3D reconstruction of the Brasilia madness

A beautiful 3D reconstruction of the Brasilia madness. It is a shame the video forgot about the men and women who built the city, but it's still a beautiful tribute to the work of Oscar Niemeyer and Lucio Costa.

Construção de Brasília em animação 3D - by Unloop from Unloop on Vimeo.
 

Brasilia, 32 years of urban expansion

Google Earth Engine has released new data for their project Timelapse, which combines over 5 million satellite images acquired over the past three decades and allows for a zoomable video of land transformations at a global scale. You can play around  procrastinate  on their website zooming in different areas. I find Dubai and Las Vegas particularly interesting. There is a good playlist on Youtube!

This is the timelapse of Brasilia (Federal District), my hometown. During this period between 1984 and 2016, the population of Brasilia went from approx. 1.2 million to 2.9 million. The video shows some very interesting transformations including the expansion of poor settlements largely undeserved by urban infra-structure in the south and southwest of the city, but also some illegal occupations of protected areas by middle- and high-income gated communities in the east and north-east parts of the city.

Urban Picture

This is a picture of Vila Amaury, a temporary village of 16,000 people in Brasilia - Brazil. Most of those people were construction workers who built public buildings in the city, including some ministries and the National Congress, the tall building you see in the picture. (ht Telmo Ribeiro)

The village was later covered by the water when the Paranoá River was dammed to create an artificial lake.

credit: Public Archives of the Federal District, via Histórias de Brasília

Car-centric Brasilia

Brasilia is great for cars, but less so for people.

Tesourinhas de Brasília from Drone Brasília on Vimeo.

Assorted links

1. High resolution maps of urban perception of safety (via C Hidalgo)
   
   
2. The transformation of Colombia’s second city will be hard to copy
   
   
3. A peculiar photo session in Brasilia
   
   
4. Demography's 50th Anniversary! (via Bernarado Lanza)
   
   
5. Oxford University launches new online course on International Labour Migration: Economics, Politics and Ethics
   
   
6. How the Recession Reshaped the US Economy, in 255 Charts (in one chart)
   
   
7. 7 Hand Gestures That Make You Look Like a Real Intellectual (via Vinicius Netto) - I loved the 'The Tiny Dialectic' one.
   
   
8. Map Compare: a useful tool to compare basemaps and cartogrphic styles
   
   
9. Metions to equality, fairness, freedom and liberty in the Democratic and Republican platforms since 1948 

Rise in Transport Costs in Brazil

In June 2013, the rise in Bus fares were the spark for huge protests in more than 80 cities in Brazil. In this report (published in Portuguese last year) we analyze some of the main pricing and funding issues of public transport in Brazil. The rise in transport costs in the country is just of them, and in which govermental policies have played an important role subsidizing gasoline consumption and the purchase of new cars.

For more details and a further discussion on this issue, you may read the report here.

And for now, here are some figures and a chart showing the increase in inflation and its transport components between 2000 and 2012 for the largest Brazilian metropolitan areas.

IPCA (Inflation): 125%

Bus fares: 192%

Gasoline: 122%

Owning a vehicle: 44%

[click on the image to enlarge it]

Label Translation:

• IPCA = consumer price index
• Tarifa de ônibus = Bus fare
• Tarifa de Metro = Subway fare
• Gasolia = Gasoline
• Veículo próprio = Owning a vehicle (car or motocycle), including purchase and maintenance expenses.

Urban Picture

Esplanada dos Ministérios Construction site in Brasilia, Brazil (1958)

by Marcel Gautherot

More here and here.

Thanks T de Aragão for sharing.

"Thinking in terms of space rather than place"

A few comments by Chris Bertram (Crooked Timber) on Brasília (ht Pedro Souza)

"As a new city, built on the red highland earth in the 1950s, Brasilia incorporates all the best town-planning theory of that era. [...] Apparently, nobody had the idea that the people staying in hotels might want to see anything other than more hotels …"

ps. The title of this post is actually a quote by Robert Hughes.

• Related Link: Brasília From Above (and here)
  
• Related Image: Brasília's Weird Traffic System

Urban Picture

Brasília from above (via emBrasilia)

by the way, I’m finally back to Brasília  and I'm not sure if I like it 

Soundtrack:  retrato pra iá iá

52th Birthday

Nice Google's tribute to the 52th Birthday of Brasilia.

Photos by João Campello

Soundtrack: Eduardo e Monica

Urban Picture

Brasília from above (Beautiful microchip appearance. It is not really functional though ...)

[Image Credit: emBrasília]

soundtrack: Ray

Urban Picture: Weird Traffic System

Just a fast post today: 

Brasília's Weird Traffic System

(via 9gag)

soundtrack: Ray

off-topic: Brasília From Above

This is not much compared to the BBC series Britain From Above.... but it's still Brasília !

(thanks Paulo Afonso Rheingantz for the tip)

The death of Modern Architecture(?)

Is Modern architecture dead?

Pratik Mhatre (Urban Planning Blog) posted the trailer for the documentary film "The Pruitt-Igoe Myth: an Urban History" . Here is the Trailler (and the documentary official website):

Trailer – The Pruitt-Igoe Myth: an Urban History from the Pruitt-Igoe Myth on Vimeo.

I didn't know of the existence of Pruitt–Igoe until this post. And now, thanks to wikipedia, I know that Pruitt–Igoe

• "was a large urban housing project first occupied in 1954 and completed in 1955 in the U.S. city of St. Louis, Missouri".
• "The complex was designed by architect Minoru Yamasaki, who also designed the World Trade Center towers."
• Furthermore, "The Pruitt–Igoe housing project was one of the first demolitions of modernist architecture and its destruction was claimed by postmodern architectural historian Charles Jencks to mark 'the day Modern architecture died'."

One particular point caught my attention: Pruitt–Igoe's collapse seems to be attributed exclusively to its modernist architecture. Isn't a too simplistic statement? Brasilia (a remarkable urban experiment) is doing fine so far (?is it?).

What could help us understand the different fates (failure and success) faced by modernist urban planning experiences ? [urban scale? capita income, and other sociodemographic characteristics?....]

These are some photos of Pruitt–Igoe back then.

[photo credit: Legmountain]

[photo credit: Wikipedia]

[photo credit: Wikipedia]

a few photos of Brasilia :

[photo credit: designKULTUR]

[photo credit: Prof. Frederico Holanda]

[photo credit: urbanism.org]

Time Lapse + Tilt Shift Brasília DF - Brazil

The "Central Bus Station" of Brasília (DF - Brazil) captured in a pretty TimeLapse. (mandatory suggestion of my girlfriend! Thanks cute!)

Teste Time Lapse + Tilt Shift (Brasília DF - Brazil) from FotoNoiva /Caviccioli - Delfini on Vimeo.