Brasilia or the Limits of Theory

Abstract

Modernist planning theory assumed that planning, architecture, and urban design by themselves could transform society and create new forms of collective association and personal habits. Using James Holston’s The Modernist City, an Anthropological Critique of Brasilia as my starting point, I argue in this paper that Brasilia clearly exemplifies the limits of planning theory itself. Even if it provided Brasilia’s planners with a specific and explicit set of guidelines, concepts, and principles, these ended up creating a “formalistic shell for living” that did not transform the status quo but made it even more explicit. As such, Brasilia reminds us that the development of cities is mostly the consequence of personal decisions and choices that cannot be determined a priori. Therefore, planning theory can only help planners, architects, urban designers and politicians (to name a few) “create conditions that might set in motion processes” (Abu-Lughod 1993:32), but it can nonetheless never provide us with totalizing solutions that always objectify and consider people passive recipients of planning and thus fail to include the unintended, the unexpected, the subversive, the political.