I did a project this semester on Brasilia’s sudden growth in the early ’60’s which I found particularly interesting, this is a small summary highlighting how the poor were marginalized by this huge project.

The government did not allow the forces of supply and demand to naturally cause Brasilia to grow. Designers went with a shotgun approach and perhaps let their desire for Brasilia to emulate a modern, futuristic city blind them from the economic realities of organic city growth. For example, when the population increases in Vancouver, there is a higher demand for condominiums and thus developers start new projects. Since the state built Brasilia before anyone actually lived there, market forces were ignored with supply set by the government. Evidence of this is how Brasilia was designed to have a maximum occupancy of 500 000 inhabitants but now, including satellite towns, the population exceeds 2.5 million. This is understandable for it is tough to predict how popular and populous a new city will become; however, economists behind the Brasilia project should have realized that and allowed the city to grow naturally with minimal government planning. State-ownership of land was thought to be a more democratic urban spatial strategy; however, irony lies in the fact that only mansions (for the upper class) and condominiums (for the middle class) were a part of the original city plan . There was little thought put into residential planning for the poor, aside from a small number of low-cost housing units for the lower class citizens. This is not surprising given Costa’s utopian plan for an immaculate, modern city without the woes of other Brazilian metropolises.

Lower social classes in developing countries tend to be highly reliant on the informal sector: the part of the economy that is not monitored by any governmental regulatory agencies, and as a result, is not taxed nor included in a country’s gross national product. Spatially, Brasilia does not promote the informal sector. With large boulevards and green spaces, the informal market is mitigated; people simply drive everywhere, which does not permit street-level market interaction. As Ricky Burditt of the London School of Economics states, “[i]t’s got a place where you go to work. There are places where ambassadors have to sleep, and they are extremely unhappy about that because there isn’t a street life.” A lack of street life indicates a lack of the informal sector. Contrasting this with the suburban, organically developed, poorer, outlying areas where street life flourishes- we see a stark difference in the amount of informal economic activity. To critique this argument, one reason why the informal sector may be unnecessary in central Brasilia is the demographics found in this area. Workers in central Brasilia are wealthier (as they work for the government or are professionals) and thus, they do not need the informal sector’s services to provide lower cost products. Perhaps that was the ulterior motive of Brasilia’s planners: to segregate the rich from the poor. If that was not the objective, then why was there such a lack of low-cost housing in the Pilot Plan? Policies to increase the amount of low-cost housing in the central city area, and to reduce the amount of area occupied by parks in this zone would thus promote informal market interaction.