Brasilia, in fact, is not as bad as everyone says it is - in my opinion. This massive experiment in urban design - by the architect Oscar Niemayer - is an interesting attempt at redesigning the city. Yet the overall feel of the place is that of self-destructive mid-twentieth century modernism, and I think that most people would not enjoy living in a gigantic modernist sculpture. And from the air, if you don't know, the layout looks like an airplane.




The sidewalks seem to be an afterthought - there are dozens of dirt trails cutting through the large tracts of grass that divide the city in two. This is indicative of the city design failing to meet the needs of its people. In fact, meeting the needs of the people who live here is simply something that is not done.




Brasilia is divided into quadrants, all well marked, all surrounded by roads; the zoning is harshly segregated. There's the hotel district, an area near the middle with only hotels of course; the government buildings at the front of the plane; the commercial district which forms one wing, and the residential neighbourhood which forms the other wing. So everything ends up being a long drive away, or an even longer walk. There are buses, but there is no rapid transit system.




An avant - garde group I heard on late - night CBC did an audio project on this city, calling it "modernism gone bad". Certainly, letting the cold calculations of conceptual and minimalist architects create a city for normal people is not a good idea by any means. Considering when it was founded - in 1976 I believe - we can assume it was designed with the nuclear, apocalyptic, 1984ish future to come. Brazil - the land of the future.




But there is also the political abuse that defines this city - Brazil has a massive poverty and corruption problem. Laying down a city like Brasilia is a flagrant abuse of public funds, an aim at grandeur for the sake of politics. A capital, in theory, that the country could be proud of; but in practice, a capital that shuns the needs of its people and thus implies it does the same to its country.
But, I suppose someone needs to make mistakes along the way in designing the new urban spaces of this world, and since Brazil has failed at so many other things - most noteably exploiting its resources and profiting from them, reducing poverty to reasonable levels, and becoming the superpower that it should be - it may as well make some failures at successfully redesigning urban space. It's hard to build character into a city, but this was never the intention of Brasilia. The cold, detached, formal and impersonal layout turns the city into more of a park. A better description would be a modernist theme park - sections like the "octagonal area" are modernists playing with their own power too much. It may have seemed right to them in the earlier part of the twentieth century, but in 2000 the city looks very dated, stuck in an era of time that few of us would choose to remember fondly.

.....And flights to Rio are really damned full. It must be a popular city down there or something - uh oh, I'm going to a normal destination. Travelling standby is a bad thing to do to a destination like that. I guess we'll see if I get on these flights. Once again another problem with Brasilia - those who can afford it, who work here, often spend their weekends in Rio.


Rio De Janeiro
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* A full account of my visit to this country is available in my yet to be published book, Means To An Exit. If you are an agent or publisher and would like to receive an outline and manuscript, please Contact Me.