When Brasília was inaugurated as Brazil's new capital, in 1960, the state of Guanabara was created, and the city of Rio became its capital. Being a state meant having municipal and state resources capable of solving the shortcomings of the former capital, which had just kept piling up. But there were new problems, besides the lack of water and sanitation. The population kept growing, as did the number of automobiles, and the streets couldn't sustain the increase in traffic.
The hills were systematically occupied by people who came from the countryside to the city, and the favelas spread at such a speed that, by 1960, their population already accounted for 11% of a total of 3.8 million residents.
Carlos Lacerda, the first governor of the new state, focused on immediate issues, with infrastructure works that changed the landscape of the city-state and solved some of its problems. The governor ended up being helped by the proximity of the four-hundredth anniversary of the city's founding, whose celebrations fueled the idea that the former capital was now Belacap, a mix of the country's financial and cultural hub. In order to produce immediate and direct effects on the working classes, Lacerda announced that the reforms would begin in the suburbs, the areas most lacking in government action, and with the strengthening of education, which should reach every region of the state.
In this scenario, Lacerda hired the Greek urban planner Constantinos Apostolos Doxiadis to draw up the city's second master plan. Part of the funds needed to finance the project came from the United States under the "Alliance for Progress" program, from the Kennedy administration, which sought to establish alliances with Latin American countries to combat the "communist threat." The combination of the possibility of Lacerda's candidacy for the presidency of the Republic and the celebrations of the IV Centenary turned Rio de Janeiro into the capital of conservative Catholic morality and labor, giving the plan an unimagined repercussion, which led it to be seen as an example of competent administration and foresight for the future. In this sense, the Doxiadis Plan worked as a lever for Carlos Lacerda's ambitions to become president of the Republic, with Guanabara as his political showcase.
Image description: The image is a black-and-white illustration depicting an architectural project for an urban area. The spatial layout begins on the left, where we see a tall building marked "APARTMENTS" and "MECH. GARAGE." Next to it stands an apartment block with "SHOPS" on its ground floor. In the center is an open space with trees and a fountain. On the right, another similar building with "APARTMENTS" and "SHOPS" on its ground floor. In the background, we see more buildings and a sign reading "COACABANA."Doxiadis' project for Copacabana. Source: Doxiadis Associates, 1965
The choice of Doxiadis reflected an ideological affinity with Lacerda's positioning: it represented a move closer to North American urban thought – that is, to his allies in the anti-communist struggle – and, concomitantly, an attempt to overcome the modernist paradigm of the construction of Brasília, JK's greatest achievement.
The choice of a foreign firm sparked – just as had happened in the 1920s, when the Frenchman Agache was hired – great indignation among Brazilian architects. Even so, the contract with Doxiadis was signed in January 1964, and by the end of February the urban planner had already set up an office in the Avenida Central building, on Avenida Rio Branco. The Greek argued for the need for large-scale planning that would coordinate both the socioeconomic and physical aspects within a metropolitan-wide program, aiming for the year 2000. The Doxiadis Plan was, therefore, both a management plan and a physical master plan, which set out guidelines so that, by the start of the following millennium, the state would be urbanized according to a pattern of balanced growth and could thus function perfectly.
According to Doxiadis, Guanabara's economic problems stemmed from the obsolescence of its physical infrastructure, even though Lacerda had, throughout his administration, been carrying out a large number of public works. For the urban planner, the governor's interventions lacked a guiding line, an overall renewal plan.
In order to build this master plan, Doxiadis developed a network of communities, structured according to a functional and scale-based hierarchy. These self-sufficient communities would be separated by high-speed expressways, which would be built on elevated structures and oriented along north-south and east-west axes. Furthermore, Doxiadis proposed a city with two centers: an industrial center in Santa Cruz and a civic and business center in the old Centro.
Image description: The image is a black-and-white drawing representing an urban structure. On the left, there is an area labeled "Community Class VI," and on the right, another area identified as "Community Class VII." Both areas contain several oval shapes filled in black, possibly representing different communities or urban nuclei. The shapes are arranged in an organized manner within each area, with dashed lines delimiting the boundaries of the communities. In the lower right corner, it reads "6-urban structure," followed by "DOXIADIS PLAN - HIERARCHICAL COMMUNITIES."Community organization scheme proposed by Doxiadis. Source: Rezende, 1982.
Many of his proposals were drawn from interventions that Lacerda had already been implementing in previous years, such as the creation of industrial districts in the Santa Cruz region and along the margins of the expressways, already underway since 1961, when the Companhia de Progresso da Guanabara (Copeg) was created, and the preference for road transport, also a reality in Guanabara, whose old streetcars had been replaced by electric buses of the Companhia de Transportes Coletivos (CTC). In addition, the construction of expressways had been a transport solution since the previous decade, closely tied to the national-developmentalist model that drove the growth of the automobile industry in Brazil.
The positive results regarding the increase in the city's consumption capacity and the availability of jobs made the city a benchmark for those seeking employment and investment opportunities. The city began receiving immigrants from various parts of Brazil. The migrants fleeing the drought in the Northeast, as Caymmi announced, would catch an "ita" up north and come "to live in Rio."
The problem of the favelas remained, however.
The centrality of the debate on favelas had an impact on the drafting of the Doxiadis Plan, which incorporated the policy of building housing complexes on the outskirts, which Lacerda had been implementing since the creation of Cohab, in 1962. Designed to last until 1980, the "Special program of housing policy for favela dwellers" was presented
In the form of an emergency report, submitted just four months after his hiring, in June 1964, the special program for the elimination of favelas through the creation of accommodations for all hillside residents had a key moment in its first five years. Doxiadis proposed as a fundamental guideline a global effort to mobilize public and private resources.
This removal plan did not have easy acceptance and ended up turning into a political issue, mainly because of the way the removals began to be carried out. The central point was the precariousness of communication between the housing developments and the workplaces in the city, as well as the issues related to the time allowed for removal, justified by the plan's urgency and criticized for its authoritarian nature. To contain the first criticism, Lacerda created a state transportation company – the CTC – which would integrate the housing developments with Downtown and eliminate the first issue; as for the second, it was more difficult, since it involved the Secretariat of Social Services, headed at the time by Sandra Cavalcanti, who was accused of pursuing a policy of exclusion and was said to have gone so far as to throw the homeless into the Guarda River, in order to eliminate poverty during the city's anniversary celebrations.
During the Lacerda administration, about 42,000 people were removed from 27 favelas, four housing complexes were built, and four favelas were urbanized. Most of the removals carried out during this period affected favelas near Avenida Brasil.
However, the removals did not end with his administration, especially after the flood of January 12, 1966, when a severe storm left 50,000 people homeless and caused 250 deaths. The storm, which lasted more than 72 hours (and whose waters took about three days to recede), left the city completely paralyzed. The storm mainly hit the Leopoldina zone and the suburbs of Central do Brasil. Neighborhoods such as Madureira, Jacarepaguá, Botafogo, Tijuca, Praça da Bandeira, and Jardim Botânico were also affected.
The measures were swift in the face of such a great tragedy. In September 1966, a working group was created to draw up a housing plan for all of Guanabara, the "Integrated Housing Plan of Guanabara." And, just over a year later, in December 1967, the government presented the "Plan for the Eradication of Favelas and Urbanization of Rio de Janeiro," which would begin in the favelas surrounding the Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon and would affect around 35,000 people.
Although the memory of Rio's residents points to Lacerda as the governor responsible for the largest removals carried out, the number of people removed during the following administration, that of Negrão de Lima, was almost double. The removal program only began to broadly affect the Zona Sul in December 1967, already under the Negrão de Lima administration.
Image description: This is a black-and-white photograph of a community of houses built on stilts over water. From left to right, we see several wooden structures supported by stilts, with sloped roofs and porches. Some roofs have clothes hanging out to dry. In the background, there are more similar houses, also on stilts. The ground is flooded, reflecting the houses.Favela do Esqueleto, on the land where UERJ is currently located. UERJ Collection /Website of Jornal Meia Hora
In May 1968, the removalist approach gained more strength with the creation of the Coordination of Social Housing Interest for the Metropolitan Area of Greater Rio (Chisam), an agency under the Ministry of the Interior, which was responsible for carrying out the large-scale removals of favelas until 1973, when it was disbanded. A close look at the removals reveals surprising results.
In the end, the Doxiadis Plan had limited practical significance, because it was closely tied to the figure of Carlos Lacerda and was delivered at a moment when association with the governor's image was desired neither by the Military Dictatorship nor by those who opposed it. However, the plan was never completely abandoned. As soon as Negrão de Lima took office as governor, demands regarding its implementation began. Then, in June 1966, a study group was created, which gave rise to the Executive Commission for Housing Policy (Cepe), in order to establish its feasibility. Even so, the plan remained practically untouched, except for the guidelines for the favela removal policy and the works carried out in the area of the old Mangue, which included the neighboring Catumbi.
Seen by Doxiadis as a stagnant neighborhood, the Mangue region was meant to be the object of an urban renewal plan that would allow for the expansion of the Centro. To this end, mass expropriations were planned, along with changes to lot dimensions, amendments to urban legislation to allow for population densification, and the opening of avenues. From 1966 to April 1970, about thirty favelas were relocated, totaling 70,595 people.
