is located in Brazil in South America, with the world's fifth population and land area; it is also the only BRIC country in the Americas, which is quite competitive. The focus of Brazil's attention does not stop there. They moved their capital from Rio de Janeiro to Brasilia in the 1960s, which is regarded as a typical case in the history of the world's capital migration and is often mentioned in textbooks.
▲ Brasilia is located on the Brazilian plateau in the center of the country, far away from the coastline, with an altitude of 1158 meters. It is the rare high-altitude capital
in the world. This is not the first time Brazil has moved its capital. The earliest capital of Brazil (in the colonial period) was Salvador on the Atlantic coast. After the country was formally established in 1822, the capital was officially recognized as Rio de Janeiro, the same coastal city.
▲The original capital of El Salvador, located in the eastern coastal area
Rio de Janeiro is Brazil's first capital since its independence. Like El Salvador, it is also located on the Atlantic coast and is the second largest city in the country after Sao Paulo. Whether it is in economics, trade or culture, Rio de Janeiro has a veritable absolute strength.
▲Rio de Janeiro has an unparalleled location in Brasilia
is such a city. In the 1960s, more than 130 years after the capital was established, the country made the decision to withdraw the capital and move to Brasilia. . Before that, Brasilia could be said to be an almost deserted area.
▲Brazilian capital changes over the years
moved the capital from the fertile coastal areas to the central plateau. What kind of strategic considerations does the Brazilian government have in doing so? What changes have happened to Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia after the capital was moved? Starting from the country as a whole, did the move this time achieve their original goal?
1. The capital was infected with the "urban disease"
Brazil, in history, has long existed as a colony because of the discovery of the New World in the great nautical era. At the beginning of the 16th century, Portuguese navigators first arrived in Brazil's southeast coast and other places, and took root here. For the next three hundred years, the Portuguese were engaged in redwood logging, gold panning, sugar cane planting, etc., and gradually took this land as a new overseas territory, and the capital was set in the coastal city of El Salvador.
▲The scene of Portuguese explorers landing at the port at the time
Although Brazil was only a fairly common part of the Portuguese colonial empire at the time, it rescued Portugal from fire and water when the sovereign state was in distress. As a member of the anti-French alliance in the Napoleonic Wars, Portugal was attacked by a strong French army in 1807, and the mainland fell completely shortly after. At this critical moment, Queen Maria I of Portugal made the decision to temporarily move the capital. The location is the Brazilian colony in South America.
In order to gain the support of the local people, after arriving at the destination, the queen immediately issued a call for Portugal and Brazil to have equal status, and decided to change the country name to Portugal-Brazil-Algarve United Kingdom, and the capital was moved from El Salvador to the port Rio de Janeiro has more outstanding conditions and richer resources. During the period when Rio de Janeiro was the capital of exile, with the help of Portugal, the first stock exchange, the National Bank and other financial institutions were established there, which laid a good foundation for the smooth operation of the capital market.
▲The national emblem of Portugal-Brazil-Algarve United Kingdom. Although this is only a country that has only existed for 11 years, it does not prevent it from being important to Portugal and Brazil. Even though there has been a honeymoon period of concerted cooperation, the colonial nature cannot change its exploitative nature after all. What I long for is an independent government that can be the master of the country. After experiencing the embarrassing situation of the fall of the mainland, Portugal's national power has declined greatly, and the prestige of colonial hegemony in the past is no longer; and after the government moved back to the mainland, the independence demands of Portuguese Brazil have become more and more obvious.
On September 7, 1822, King Pedro I, the regent from the Portuguese royal family, declared independence and established a brand-new sovereign state—the Brazilian Empire, in the form of lawThe ceremony officially designated Rio de Janeiro as the legal capital of Brazil.
▲In the early days of the empire, Rio de Janeiro had great ambitions for the establishment of the
empire. However, during the period of Pedro II, the regime was quickly overthrown by the Republicans due to poor governance and unpopularity. Since then, Brazil has entered the republic period. Since this time, the construction of the capital has entered a planning decision-making period, and with the original Portugal laying the foundation for Rio de Janeiro, the city has quickly embarked on a period of rapid development.
Since the 1930s, Brazil began its industrialization process. The development history is almost blank, indicating a huge market prospect; the southeast coastal ports are densely populated, creating convenient conditions for foreign exchanges; and the colonial background in the past provides a channel for technical support to a certain extent. Taking advantage of the east wind, the urban construction of Rio de Janeiro ushered in a new opportunity. The city center has become very saturated in the "crazy piling up" of the previous decades. Gradually, the decision-making department shifts its focus to the south and west of the city. A very large metropolitan area is beginning to take shape.
▲The Copacabana Palace Hotel, built in the 1930s, was a representative building in the urban expansion of Rio de Janeiro that year.
tasted the sweetness in the process of industrialization and inspired Brazil to strive towards becoming a more powerful country. Rio de Janeiro is a benchmark they have tried hard to build, and it is also the region with the most concentrated political, economic and cultural resources in the country. Therefore, here, you can see countless people swarming from all over the country every day, one factory after another. Crowded has become the most representative word in the capital.
▲At that time, the construction boom in Brazil attracted many Japanese middle- and lower-class people to emigrate, and now there are more than one million Japanese residents in Brazil. The result of a series of social changes has greatly promoted the urbanization of Rio de Janeiro. However, it cannot be ignored that Rio de Janeiro lacks long-term planning in the process of promoting urbanization; it has not made reasonable judgments on the rational allocation of resources, and there is a mismatch between population and resource reserves.
can see the drawbacks from the most intuitive numbers. In 1900, the population of Rio de Janeiro was only a few hundred thousand. By the middle of the 20th century, the population of Rio had reached 2.5 million; by the 1980s, it had surged to more than 10 million. Not only Rio de Janeiro, but Brazil, including metropolises such as Sao Paulo, also have similar problems. The country’s urbanization rate is showing a rising trend.
▲Compared with developed countries such as the United States and Canada, Brazil’s urbanization started late, but the degree of progress is amazing.
, on the surface, has improved regional competitiveness, but it has brought to Brazil the entire country. The crisis is also significant: a large influx of people from rural areas to cities, especially young people, a sharp decline in young labor is not conducive to the development of basic industries such as agriculture; the gap between the rich and the poor has further widened, and social problems have become acute... so "deformed" Urbanization is the result of blindly pursuing face projects that are inconsistent with its own development stage. This is also known as an "over-urbanization" phenomenon.
▲ View the slums of Rio de Janeiro from a high altitude. Factors such as chaotic planning and lack of management have led to environmental emergency and slums in Brazil’s cities. Starting from the earliest slum-like “fugitives” huts in the middle of the 19th century, more than 7% per year during the Brazilian economic miracle in the 20th century Growth rate of slum population. The problem of the gap between the rich and the poor in the cities has become more and more vigilant among the Brazilian authorities. After national independence, Brazil has seized a golden opportunity for development. Focusing on creating a typical goal, Brazil has put all efforts to build Rio de Janeiro, but has neglected to integrate it with the actual situation of the country. Faced with such a predicament, the plan to move the capital is gradually coming out.
2. Traveling to the plateau
Although Brazil has a large territory, its population distribution is very uneven. The population of the country is mainly distributed in the southeast coastal areas, followed by the Amazon plains, and the high-altitude areas in the center of the Brazilian plateau are sparsely populated. This has a great relationship with topographical factors and economic and social development.
▲BrazilThe plateau covers from north to south, and is the second largest plateau in the world after the Antarctic plateau. After the 1930s, although Brazil seized the opportunity, it greatly improved its regional competitiveness and national strength. Promote. But this kind of transformation also has imbalances between regions, and it is quite significant.
Brazil’s economic take-off is indispensable for the foreign trade of several large ports along the Atlantic coast, so this area is also the most developed in the country; followed by the Amazon Plain and nearby areas, with suitable climate, flat land, and abundant natural resources. The prospects are also considerable.
▲Located in Brazil's largest city on the Atlantic coast-Sao Paulo
, but in the central Brazilian plateau, it has not enjoyed such a good dividend. The plateau has an average elevation of 500-800 meters, and its area accounts for more than 80% of the country's land. The importance is self-evident. However, due to topographical factors and priority development of coastal strategies, the central and western inland areas where the Brazilian Plateau is located have always been slow in economic and social progress.
▲Inherent topographical advantages have made minerals, agriculture and other industries the pillar industries of the Brazilian plateau, but this is also the origin of the disadvantages of local industry simplification.
Since then, the problem of urban overload and uneven development has become Two major problems that the Brazilian government needs to solve urgently. Since the mid-1950s, the voice of moving the capital has intensified among the high-level government and even the civilian class. At that time, the best decision-making direction was considered to be able to bring about a new turn for the economy of the central and western regions while resolving to give full play to the functions of the capital. After some investigations and evaluations, the Brazilian government proposed the central city of Brasilia as the new capital of the country. Before being favored by the country, Brasilia was just an ordinary area with a backward infrastructure level, which also shows that it has a huge room for shaping. Since the construction of the city in 1956 and the official capital establishment in 1960, the Brazilian government invested four years plus hundreds of millions of dollars in capital in the process.
▲ "Build Brasilia as a benchmark for the capital". In the local area, such bold and novel buildings can be seen everywhere. When the new capital of
, which was built in the process of fortification, was announced, there were generally two voices: first, the approvers. They believe that removing the root causes of diseases in metropolises as soon as possible is of great significance to the lives of local people and the healthy operation of the national administrative system. At the same time, the capital's march to the central and western regions will benefit a lot from the in-depth development of the region.
is followed by the opposition. It is believed that the change of the capital will affect the country's long-term focus of policy on the southeast coast. In addition, the huge construction cost is a loss of national finance.
But no matter how many voices are, relocation is already an unchangeable trend, and it is regarded by the Brazilian government as a century-old project. In terms of design, they strive for excellence to avoid repeating the mistakes of Rio de Janeiro: in terms of population, the planned capacity is 500,000; the construction of multiple satellite cities will disperse the pressure of the city center; the location of residential areas, commercial areas and industrial areas shall be specified, and some The height limit of buildings in the area...
▲The population of Brasilia has exceeded 2 million, far exceeding the initial expected level. To a certain extent, it has reached the expected siphon effect.
When the double crisis became prominent, the Brazilian government resolutely did it. The decision to move the capital out. It is hoped that through the opportunity of moving the capital, the level of administrative management and economic and social development will be brought to a new height. Brasilia has been the capital of Brazil for decades, and there have been divergent opinions about its highlights and criticisms.
3. Both achievements and critics
The level of urban construction in Brasília is absolutely epoch-making for the history of the country’s urban development: the industry’s most authoritative team of experts continues to conduct process evaluation and adjustments; public The building follows the modernist characteristics as much as possible, highlighting the sense of science and technology and the atmosphere of the times; the whole area is divided into 31 areas in a regular manner, and the satellite city is continuously expanded.
Brasília's excellence has finally won it the honorary title of "City of Design" awarded by UNESCO.
▲A high-altitude bird's-eye view of the city of Brasilia taken by satellites from
After moving the capital to the present, Brasilia has existed as the capital for decades, and the results achieved during this period are also quite impressive: its emergence has filled the gaps in large cities in the central and western regions and created immeasurable employment opportunities; regional economic levels Rapidly rising, Brasilia is currently the third largest city in the country in terms of total GDP, and its per capita GDP has reached the highest value in the entire Latin American region; the road network to all parts of the country is nearly complete, and emerging transportation facilities such as subways and high-speed rail are in Plan the stage of completion or put on the agenda.
▲Brazil's GDP per capita rankings all over Brazil, Brasilia ranks first in the country.
achievement is one aspect, but the move to the capital has also caused considerable controversy. First of all, during the construction of Brasilia, the state allocated huge sums of money from public finances as support. But the high price has also triggered crises such as inflation and soaring deficits. The people complained for a while, thinking that the government was too extravagant and wasteful. This is also widely regarded as an important incentive for Brazil's 1964 military coup.
▲ The people of Sao Paulo gathered in the church square to demand that the government "return the government to the people." Brazil had a period of dictatorship due to a military coup d’état, and Brazil had a period of dictatorship. Secondly, although the economic level of the new capital has been greatly improved, such results are limited to Brasilia and surrounding satellite cities. As far as the inland regions such as the central and western regions of Brazil are concerned, they have not really enjoyed the actual development dividend, and the economy and society are still stagnant at a relatively backward level.
▲The unemployment rate in Goiás State, where Brasilia is located, is still at a high level, and the numerical changes are quite unstable.
The move to Brazil is based on the urgency of the future of the region and the country. Although critical voices still exist, judging from the overall situation, it is still a decision that cannot be erased.
Author: Chen complementary
editor: Thomas (Don)
