Life cycle of Brazilian cities

Abstract

One of the remarkable features of Brazil is that it is possible to observe there the complete cycle of birth, growth, decline - and sometimes disappearance - of cities in short time spans, often less than a century. This is particularly the case of cities that were created on the pioneer fronts, such as the coffee front, during the first half of the 20th century in the States of São Paulo and Paraná, or on the soybean front since the 1970s in Mato Grosso. Earlier cases from the colonial and imperial period allow to follow the cycle up until their final decline, such as the gold towns of Minas Gerais, which reached their economic and demographic peak in the 18th century, suffered a sharp decline in the 19th century and sometimes have witnessed a recent renaissance due to the increase of touristic activities. In addition, the country has, in several occasions, created ex-nihilo new cities to become capitals of federal states or, in two occasions, to become the capital city of the entire country, on dates that span between the end of the 19th century and the end of the 20th century. We will therefore analyze these three cases, focusing at first on the examples of the city of Londrina (Paraná), founded in 1929, then in a second moment on that of Sinop (Mato Grosso), founded in 1974, and finally in a third moment on those of Ouro Preto (Minas Gerais), founded in 1711, and Paraty (Rio de Janeiro), founded in 1597. Among the creation of federal states capitals, we chose the examples of Belo Horizonte (1897) and Palmas (1989) and at the national level the case of Brasília (Federal District), founded in 1960, which reached in 2017 the three million inhabitants mark. In each case, we will analyze the reasons for the founding of the city, generally related to an economic cycle of production, for export, of ores or agricultural commodities. Then the modalities of its growth and its positioning in the pre-existing urban and transport networks, already existing or created for a specific occasion (e.g. "royal route" for the gold export, coffee railways, trans-Amazonian roads). Special attention will be paid to cities that for a certain period played the role of boca do sertão, gateways to frontier zones, which lasted only until competitors supplanted them when the pioneer front advanced a step further. Then we will focus on the ulterior destiny of those cities after the end of the peak of the economic cycle that gave birth to them: either growth stabilized on different bases, or a more or less pronounced decline, followed or not by a recovery in another situation. In the case of voluntarily created capitals, it will be examined whether this initiative has had the expected success in giving the new city a real command role and rebalancing the territory in their area of influence. The extraordinary dynamism of the Brazilian urban network thus offers many examples, observable until today, of the lifetime of urban systems, much more than in the countries of Europe or Asia, where the origins of the cities are so remote and their history so long and complex that it is difficult to reconstruct their life trajectory.