Modernization and Urban Planning in 19th-Century Brazil

Abstract

THE 19TH CENTURY is a key period in Brazilian history. In addition to witnessing the inauguration of independent political life, it gave rise to several prominent initiatives affecting the existing spatial forms. Contemporary Brazilian experience is marked by an effort to develop a comprehensive nationwide urban policy, with heavy emphasis on metropolitan areas (Schmidt 1979). Considering the policies developed in the last century in the course of a general drive towards the modernization of a country emerging from colonialism under mercantile capitalism, the analyst can detect some resemblances between past and present. This historical continuity has been effected by private and public actors responding to incentives created by international economic forces and national interests. As Gardner (1972) has acutely observed, perhaps more apparent than anything else in this long process is the fact that "the determination to settle the interior amounts to a national passion." Seeking to grasp the meaning of this movement, Morse (1971, 1975) has called attention to the fact that urbanization in countries like Brazil is closely associated with the development of regional centers of economic growth. In a comparison of the development of two core industrial centers of the contemporary capitalist world, Manchester and Sao Paulo, Roberts (1978) underlines the fact that the Brazilian city contrasts sharply with Manchester because of two consequences of urbanization-cum-immigration: the development of an efficient state apparatus and a class structure marked by an alliance between industrialists and landowners and a lack of solidarity within the working class. Brazilian history was not marked by the existence of urban forms of civilization, as were Mexico, Peru, and other areas of Latin America with sophisticated pre-Columbian cultures (Hardoy 1964), until the massive exploitation of the gold mines of Minas Gerais during the 18th century. Therefore, the experience of Mexico under the Bourbons, which included considerable decentralization of the economy and an effort to make New Spain the world's largest producer of silver, was not to be faced by Brazil until later (Moreno Toscano and Florescano 1976). The Mexican state played a prominent role in centralizing control over economic activities and extending lines of production throughout the interior. Rather than being only a reaction to the "corporatism" favored by the Habsburgs, the reform undertaken by the Bourbons was designed to increase mining output and "to fragment the Viceroy's power by strengthening Royal power through the creation of a select group of administrators to be chosen in Spain" (Moreno Toscano and Florescano 1976:72, my translation). Brazilian modernization and urbanization, based on the construction of new spatial forms, must be seen as a gigantic attempt to realize late-developmental goals. In this framework, the creation of a built environment2 befitting the modernized-society-to-come took a central place, and throughout this process the state played a salient role. Three intertwined issues become apparent through examination of the historical evolution of urbanization in Brazil in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: (1) the implications of public works projects for the shaping and occupation of the country; (2) the key role played by the state, as manager of the social capital, in the construction of the built environment; and (3) the gradual emergence of the issue of uneven regional development through the unfolding of contradictions generated by the establishment of the railway network in Sao Paulo, the construction of Belo Horizonte as capital of Minas Gerais, and the decision to build a new capital at Brasilia.