Brasília: do desenho ‘utópico’ de cidade ‘harmoniosa’ ao pesadelo de metrópole desigual e segregadora de ‘periferias’

This article analyses the project and inaugural design of Brasilia as a new, harmonious and cohesive city from a critical perspective, with a view to the process of removal and/or expulsion from the Pilot Plan not only of indigenous people but also of other classes and marginalized ethnic-racial groups, namely migrant workers from other states, real material workers from the monumental city, giving rise to the formation of ‘disorderly’ peripheral cities, without adequate transportation, minimal infrastructure and equipment, and with precarious housing conditions. The project of the city of Brasilia as the new capital of Brazil, allegedly built to integrate the Midwest with the coast and boost development, corresponded to the creation of conditions for a new phase of agroindustrial expansionand capitalist modernization of the country but implying the reproduction of socio-spatial inequalities, which requires inquiring about the exogenous and endogenous factors of the processes of dependence, subordination and socio-spatial segregation of satellite cities and their residents.