Urban Reforms and the Birth of City Planning in Rio de Janeiro and Recife ( 1904-1945 )

This paper discusses urban reforms and the birth of city planning in Rio de Janeiro and Recife between the years 1904 and 1945. It deals with financial changes, political struggles, housing crises and the birth of city planning itself. The paper concludes that these urban reforms brought another image of the city, a new townscape and a different experience of living. These developments were characterised by proto-modern architecture, skyscrapers built on large avenues, distant housing with long journeys to work for the poorest, or overcrowded favelas (slum setlements) around the city centre.

class is conducted to dwellings in the periphery.The other option to the working class is to reduce their consumption, while remaining in the city centre.The former case brings easier social control and is especially important in cities with a tradition of working class revolts.Urban reforms rely on both decisions and works of a significant size, such as expropriation laws and financial resources.This latter aspect seems to be always present in urban reforms.Municipal budgets are not sufficient for the amount of capital required in investments of this magnitude.In other words, urban reform is preceded by financial reforms.It is necessary to have a "revolution in the credit system to revolutionate space relations". 3f the mid-nineteenth century was the period in which Haussmann's urban reform was undertaken in Paris, 4 the three first decades of the twentieth century was the period in which some of the most important urban reforms took place in South American cities.In Brazil, the urban reform of Rio de Janeiro was undertaken during the government of the engineer and mayor Pereira Passos (1902-1906), called a "Tropical Haussmann", by a Minister of Foreign Affairs. 5 In this experience, as in others, working class housing and insalubrious streets in the centre were demolished and the population moved out, in part to far neighbourhoods beside the railways and in part to favelas (shacks) placed on the hills around the centre. 6Sao Paulo also had its urban reform in the governments of the mayors Antônio Prado (1899-1911) and Raimundo Duprat (1911-1914), when many infrastructures were improved, as was the case of the transportation system. 7Recife, third largest city in population in Brazil until the middle of the century, had a smaller reform, limited to bairro do Recife, the district beside the port (1909-1913).During this period, a project for a new water supply and sewerage system was also implemented. 8Argentina did not escape from this tendency.At least Buenos Aires passed by an urban reform in the beginning of the century, during the tenure of mayor Alvear. 9

Financial Changes
The turn of the century marked a cycle of urban reforms in South America.From the late 1920s until the 1940s a second cycle took place.This new cycle was associated, among other causes, at least in Brazil, with World War II and especially with structural changes to financial supports in the ways of production of the built environment.These urban reforms were also related to political needs and cultural models.Until the 1940s real estate was a privileged locus of investment of capital generated from commerce and industry, as well as agriculture.In the absence of a financial market in which intersectorial transferences between economical agents could take place, real estate was a very good kind of investment.In the context of World War II, when imports were suspended, the commercial balance experienced a huge superavit, inflating the monetary basis.This improved credit supply, which added to the speculative wages which affected all markets, especially that of building materials, created, jointly with financial changes, an unprecedented building boom.
The expansion of the Workers' Co-operative Funds (IAP) and insurance companies created a true financial revolution.Many small banks were set up with very little capital, operating partly with the Workers' Co-operative Funds and becoming important in real estate financing.Financial circuits did not only play a part in building credit supply.Banks also made large investments in real estate, which resulted in a liquidity crisis of the banking system, stopping governmental investments in real estate.Capitalization and insurance companies invested their reserves in real estate and borrowed money for this purpose.Martinelli, Lar Brasileiro, Sulacap, Sulamérica and Aliança da Bahia, for instance, were companies which built monumental skyscrapers, leaving their symbols in the urbanscape through their office buildings.In parallel to those investors, the Institutos de Aposentadoria e Pensões (IAPs -Workers' Co-operative Funds) bought large quantities of urban land, constructing commercial buildings, flats and social housing, becoming one of the greatest urban landowners in the country.Urban reforms undertaken by municipal governments in cities like Rio de Janeiro and Recife were done with the aid of the IAPs, which invested largely in central areas. 10

Political Struggles
Another feature of this process of modernization, which has not yet been explored in the literature, is the relationship between urban reforms and the political struggles of the working class.The movement called the 1930s Revolution was a turning point in Brazilian history.It changed the political system from a false democracy (1899-1930) to a period of transition without elections (1930-1937), culminating in the dictatorship of the Estado Novo (1937-1945).In 1935 a curious communist revolt took place. 11One might not exclude the possibility of social control through urban reforms.At least in Recife, the colonial townscape constituted by narrow and irregular streets seems to have played a part, resulting in a difficult control of the battle.
Indeed, the implementation of urban reforms was not free of conflicts.These can be divided into two categories: conflicts with renters and householders and conflicts with groups of intellectuals who intended to preserve the old townscape, especially colonial churches and monuments.Since 1927, householders in Recife, in the district of Santo Antônio, which was condemned to demolition for the opening of large avenues, demanded to be exempted from taxes, arguing that they could not rent their buildings because they would have to remain closed until they were demolished (a municipal law required them for expropriation).This demand was satisfied by a decision of the City Council.Another problem was that when the renters knew that the buildings in which they were living would be demolished, they stopped paying their rents.Some curious cases were registered, such as that of a rich householder who started to paint his property, which was among other houses being demolished, in an attempt to rent it again.This initiative was discovered and forbidden by the City Plan Commission.Renters did not want to leave their homes.A strong rainfall demolished one building, killing five individuals and induced renters to move out.After this tragedy the Director of the Department of Public Health condemned 28 buildings to demolition. 12

Housing Crises
The demolition of a large quantity of buildings, in Recife and in Rio de Janeiro, both in the two cycles of urban reform, created two housing crises. 13Following these crises rents rose and it was almost impossible to find a dwelling.Even the quantity of casas de comodos decreased. 14Many of them were located in districts which were demolished and others were converted to a different use.It is difficult to measure accurately how many homes were demolished.In Recife, the demolition of Santo Antônio district alone for the opening of main avenues like Dez de Novembro (10th November), the inauguration date of the dictatorship of the Estado Novo, totalled 357 buildings. 15In general, these buildings had at least two floors.Since they normally had a workshop for craft workers and at least one home in each building, one can consider that at least 357 homes disappeared in the district.As the average family in this period was constituted by 5 individuals, it can be stated that at least 1,785 persons moved out of the district, 0,5% of the 346,000 inhabitants of the city.
In Rio de Janeiro, in a district in which 22,8% of the buildings were casas de comodos (the highest proportion in the city), a survey carried out in 1945 showed that from 337 casas de comodos which had been inhabited some years before, housing 10,000 persons, 30 were demolished, 9 closed down and 61 put to other use, which means a reduction of almost one third.This tendency was prevalent at least from the time of Pereira Passos' reform.The reduction in the number of casas de comodos went from 3,401 in 1906 to 2,967 in 1920 and only 1,047 in 1945.As a proportion of the housing stock, casas de comodos went from 3,6% to 2,3% and 0,3% in the respective period.The urban reform in Rio during the second cycle resulted in the demolition of 2400 residential buildings with a population of around 18,200 persons.For the opening of Presidente Vargas Avenue 525 buildings were demolished, resulting in a marked rise in prices of urban land in central areas.Land prices rose 2,188% between 1936 and 1954, when while prices of civil construction rose 733% and the cost of living 789%. 16he second cycle of urban reforms consolidated a housing pattern of the urban poor characterized by favelas located on hills and over marshlands around the centre or out in the suburbs, near the railways.The number of favelas rose 71,7% between 1933 and 1940.The housing crisis during a building boom can be explained by a change in the pattern of the housing market during this period.The explanation was that housing built were expensive and for sale, not for rent.This became particularly true after the politization of the crisis, when the State enacted the Housing Rent Act of 1942, which forbade rent rises for houses already rented. 17

The Birth of City Planning
Since the late 1920s and especially in the 1930s there was a change both in thought and practice regarding urban problems.This period was characterized by the proposition of city plans.It was no longer a question of building company towns or renewing city centres with casas de comodos and favelas.The new paradigm was to plan the city as a whole and to control its growth.In this process there was an influence of European urban reformers, especially those associated with the Société Française des Urbanistes and the Musée Social of Paris. 18In the beginning of the century some Brazilian engineers had links with European professional societies, such as the Association Génerale des Hygiénistes et Techniciens Municipaux (AGHTM).Francisco Saturnino de Britto, a sanitary engineer who carried out many projects for systems of sewerage and water supply for Brazilian cities and also plans of extension, was membre d'honneur of the AGHTM.This engineer was awarded a prize in the Exposition de la Cité Reconstitué in 1916 for his work "Le Tracé Sanitaire des Villes". 19ther engineers also participated in this network of reformers, such as Victor da Silva Freire, a city planner who was very important in the origins of city planning in São Paulo.While in the early twentieth century there was only a small elite of professionals who was up to date with all the knowledge about urban problems being produced in Europe, after the second half of the 1920s this knowledge was applied and diffused in Brazil.
The visit of Donat-Alfred Agache to Brazil in 1927 was quite important in this sense.This planner, one of the founders of city planning in France, was a member of many institutions for urban reform, such as the Musée Social, in which he was a member of the section d'hygiene urbaine et rurale (urban and rural public health board), founded in 1908. 20Agache was invited to design a plan for Rio de Janeiro and Recife and lectured for engineers, city planners and architects in both cities.These lectures seem to have played an important part in the development of city planning ideas. 21At least in Recife, where he did not propose a plan, his lectures were frequently cited in the planning discussion. 22gache designed a plan for Rio de Janeiro in 1930.With the 1930s Revolution, all that was identified with the old regime was considered a sign of corruption and the plan was ignored, although some ideas were modified and implemented in the following years.The plan also influenced other Brazilian planners.Ideas similar to those contained in his plan appeared in a plan designed by Fernando Almeida for Recife in October 1931, as well as in the plans of Nestor de Figueiredo for this city.At the same time that Agache was designing his plan for Rio de Janeiro, the architect-engineer Francisco Prestes Maia was proposing his plan for São Paulo.In this last plan the influence is more American than French, but the circulation system was a mix of ideas developed by European planners such as Stubben and Eugéne Hénard. 23lthough Agache's sojourn in Brazil contributed to the development of planning, other visits were also important, especially for the professional formation of the young generation of planners.Atilio Corrêa Lima, an architect who graduated at the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes in Rio was awarded a scholarship and travelled to Paris, where he studied urbanism at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Urbains.In Paris, he was in contact with many French urban reformers and was influenced by them.Upon his return to Brazil, Corrêa Lima designed plans for various cities, such as Goiânia, a new town planned to be the capital of the State of Goias.In Paris, his thesis was a plan for Niteroi, a city in Guanabara Bay. 24In 1936, Corrêa Lima was invited to propose a plan for Recife.Another political change, the dictatorship of the Estado Novo, meant the cancellation of his contract.Other professionals also studied in foreign countries, such as Washington de Azevedo, who did a graduate course at Harvard.This engineer worked as a consultant and city planner, being invited jointly with Prestes Maia by the City Plan Commission of Recife to analyse the plan of Nestor de Figueiredo in 1932. 25any plans and ideas proposed before the 1930s Revolution were implemented during the Estado Novo.In São Paulo, the implementation of Prestes Maia's plan began in 1938, when he became mayor (1938-1945).In Rio de Janeiro some of the ideas of Agache were followed, such as the opening of Presidente Vargas Avenue, which was undertaken in the early 1940s during the government of Mayor Henrique Dodsworth (1937-1945).Recife also followed this tendency.João Florence de Ulhôa Cintra, Director of Public Works of São Paulo, for which he had proposed a new system of avenues with Prestes Maia before the Plano de Avenidas (Plan of Avenues), visited the city in 1943 and proposed another plan.In this plan he employed some of the ideas of Nestor de Figueiredo, such as the opening of Dantas Barreto Avenue.
Despite the reorganization of the urban territory by public works, conflicts with householders and renters, the displacement of population, and the housing crisis, these reforms were part of a larger movement, that of the birth of city planning as a new discipline. 26As a result, a new practice related to urban problems and a new knowledge emerged: city planning.A new professional was also created: the city planner.City planning became institutionalised with the creation of positions in the state apparatus and courses in many universities.The proposition of city plans was followed by a new rationale, that of Taylorism, technical rationalism and the re-creation of cities as a mirror of industry, even if Brazil and Argentina had agricultural rather than industrial economies, with the majority of the population still living in rural areas.Zoning was also part of this rationale.All plans included industrial, commercial, university and residential zones.
This period also presented a change in professional representations.Engineering, a technical profession, occupied important positions in the municipal administration.Engineers and city planners thought that representative institutions, typical of democratic societies, were not efficient.Politics was in opposition to the needs of the modern city.This authoritarian thought was implemented both in Brazil and Argentina in this period; in Brazil, with the "Vargas years" and the dictatorship of the Estado Novo (1937-1945) and in Argentina, with the governments of Uiraburu and Justo.These governments inaugurated State intervention in the labour market with the creation of welfare and labour laws.Intervention in the labour market was also followed by social policies, such as the housing policy, characterised by the construction of social housing financed by Workers' Cooperative Funds. 27

Conclusion
The period analysed in this essay is extremely important for South American history.Certain social, urban and housing policies were initiated between 1926 and 1945.The implementation of working class discipline was the aim of all those reforms.Indeed, the creation of city planning was part of a process of population management in an age of arrangements in the labour market for economic growth through industrial activities in which social peace and skilled workers were necessary.These changes brought another image of the city, a new townscape and a different experience of living.These developments were characterised by proto-modern architecture, skyscrapers built on large avenues, distant housing with long journeys to work for the poorest, or overcrowded favelas around the city centre.Notes *Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, E-mails: outtes@uol.com.br,outtes@yahoo.co.uk