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Abstract
From a panoramic and comparative perspective, the article aims at reviewing the framework of regional and national planning in Brasília and Venezuela's Ciudad Guayana, while exploring their relationship with political and economic goals in the heyday of Latin America's modernism and desarrollismo (developmentalism). Although these projects have often been addressed in terms of their architectural value and urban design, this article's approach stresses their relationship, on the one hand, with national processes of industrialization and urbanization, and on the other, with regional models of development, already tested on the continent. Such an approach requires, firstly, the contextualization of Latin America's growing corporate states after the Second World War, while exploring the relationship with national apparatuses of North American-orientated planeamiento that progressively replaced the urbanismo fostered by European traditions since the 1920s. The case of Brasília is explained through the image of its original sin, in the sense that the city did not result from proper regional planning, a shortcoming that eventually reduced its capacity for adapting new functions and settlements to the original Pilot Plan. Ciudad Guayana's main hindrance was instead its feet of clay; in addition to the weakness of the industrial activity in the long term, both Puerto Ordaz and San Félix were remotely planned, without much attention paid to their integration and the absorption of the informal population.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributors
Arturo Almandoz (Caracas, 1960) is Urbanist cum laude (Universidad Simón Bolívar, USB, Caracas, 1982). He has an Urban Technician Diploma (Instituto Nacional de Administración Pública, INAP, Madrid, 1988), MPhil in Philosophy (USB, Caracas, 1992), Ph.D. in Housing and Urbanism (Architectural Association School of Architecture, Open University, London, 1996) and Postdoctoral at Centro de Investigaciones Posdoctorales (Cipost), Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV, Caracas, 2003–2004). He was Professor at the Department of Urban Planning, where he was Co-ordinator of the Urbanism programme (1996–1998). He is Professor Adjunct, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (PUC) since 2009. In addition to more than 50 articles in specialized journals, he has published 15 books in Spanish about the emergence of modern urbanism and metropolitan culture in Venezuela, Latin America and abroad, which have won local, national and international awards. The most recent one is Modernización urbana en América Latina. De las grandes aldeas a las metropolis masificadas (Santiago: IEUT, Universidad Católica, 2013). Having collaborated in 20 other books and 3 encyclopaedias, Professor Almandoz is the editor of Planning Latin America's Capital Cities, 1850–1950 (London and New York: Routledge, 2002; 2010) and Caracas, de la metropolis súbita a la meca roja (2012). Professor Almandoz has been lecturer or speaker at more than 100 events worldwide, as well as guest professor in graduate programmes at universities in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Finland, the UK and Venezuela. He has belonged to the editorial boards of several periodicals in Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Spain, UK, USA and Venezuela, where he was Director of the Argos journal (2006–2008). His current research lines include urban cultural history, modernization and urban historiography in Latin America. His book Modernization, Urbanization and Development in Latin America, 1900s-2000s is to be published by Routledge in 2014, while he translates into English part of Karl Brunner's Manual de Urbanismo (1939–1940). He also writes chronicles about metropolises, which have been compiled in Crónicas desde San Bernardino (2011) and Regreso de las metropolis (2013).
Notes
† Preliminary versions of this article were presented at the Fourteenth National Conference on Planning History of the Society of the American City and Regional Planning History (Baltimore, November 2011); International Seminar, ‘Shaping the Twentieth Century City. Chapters of Latin America's Urban Agenda’, Pontificia Universidad Católica (PUC) de Chile (Santiago, October 2012). The article is drawn from the research project about ‘Latin America's urban modernization, 1850-2000’, developed by the author with the sponsorship of the Decanato de Investigación y Desarrollo (DID), USB and the Instituto de Estudios Urbanos y Territoriales (IEUT), PUC.
1. Combining elements of economic and political history with sociological descriptions, Rostow studied and grouped the cases of ‘traditional societies’, which, from the late eighteenth century onwards in England, had modernized their agrarian and industrial sectors.
2. As the term came to be popularized in Spanish and Portuguese.
3. Rostow, Stages, 10–12.
4. Reissman, Urban Process; Davis, “La urbanización.” Such categories were then applied in different contexts, from Taiwan and South Korea, via India and Turkey, through most of Latin America.
5. Williamson, Penguin History, 334–5.
6. United Nations, Urbanizing World, 47 and Harris, The Growth, 18.
7. Almandoz, Modernization, Urbanization and Development, 88–90.
8. Trained as an economist, Raúl Prebisch (1901–1986) was former Director General of Argentina's Central Bank.
9. Williamson, Penguin History, 339. The exhaustion of the ISI determined the excessive urbanization:
By the end of the 1950s the more advanced countries had reached the limit of their internal market in what is generally known as the ‘easy’ phase of import substitution: the production of non-durable consumer goods such as textiles and leatherware. Since much manufactures are labour-intensive and low-technology, factories were able to absorb the migrants from the countryside fairly easily while the internal market was still expanding. (Williamson, Penguin History)
10. Montoya, Cambio urbano, 28.
11. Roberts, Cities of Peasants, 71.
12. Taffet, Foreign Aid. Other beneficiaries were the governments of Arturo Frondizi (1958–1962) in Argentina; Fernando Belaúnde Terry (1963–1968) in Peru; Eduardo Frei (1964–1970) in Chile; and, especially, Alberto Lleras Camargo (1958–1962) and Carlos Lleras Restrepo (1966–1970) in Colombia.
13. Edwards, Populismo o mercados, 70.
14. The explanation of why maturity was not attained in Latin American nations after several decades of alleged despegues is very complex (Almandoz, Modernization, Urbanization and Development, 86–99). As Rostow observes, once the take-off has occurred, there were many decisions to take and balances to maintain regarding the priorities of development. For instance, the diffusion of modern technology and the increase in growth rate, on one hand, and rising per capita consumption, on the other, or the increase on social welfare expenses without excessive growth in state bureaucracy, are typical obstacles on the path to development. On top of that, scenarios are made more complex by the particular political and social situations that each country must face (Rostow, Stages, 14–16), jointly with the aforementioned exhaustion of the ISI.
15. Taylor, Urban Planning Theory, 59–91. It is not coincidental that the term urbanismo, adopted during the 1920s and 1930s in Latin America, tended to be replaced, after the Second World War, by planificación or planeamiento in Spanish, and by planejamento in Portuguese, while the focus of the discipline enlarged from the city to the region. Since they are often used as mere synonyms, the seeming duplicity can be attributed to a vocabulary that, in this case, is richer in Spanish and Portuguese than in English. In the latter, urbanism did not used to have a disciplinary connotation alternative to British town planning or American urban planning – a situation that would change with postmodernism. There actually are conceptual and historical nuances associated with each term. Unlike French urbanisme, Italian urbanistica and German Städtebau, Anglo-Saxon town planning stressed systemic, procedural and/or political values, relying for that purpose on social sciences and their technical apparatuses instead of mere design, just to sum up the widespread orientation of planning in the mid-twentieth century (Hebbert, “Town Planning Versus Urbanismo,” for instance).
16. Almandoz, “From Urban to Regional.”
17. Gomes and Huapaya, “Diálogos modernistas,” 153–4.
18. Almandoz, “Urbanization and Urbanism,” 31–9.
19. Almandoz, Modernization, Urbanization and Development, 133–5.
20. Feldman, “As Comissões de Planos” and Pereira, “Notas sobre Urbanismo.”
21. Local planning was later strengthened with the Rio-based Instituto Brasileiro de Assistência aos Municipios (IBAM, Brazilian Institute for Municipal Assistance, 1946), which counted on the support of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Feldman, Planejamento e zoneamento, 46–7.
22. Ibid., 20–8, 46–55.
23. Maia, Estudo de um plano and Anelli, Plano e conformação, 20–1.
24. Anelli, Plano e conformação, 22–3.
25. Lamparelli, “Louis-Joseph Lebret” and Leme, “A formação do pensamento,” 26.
26. Gomes, “Cultura urbanística,” 25.
27. Perroux, “Note sur la notion.”
28. Lamparelli, “Louis-Joseph Lebret.”
29. Gomes, “Cultura urbanística.”
30. Fraser, Building the New World, 207.
31. Gomes and Huapaya, “Diálogos modernistas,” 161.
32. There were also regional considerations in TPA's contract for Chimbote, commissioned in 1948 by Peru's Oficina Nacional de Planeamiento Urbano (ONPU, National Bureau of Urban Planning) and the Corporación Peruana de Santa (Santa's Peruvian Corporation). Huapaya, “A construção do Peru.”
33. González, “Modernidades alternas del urbanismo,” 50–9.
34. Fossi, “Desarrollo urbano y vivienda,” 110–13.
35. Almandoz, Urbanismo europeo en Caracas, 323–39, 348–5.
36. Rotival, “Planification et urbanisme,” 42.
37. Violich, Cities of Latin America, 158, 169, 173.
38. Violich, “Caracas,” 285.
39. Almandoz, “Modernidad urbanística” and Urbanismo europeo en Caracas, 346–50.
40. Fossi, “Desarrollo urbano y vivienda,” 110–13.
41. Gomes, “Cultura urbanística,” 19.
42. Almandoz, Modernization, Urbanization and Development, 133–5 and Storper, “La industrialización.”
43. del Priore and Venancio, Uma breve história, 263–4.
44. Schneeberger, Minimanual compacto, 319–20.
45. Ibid., 321–3.
46. Faría and Carpintero, “Brasília,” 108, 126.
47. Kubitschek quoted in Evenson, “Brasília,” 472.
48. Evenson, “Brasília,” 472.
49. Almandoz, Modernización urbana, 287–8.
50. Batista et al., “Brasília,” 164–5 and Faría and Carpintero, “Brasília,” 106.
51. Evenson, “Brasília,” 473.
52. Including that of the new town of Vera Cruz, by Raul de Penna Firme, Roberto Lacombe and José de Oliveira Reis. Faría and Carpintero, “Brasília,” 121–3.
53. Batista et al., “Brasília,” 166.
54. Faría and Carpintero, “Brasília,” 125.
55. Urban, Tower and Slab, 80 and Evenson, “Brasília,” 476–7. Niemeyer had worked for the lakefront district of Pampulha while Kubitschek was mayor of Belo Horizonte.
56. Fraser, Building the New World, 227, 235 and Urban, Tower and Slab, 79–88.
57. Evenson, “Brasília,” 476.
58. Freyre, Brasis, Brasil, Brasília, 156.
59. Costa quoted in Evenson, “Brasília,” 481 and Fraser, Building the New World, 220–30.
60. Evenson, “Brasília,” 475.
61. Ibid., 477.
62. Moraes, Território e história, 99.
63. Evenson, “Brasília,” 485.
64. Batista et al., “Brasília,” 171–2.
65. Evenson, “Brasília,” 489–91.
66. Faría and Carpintero, “Brasília,” 224–5.
67. Batista et al., “Brasília,” 175–6 and Faría and Carpintero, “Brasília,” 136–7.
68. Fraser, Building the New World, 216.
69. Almandoz, Modernization, Urbanization and Development, 116–17.
70. Izaguirre, Ciudad Guayana, 9, 14, 24.
71. Friedmann, Regional Development Policy and Perroux, “Note sur la notion.”
72. Rodwin, “Ciudad Guayana,” 118.
73. Negrón, La cosa humana, 261.
74. Decree 492, 30 December 1958, quoted in Fossi, “Desarrollo urbano y vivienda,” 113.
75. Fossi, “Desarrollo urbano y vivienda,” 113.
76. Izaguirre, Ciudad Guayana, 17–22, 46.
77. Almandoz, Modernization, Urbanization and Development, 133–4.
78. Hall, Urban and Regional Planning, 74–6.
79. Rodwin, British New Towns, 57–61.
80. Rodwin, “Ciudad Guayana,” 126–7.
81. Friedmann and Frieden, “Regional Planning.”
82. Rodwin, “Ciudad Guayana,” 115–16.
83. See, for instance, Urban, Tower and Slab, 92–8.
84. Rodwin, “Ciudad Guayana,” 117 (my translation from Spanish).
85. Peattie, The View from the Barrio, 3.
86. Ibid., 12–13.
87. Izaguirre, Ciudad Guayana, 53.
88. Ibid., 68, 96.
89. Ibid., 89, 114, 122.
90. Negrón, Ciudad y modernidad, 1936-2000, 184, 186 and Rodwin, “Ciudad Guayana,” 119.
91. Negrón, Ciudad y modernidad, 1936-2000, 190.
92. Rodwin, “Ciudad Guayana,” 133 (my translation from Spanish).
93. Evenson, “Brasília,” 472.
94. Izaguirre, Ciudad Guayana, 119–23.