O Brasil nasceu urbano

THE CITY IN BRAZIL BRAZIL WAS BORN URBAN "THE DISCOVERING OF BRAZIL" HUMBERTO MAURO When Portugal and Spain decided to build urban centers in the New World, they had at their disposal two very distinct city models: on the one hand, the royal city, on the other, the ideal city. “O MIÚDO DA BICA” CONSTANTINO ESTEVES When I say real city, I mean the city as it really were in Iberia, cities ​built under the Arab stream, cities ​of Muslim and medieval shape and character. And when I say ideal city, I mean the geometric city as thought, or envisioned, from the Roman writings of Vitruvius and the Italian Renaissance's architects and urbanists.

Between these two city models, the Muslim and the Renaissance's, the Portuguese and Spanish Crowns made their choice fall on the second model. They chose the Atlantic projection of the Renaissance project. They'd not reproduce the drawings, the peninsular urban poles.

Spanish and Portuguese left to transplant to the Americas their languages, cultures, institutions, but not their cities. Regular outlines have existed since Antiquity. Or when they're founded cities or when they're rebuilt cities.

Mileto, in Greece, has been remade with a grid, then Ephesus, Pergamon and others as well. In China, there were cities of this sort, also born from this circumstance of being foundational cities, they're founded at a given time, needed to be occupied quickly, for the city is in danger of having an early death if it doesn't consolidate in a short span of time. And what cities were these popping out of nowhere in the Americas?

"LES GRANDES VILLES DU MONDE: MEXICO" INSTITUT NATIONAL DE LÁUDIOVISUEL They're founding cities, of political decision, let's make a new capital. It isn't a city born from a road junction or a river transposition, where settlement forms nearby and all this stuff. It's a circumstance of that occupation.

Moreover, it's also a way of occupying, with very few people, for the invaders were numerically very small, a territory that had great cities, already, Mexico City was an immense city. So, these incoming invaders needed to show some… condition, if not of superiority, at least of equality or capacity of occupation this territory, with a scheme, which is a very accessible, very rational scheme, for really consolidating this occupation. "CITY OF SALVADOR" HUMBERTO MAURO See the example of city of Salvador of Bahia de Todos os Santos.

It's entirely designed in Portugal, on Lisbon drawing boards, by Miguel de Arruda, chief architect of the king. Scholars remember that the layout of the new city was an exercise in geometry and symmetry. Who walks by the plot matrix of the city realizes that there's a center, grid-grained, trying to adapt to the topography.

Anyway, it's a board-like layout. But this geometric configuration wasn’t maintained, Salvador grew in a totally organic undisciplined, winding way, over a very rugged terrain. The clarity of geometry has given way to the tangle, to the unruly yoke of shade and light, to the organic variations.

And the same happened to Rio de Janeiro. So, these first cities of ours put aside the ideal, Renaissance model, to set themselves up as Muslim cities, in the standard of Europe's Portuguese cities. "THE MAN AND THE CITY: LISBON" PEDRO CASTRO If you asked anyone in the 17th century if they're Brazilians, they'd possibly say they weren't, that they're Portuguese.

When colonization takes place here, in what's previously called Brazil, what people believed to be doing was expanding Portugal here in America, what we call Portuguese America. It's even more than the idea of Portugal's influence in urbanizing, were the Portuguese institutions, it's justice, religion, employment relationships being expanded to here, to this territory. "THE CROWN PRINCE OF ITALY BRAZILIAN LANDS" In this sense, the Brazilian city can be considered a Portuguese city in the first centuries.

"THE PICTURESQUE BRAZIL" CORNÉLIO PIRES The Portuguese urbanism isn't a regular one, it's a regulated one. What's regulated urbanism? There was, in those instructions for the foundation of a city, a series of standards, I mean, there was regulation, for example, the right street.

It's a structuring street of the city. The distinction of streets and alleyways is another very typical element of differentiated functions. The street is of some importance, the alleyway, usually, is an alley.

The Portuguese colonies' block it isn't that square of the Hispanic site, it's a block of lots… long ones, usually of a 7-meter-wide front. Also, there are two differentiated squares. The civil power square, city hall, the government, all this… and the religious power one.

The Crown, by donating, as with Salvador or other cities' case, large areas for convents to set up, Saint Benedict in one direction, Convento do Carmo in the other, it's already setting guidelines for the city expansion. It's neither the organic city, as if it were something natural, spontaneous, nor the foundation city, all… geometric, regularized… "SERIAL VIEWS OF FRIO-OUTTAKES" UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA Said the debate, the debate that said the Portuguese city was sloppy, improvised, in opposition to the city in Spanish America, which would've been a more regulated one, with a most present State. I particularly disagree that… the Brazilian city has been a sloppy one, an improvised one.

We see in the maps, we see by correspondence of the chambers, we see the State knew exactly where people were living. In some cases, two parishes disputed, inch by inch, a set of houses in the middle of the jungle, for it meant those people'd throw parties there, in their chapel, in their church, not the other one, that they'd die there, be baptized there, all this meant revenue for the church, which until, the 18th century, was also revenue for the Portugal. The Portuguese institutions are very visible here.

From the 18th century onwards, the Portuguese built many regularly outlined cities in Brazil, which basically correspond to all that conquest to the west. From the meridian of Tordesillas, which crossed Laguna and stuff, going practically to the Andes. Which was an achievement.

An achievement obtained on the basis of marking territory. They'd get there and fill a fortress, a village, which later… Portuguese diplomacy succeeded in incorporating all that territory. If it's done a reading of the city, the territory, simply from its shape, it looks sloppy, but, if you look at it from the administrative aspects and how the Portuguese State wanted to control that space, which was later called Brazil, we're going to tell an entirely different story of the presence of the State.

The Portuguese developed a very sophisticated art of achieving, with a very small population, domination of a very large, very significant territory. The idea that every Portuguese, every free man and, preferably, every landowner was, somehow, a representative of the Portuguese State here. This brought about the possibility of a much significant expansion of Portuguese institutions here in America, like, for example, the City Councils, it also caused a set of problems which we live with to this day, which is, in many cases, a lack of definition of of limits and boundaries between what's public and what's private.

"THE BRAZILIAN PEOPLE" ISA GRINSPUM FERRAZ In the Old World, the agricultural revolution created the city. Here, on the contrary, it's city that created the field. First, we had urban points and later the cane fields.

There, where there used to be a soccer field. There, in that place… every time mangoes would fall off that leafy tree… and cast a certain shade of yellow. This place doesn't exist in the city's present anymore, but it exists so clearly for those who knew it, through time, a certain landscape, a certain place, it's also impregnated with this very peculiar circumstance that, when speaking of cities, I must talk about their people.

And how these people have settled there, how these people created a logic of living, what is it that gives the texture of culture. Articulating the present landscape in these overlapping landscapes, that fade, that conflict… it seems one of the most charming ways of realizing ourselves… in the possible records of what the landscapes leave as material traces… of the marks of our ways of being in those places. The cities… like those circumstances in space which shelter a certain way of living, although today they're crossed by an excess of contact and contamination by a landscape that isn't even common… it'll necessarily keep, even if it's in a kind of diction, an accent, a peculiarity that always makes us recognize them… and distinguish them from each other.

"NAZARÉ, PESCADORES'S BEACH" JOSÉ LEITÃO DE BARROS Taking the boat, going to Vila Abraão… still sighting Lisbon… eating, in Carvoeira, the fish that fisherman's left there… and hasn't been moved to afar yet… or, in the country's south, when sausages, on a road turn, is announced… and you allow yourself to enter that landscape too, for that taste too, for that way of welcoming you… also, for that time peculiar to the time of places. I think the cities have personality, Although we already have, especially today, fabrics or pieces of the city that are very crossed by a universal field. Oh wind that sings in the leaves on top of the coconut grove Oh wind that ripples the waters I've never longed like this before Bring me good news of that land every morning And throw a flower on the lap of a brunette from Itapoã Coconut tree of Itapoã, Coconut tree Sand of Itapoã, sand Brunette of Itapoã, brunette Longing for Itapoã leave me Leave me.

Leave me.