Brasília, Plan and Reality

Brasília, Plan and Reality PDF Author: David G. Epstein
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520022034
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
A masterful account of Brasilia, the city of the future, where Brazil's continental destiny was to be fulfilled, where government would be efficient and functional, without the interference of radical students and labor leaders. The building of the city was a gigantic public-works program, reflecting the various ties that existed between the planners on one hand and the contractors and suppliers on the other. Epstein gives a detailed account of the pilot plan and the rise of satellite towns between 1957 and 1967. The planners dreamed of a city that would transcend the frustrations of urban life in the underdeveloped world, but they failed to provide a sector where the actual builders of the dream city would live. Shacktowns soon developed, and have expanded to accommodate migrants--often displaced, landless cultivators--who continue to be attracted to the city. The conclusion Epstein comes to is that urban squatting will remain a prominent feature of Brasilia, a part of a system deeply rooted in local, national, and global structure and ideology. Until there are revolutionary changes in society, squatting and shantytowns will be a fact of life in the underdeveloped world.

Brasília, Plan and Reality

Brasília, Plan and Reality PDF Author: David G. Epstein
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520022034
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 236

Get Book Here

Book Description
A masterful account of Brasilia, the city of the future, where Brazil's continental destiny was to be fulfilled, where government would be efficient and functional, without the interference of radical students and labor leaders. The building of the city was a gigantic public-works program, reflecting the various ties that existed between the planners on one hand and the contractors and suppliers on the other. Epstein gives a detailed account of the pilot plan and the rise of satellite towns between 1957 and 1967. The planners dreamed of a city that would transcend the frustrations of urban life in the underdeveloped world, but they failed to provide a sector where the actual builders of the dream city would live. Shacktowns soon developed, and have expanded to accommodate migrants--often displaced, landless cultivators--who continue to be attracted to the city. The conclusion Epstein comes to is that urban squatting will remain a prominent feature of Brasilia, a part of a system deeply rooted in local, national, and global structure and ideology. Until there are revolutionary changes in society, squatting and shantytowns will be a fact of life in the underdeveloped world.

The Modernist City

The Modernist City PDF Author: James Holston
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226349799
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 383

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Book Description
The utopian design and organization of Brasília—the modernist new capital of Brazil—were meant to transform Brazilian society. In this sophisticated, pioneering study of Brasília from its inception in 1957 to the present, James Holston analyzes this attempt to change society by building a new kind of city and the ways in which the paradoxes of constructing an imagined future subvert its utopian premises. Integrating anthropology with methods of analysis from architecture, urban studies, social history, and critical theory, Holston presents a critique of modernism based on a powerfully innovative ethnography of the city.

Seeing Like a State

Seeing Like a State PDF Author: James C. Scott
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300252986
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 462

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Book Description
“One of the most profound and illuminating studies of this century to have been published in recent decades.”—John Gray, New York Times Book Review Hailed as “a magisterial critique of top-down social planning” by the New York Times, this essential work analyzes disasters from Russia to Tanzania to uncover why states so often fail—sometimes catastrophically—in grand efforts to engineer their society or their environment, and uncovers the conditions common to all such planning disasters. “Beautifully written, this book calls into sharp relief the nature of the world we now inhabit.”—New Yorker “A tour de force.”— Charles Tilly, Columbia University

Brasilia

Brasilia PDF Author: René Burri
Publisher: Scheidegger and Spiess
ISBN: 9783858813077
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Last year marked the fiftieth anniversary of the inauguration of Brazil's capital Brasilia. Designed by architects Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer, it has since become one of the most famous and widely studied urban planning projects. Niemeyer's cathedral, Catedral Metropolitana Nossa Senhora Aparecida; his building for the national parliament, the Congresso Nacional; and the city's 707-foot television tower have become icons of twentieth-century architecture. The entire city, marked by its cross-shaped layout and vast open spaces, was named a UNESO World Heritage site in 1987. René Burri, an internationally celebrated Swiss-born photographer and member of the legendary Magnum agency, visited the city for the first time on a long journey around South America in 1958, when most of Brasilia was a vast building site. He returned many times over more than thirty years, documenting the growth and development of this urban utopia. Besides documenting the buildings in various stages of completion, Burri took portraits of Niemeyer and his workers and photographed Brasilia's street scenes and people: workers with their tools, machinery and building materials, pedestrians on the newly finished streets and squares, and aerial views from the air of the city's first slums abutting brand-new blocks of residential buildings. His images capture the strong sense of a new era and a vibrant atmosphere of hard work and strain; they reflect the huge dimensions of the landscape and the great scale of this project and its ambition to design and build a new capital--and fill it with life. Complete with an essay by eminent architect and scholar of architectural history Arthur Rüegg, René Burri. Brasilia marks the city's fiftieth anniversary and allows readers to look at an extraordinary city through the eyes of an exceptional photographer.

Spatial Orders, Social Forms

Spatial Orders, Social Forms PDF Author: Adrian Anagnost
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300254016
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
A fascinating look at modernist urban planning and spatial theories in Brazilian 20th-century art and architecture Exploring the intersections among art, architecture, and urbanism in Brazil from the 1920s through the 1960s, Adrian Anagnost shows how modernity was manifested in locally specific spatial forms linked to Brazil's colonial and imperial past. Discussing the ways artists and architects understood urban planning as a tool to reorganize the world, control human action, and remedy social problems, Anagnost offers a nuanced account of the seeming conflict between modernist aesthetics and a predominately poor and historically disenfranchised urban public, with particular attention to regionalist forms of urban development. Organized as a series of case studies of projects such as Flávio de Carvalho's performative urbanism, the construction of the Ministry of Education and Public Health building, Lina Bo and Pietro Maria Bardi's efforts to modernize Brazilian museums, and Hélio Oiticica's interstitial works, this study is full of groundbreaking insights into the ways that modernist theories of urbanism shaped the art and architecture of 20th-century Brazil.

Master Plans and Encroachments

Master Plans and Encroachments PDF Author: Faiza Moatasim
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 1512825190
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
Among urban designers and municipal officials, the term encroachment is defined as a deviation from the official master plan. But in cities today, such informal modifications to the urban fabric are deeply enmeshed with formal planning procedures. Master Plans and Encroachments examines informality in the high-modernist city of Islamabad as a strategic conformity to official schemes and regulations rather than as a deviation from them. For the new administrative capital of Pakistan designed in 1959 by Greek architect and planner Constantinos A. Doxiadis, Islamabad's master plan offers a clear template of formal urban design within which informal spaces and processes have been articulated. Drawing on deep archival research, wide-ranging interviews, and an array of visual material, including photographs, maps, and architectural drawings, Faiza Moatasim shows how Islamabad's master plan is not simply a blueprint that guides future urban development or makes its violations apparent; it is used by both city officials and citizens to develop informal spaces that accommodate unfulfilled needs and desires of those living and working in the city. Master Plans and Encroachments is the first book that examines the informal practices of both the privileged and the underprivileged. The book highlights how low-, middle-, and upper-income people do not randomly build informal spaces; they strategically use architectural techniques to support their informal claims to space, which are often met with the government's tacit approval. By focusing on those spaces in Islamabad's urban fabric that are not part of its official master plan, the book demonstrates how planning actually works in complex ways.

Urban Design

Urban Design PDF Author: Jon Lang
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317282906
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 555

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Book Description
Urban Design: A Typology of Procedures and Products, 2nd Edition provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to urban design, defining the field and addressing the controversies and goals of urban design. Including over 50 updated international case studies, this new edition presents a three-dimensional model with which to categorize the processes and products involved: product type, paradigm type, and procedural type. The case studies not only illuminate the typology but provide information that designers can use as precedents in their own work. Uniquely, these case study projects are framed by the design paradigm employed, categorized by procedural type instead of instrumental or land use function. The categories used here are Total Urban Design, All-of-a-piece Urban Design, Plug-in Urban Design, and Piece-by-piece Urban Design. Written for both professionals and those encountering urban design in their day-to-day life, Urban Design is an essential introduction to the field and practice, considering the future direction of the field and what can be learned from the past.

Order without Design

Order without Design PDF Author: Alain Bertaud
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262550970
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 429

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Book Description
An argument that operational urban planning can be improved by the application of the tools of urban economics to the design of regulations and infrastructure. Urban planning is a craft learned through practice. Planners make rapid decisions that have an immediate impact on the ground—the width of streets, the minimum size of land parcels, the heights of buildings. The language they use to describe their objectives is qualitative—“sustainable,” “livable,” “resilient”—often with no link to measurable outcomes. Urban economics, on the other hand, is a quantitative science, based on theories, models, and empirical evidence largely developed in academic settings. In this book, the eminent urban planner Alain Bertaud argues that applying the theories of urban economics to the practice of urban planning would greatly improve both the productivity of cities and the welfare of urban citizens. Bertaud explains that markets provide the indispensable mechanism for cities’ development. He cites the experience of cities without markets for land or labor in pre-reform China and Russia; this “urban planners’ dream” created inefficiencies and waste. Drawing on five decades of urban planning experience in forty cities around the world, Bertaud links cities’ productivity to the size of their labor markets; argues that the design of infrastructure and markets can complement each other; examines the spatial distribution of land prices and densities; stresses the importance of mobility and affordability; and critiques the land use regulations in a number of cities that aim at redesigning existing cities instead of just trying to alleviate clear negative externalities. Bertaud concludes by describing the new role that joint teams of urban planners and economists could play to improve the way cities are managed.

Law and the City

Law and the City PDF Author: Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135308934
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
This invaluable guide offers a lateral, critical and often unexpected description of some of the most important cities in the world, each one from a distinctive legal perspective.

The Optic of the State

The Optic of the State PDF Author: Jens Andermann
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN: 0822973308
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
The Optic of the State traces the production of nationalist imaginaries through the public visual representation of modern state formation in Brazil and Argentina. As Jens Andermann reveals, the foundational visions of national heritage, territory, and social and ethnic composition were conceived and implemented, but also disputed and contested, in a complex interplay between government, cultural, and scientific institutions and actors, as a means of propagating political agendas and power throughout the emerging states.The purpose of these imaginaries was to vindicate the political upheavals of the recent past and secure the viability of the newly independent states through a sense of historic destiny and inevitable evolution. The careful presentation of artifacts and spectacles was also aimed abroad in order to win the favor of European imperial powers and thereby acquire a competitive place in the nascent global economy of the late nineteenth century.The Optic of the State offers a fascinating critique of the visual aspects of national mythology. It exposes how scientific and cultural institutions inscribed the state-form in time and space, thus presenting historical processes as natural "givens."