive character to the periphery. Ceilândia, for example, alludes to the Campaign for the Eradication of Invasions (CEI), with the suffix "lândia" designating territory.
The use of the word "satellite" implies a secondary role to a "center". Although the expression is used in everyday language to define these cities, a 1998 decree prohibits the use of the term to refer to any of the cities in the Federal District in official documents. Considering that the municipal division of the district is given by independent Administrative Regions and that several of these cities stand out in terms of economic, demographic, urban and social autonomy, there is no reason to insinuate that they are completely at the mercy of the Plan.
In fact, these cities overlap with Brasilia. Despite being larger and providers for the capital, they are somehow perceived in the popular imagination as secondary or excluded, in the shadow of the pomp of the modernist city. It is not by chance. The consolidation of these cities did not occur without its difficulties. Tensions were not appeased. Fortunately, a careful look can reveal other ways of addressing the more hegemonic literature and challenging what is often said about these cities.
Between the modern urban plan and self-construction, between the center and the periphery, and between order and disorder, there is a sense of independent belonging both to Brasilia and Ceilândia, Taguatinga or Guará. There is tension between urban exclusion and undeniable inclusion in the history of the capital. There is no part without the other. Brasília is also made up of these cities.
References and Notes
- [1] BRASÍLIA: Revista da companhia urbanizadora da nova capital do Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: ano 2, n. 20, agosto de 1958.
- COSTA, Lucio. Registro de uma vivência. 3a ed. rev. São Paulo: Editora 34/Sesc Edições, 2018.
- DERNTL, Maria Fernanda. Dos espaços modernistas aos lugares da comunidade: memórias da construção das cidades-satélites de Brasília. In: Resgate: Revista Interdisciplinar de Cultura, Campinas. São Paulo: v. 27, n. 1, p. 11–34, 2019.
- HOLANDA, Frederico de. Dez mandamentos da arquitetura. Brasília: FRBH, 2013.
- https://www.agenciabrasilia.df.gov.br/2019/10/31/e-surgem-as-cidades-satelites/ (acessado em março de 2023)
- https://www.sinj.df.gov.br/sinj/Norma/33283/Decreto_19040_18_02_1998.html (acessado em março de 2023)
