Grid Plan New Towns in the Brazilian Coffee Frontier

Abstract

The choice of the grid as a support for urban form composition is a strategy that has been applied in many situations throughout the world. Similarly, the meanings assigned to these orthogonal urban plans have featured distinct and often conflicting positions. This article explores the creative use of the grid in almost 100 new towns in the last Brazilian coffee frontier in the early twentieth century, and also contributes to a discussion about its potential in urban design. By assuming infinite configurations, the grid plan is an example of human inventiveness sometimes neglected for economic reasons and prejudices.

Notes

^1. To follow this debate, see Rosaneli (2009), ch. 4. Further development is described in Rosaneli (2013).

^2. According to Marcuse, the three basic phases are represented by three types of towns: the ‘pre-capitalist city’, the ‘city of laissez-faire capitalism’, and the ‘city of mature capitalism’. In this scheme, the ‘closed grid’ would often be adopted until the advent of capitalism, and the ‘open grid’ would be a product of capitalism associated with speculation.

^3. Grant makes clear that these categories represent finite times within a given society because the relationship of authority with power is temporally variable, and there is no evolutionary progression between them. Thus, the three categories of society are the ‘diffuse authority’, the ‘centralizing authority’ and the ‘globalizing authority’. Generally, the author shows that although the first uses an ‘equalitarian grid’, the second type of society uses the ‘hierarchical grid’. The societies of ‘globalizing authority’ apply both, according to the purposes of wealth and status.

^4. The rule of thirds is to divide a square or rectangle into nine parts through a grid with two horizontal and two vertical lines in which the four points of their intersections become focus points of privileged attention. This technique is applied to various fields of typography as well as painting and photography.

^5. On the social significance of the built environment, the author relies on the classification established by the architect Amos Rapoport (Rapoport 1988, 1990) and identifies three levels: high, medium, and low. However, the messages are not independent and mutually exclusive, which implies great difficulties in interpretation.

^6. Mascaró focuses on the study of performance between what he calls ‘open grid’ and ‘closed grid’. Although there may be non-orthogonal urban closed grids and orthogonal urban open grids, the issues raised by the author can be used to illustrate the proposition in focus here.

^7. A literal translation of the following: ‘[…] La retícula, más que por un esquema ortogonal, está formada por la intersección de dos series de líneas paralelas e implica una prioridad para el sistema de movimientos públicos. La urbanización reticular maximiza la eficiencia; es lo contrario de una planificación basada en la célula y orientada al bienestar (el individuo, la familia o el barrio).’

^8. A literal translation of the following: ‘A própria fraqueza do plano milésio—sua indiferença aos contornos da terra, às fontes, rios, linhas litorâneas, bosques de árvores—apenas o tornava muito mais admirável, por proporcionar uma base mínima de ordem a um sítio que os colonos não teriam, por muito tempo, os meios de explorar plenamente. Dentro do mais curto prazo possível, tudo era posto sob controle […].’