Brasília, the capital of Brazil, counts on important characteristics not only because of all political issues, because it is the space of great discussions and governmental decisions, but also because it is a space that has a super interesting space organization, a totally planned place and organized for certain purposes.

With this, its history, economy and tourism aspects reflect well the complexity and importance of Capital in the national scenario.

Brasília, the official capital of Brazil

Located in the Central Brazilian Plateau, in the Center-West region of the country, specifically in the Federal District, the capital of Brazil is located in a region that for many years was occupied until the nationalist projects of expansion of occupations in the territory began to create development of those regions of the country that still needed infrastructure and investments, as well as people occupying these regions and helping in development.

In 1960, the Federal Capital of Brazil, Brasília was inaugurated by the then president Juscelino Kubitschek. The construction of all Brasília took about three and a half years and it was built from a modern urban system, different from the architecture patterns of Brazil at the time.

Economy in the Brazilian capital

The particularities of the capital not only stop in its modern urban project, but also extends in every economic context. As a good example of this, the GDP, Gross Domestic Product of the city of Brasília is six times larger than that of Maranhão, which demonstrates all the economic and social development of the Brazilian capital.

Brazil life expectancy.

Thus, as HDI, the Human Development Index of Brasília, which is high, demonstrating that its population presents a good life condition.

Trade in the capital

As early as its inauguration year, in 1960, Brasília already had a well-developed commercial sector, especially in comparison to the rest of the country. This development is also related to the development of the capital of Brazil and the whole region, with the existence of roads and railways, which made production more dynamic and the demography of the region.

Civil construction greatly moved the economy of the capital, a sector that ended up losing its strength in 1990, when services started to stand out in an effective way.

Tourism in the capital of Brazil

Tourism was a driving force in Brazil’s capital economy, because a large part of the people who traveled to Brasilia for business or for political reasons ended up taking advantage of all the tourist services of the place, such as a network of hotels, restaurants or cultural tours and activities .

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All this is related to the options available to visitors in Brasilia, something that goes from an infrastructure to even elements of culture, such as music, dance, fashion, theater, new media, television and many others.

Because of the way in which Brasília was built, the city has several green spaces for rest and visitation such as gardens and lawns. In addition, the climate of the capital contains excellent conditions for visitors to practice various outdoor activities, as there are several seasons marked with a period without rain.

In addition, the city offers tourists a wide variety of cultural activities, with cultural festivals. So, too, how the cuisine is highlighted, another attraction for tourism in Brasilia.

History of Brasília

Construction of Brasilia.
Construction of Brasilia.

In the last census conducted by the IBGE (2000) a population of 2.05 million was indicated, with 1.96 million in the urban area and around 90 thousand in the rural area. The latest projections (IBGE 2004) indicate that the total population is already about 2.36 million inhabitants. It is located in the Center-West Region.

Its Pilot Plan was made by Lúcio Costa and many of its constructions were designed by the renowned architect Oscar Niemeyer.

Brasília is formed by Asa Norte, Asa Sul, Urban Military Sector, Garages and Workshops Sector, Graphic Industries Sector, Camping Area, Monumental Axis, Esplanade of Ministries, South and North Embassies Sector, Vila Planalto, Granja do Torto, Vila Telebrasília, Sectors of Areas Isolated North and sits the three branches of the Federative Republic of Brazil: Executive, Legislative and Judiciary.

According to the geographer Aldo Paviani, Brasília is constituted by the whole urban area of ​​the Federal District, not only the part registered by UNESCO or the central region, since the city is polinucleada, constituted by the several administrative regions, being one of them the Pilot Plan, so that peripheral regions such as Ceilândia and Gama, among others, are linked to the central ones, especially in the question of employment, and can not be understood as autonomous cities.

Naturalness

Brasiliense is the name given to those born in Brasilia. Candango is the term given to those who live in Brasilia, but was not born in the city. Currently it has also been used by some Brazilians to identify themselves. Of African origin, Candango means “ordinary”, “bad”, and was the denomination that was given to the workers who participated in the construction of Brasilia.

Geography

Brasília is located at 15°50”16’ sul, 47°42”48’ west at a height of 1050 to 1200 meters above sea level. Its relief is mostly flat, presenting some slight ripples. The climate is tropical from alternating altitude and altitude, with a wet and rainy summer and a dry winter.

The average annual temperature is 19ºC, reaching 28ºC in the summer and less than 07ºC in the winter mornings, the coldest night of 2006 was on June 9, 3 and 55 in the morning did 7.8 degrees. However, the temperature can vary in the Federal District, because unfortunately the inmet only has register bases in the region of the pilot plan and airport. it is very normal during the winter and fall months, in the Pico do Roncador, in the Sobradinho mountain, to register negative temperatures, since the peak is the highest within the Federal District. It is more than 2,200 meters above sea level.

The cold also predominates in the rural region and in the marges of rivers and lakes. The relative humidity of the air is approximately 70%, and can reach 30% or less in winter. Fauna predominantly typical of cerrado, in some places of the city it is possible to observe species of gymnosperms (pines and also other types of trees coming from another Brazilian flora.

The city was built strategically in the Central Plateau, a vast region without major geographic accidents in the interior of Brazil. Some reasons for its construction are the displacement of the political center of the country out of the Rio-Sao Paulo axis, incentive to the settlement of the almost empty interior of the country and better strategic and military position of the capital.

Brasília has grown a lot since it was built. The city was designed to hold a maximum of 500,000 inhabitants, and today the Federal District, a quadrilateral in the middle of the plateau determined to house the city, already has more than 2.2 million people, with 1.5 million in satellite cities and 600,000 people in Brasilia. The biggest reason for its overpopulation is the fact that its economy is closely linked to public power.

Brasília is the city with one of the largest per-capita incomes in Brazil. One of the chronic problems caused by all this is that the number of cars in Brasilia tends to increase to levels for which the city has not been projected; numerous traffic jams began to appear in the city, and some places became impassable at rush hour. To try to soften this picture, a subway was built, but due to its limited extent and the city’s own growth, did not significantly alter the traffic problem in the city.

History of the Brazilian capital

Plans for the construction of Brasilia.
Plans for the construction of Brasilia.

The first administrative headquarters of Brazil was São Salvador (now Salvador), where it operated from 1578 to 1763, later transferred to Rio de Janeiro. But from the beginning of the colonization the idea of ​​a capital in the interior was always present. Despite the lack of evidence, the originality of the idea is credible to the Marquis of Pombal (1699-1782), who would then want an impregnable capital, not only for the colony, but for the entire Portuguese kingdom.

The patriots of the Mine Conjuration of 1798 intended to install the capital of the country in the city of São João del Rei, while the Northeastern revolutionaries of 1817 imagined for the capital of the republic that they intended to build, a central city, 30 or 40 leagues from the sea.

In 1808, the Portuguese court took refuge in Rio de Janeiro. In 1809, William Pitt, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom recommended, for security reasons, the construction of a New Lisbon in central Brazil.

From 1813, Hipólito José da Costa, in repeated articles of his Correio Braziliense, called for “the interiorization of the capital of Brazil, close to the slopes of the mighty rivers that go north, south and northeast.”

In 1821 José Bonifácio prepared the draft of the demands of the Brazilian bank for the opinion of the committee in charge of drafting additions to the constitution. These claims are believed to have inspired the publication in 1822 of a book under the title of “Addendum to the draft Constitution to make it applicable to the Kingdom of Brazil,” in which it is suggested “in the center of Brazil, between the springs of the confluents of Paraguay and Amazonas, will be founded the capital of this Kingdom, with the denomination of Brasília “.

Esplanada dos Ministérios buildings in Brasilia.
Esplanada dos Ministérios buildings in Brasilia.

José Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva, as soon as he saw the proclamation of Brazil’s independence, offered to the constituent assembly, which he presided at, a memorial, where he demonstrated the advantages “of a new capital of the Empire in the interior of Brazil, in one of the São Francisco River, which may be called Petropolis or Brasília … “.

In the 1852 Legislature the matter was again vented, arousing the attention of the historian Varnhagen, who ardently defended in the compendium “The question of the maritime capital or inland?”. It was the first practical check in place (1877). He then pointed out as a more appropriate place “for the future capital of the Brazilian Union the triangle formed by the Formosa, Feia and Mestre d’Armas lagoons, from which the waters flow to the Amazon, the São Francisco and the Silver!” It determined, thus, eighty-three years in advance, the point where the new capital would be installed.

With the advent of the republic, the old question returns to the fore, always linked to the defense and development of the country, expressly affirming, in art. 3rd of the republican constitution of 1891; “Floriano Peixoto (second president of the republic) gave an objectivity to the text, constituting itself as a member of the Union, in the Central Plateau of the Republic, an area of ​​14,000 km², which will be timely demarcated to establish the future Federal Capital. the Exploratory Commission of the Central Plateau of Brazil (1892), under the direction of the geographer Luís Cruls, who presented a substantial report, delimiting, in the same area indicated by Varnhagen, a rectangular area that became known as the Cruls Rectangle.

For a number of years there would be little talk of the matter, and indeed, for such a bold plan, at that time, it would be necessary to overcome distances with reasonable railroads to the sea, requiring a technology which the State did not have.

Although the constitution of 1934 provided for the internalization of the federal capital and ordered that “after the studies were completed, they will be presented to the Chamber of Deputies, which will take, without loss of time, the necessary measures for change”, followed the constitutional charter of 1937 and such purposes were forgotten. The same text reappeared in art. 4 of the transitional provisions of the 1946 constitution, motivating the committee headed by engineer Poli Coelho, who recognized the excellence of the site already advocated.

Palácio da Alvorada during construction.
Palácio da Alvorada during construction.

Another committee, constituted in 1953 and presided over (in 1954) by General José Pessoa, completing the studies already carried out, outlined the area of ​​future capital between the rivers Preto and Descoberto, and the parallels 15o30 ‘and 16o03’, covering part of the territory of three municipalities (Planaltina, Luziânia and Formosa), which was approved.

On December 9, 1955, the President of the Republic, Nereu Ramos, through decree n. 386, transforms the Commission of Location of the New Capital of Brazil into a Commission for Planning of Construction and of the Change of the Federal Capital. president, from May to September 1956, Dr. Ernesto Silva, who, on September 19, launched the national contest of the Plano Piloto de Brasilia.

In Jataí, at the beginning of his electoral campaign, Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveira had been questioned on the subject of the change of the capital by a popular one.

He replied that the change was a constitutional obligation and would take the first steps to its realization. The president of the republic, shortly after his inauguration in January 1956, affirmed his commitment “to lower the dream of Brasilia reality from the plane of dreams”; On March 12, 1957, the Public Tender Committee was installed for the choice of the Pilot Plan of the city of Brasília.

Aerial view of Brasilia and its wing format.
Aerial view of Brasilia and its wing format.

The architect Oscar Niemeyer was chosen to head the Department of Urban Planning and Architecture, and was asked to open a competition to choose the pilot plan; Thus, in March 1957, a judging commission consisting of Sir William Halford, Stano Papadaki, André Sive, Oscar Niemeyer, Luís Hildebrando Horta Barbosa and Paulo Antunes Ribeiro chose the project of the architect Lúcio Costa.

On October 2, 1956, in the open country, President Kubitschek signed the first act on the site of the future capital, then issued the following proclamation: “From this central plateau of this loneliness that soon will become the brain of the high national decisions, the eyes on the tomorrow of my country and I foresee this dawn with unbreakable faith and a confidence without limits in its great destiny. “

In the same year the construction work began. The Núcleo Bandeirante was formed, where the private initiative was allowed greater freedom and was baptized with the name of “Free City”. Especially from the Northeast, Minas Gerais and Goiás, workers began to arrive. The first candangos.