ABSTRACT
By the time Brasília was officially declared the political capital of Brazil in 1960, a massive process of territorial reorganization had started to unfold in the Amazon. Observed at territorial scale, the transversal axes that define the basic urban structure of Brasília appeared as an intersection of two major arteries that were being cut toward the northern and western borders of Brazil, one linking Brasília to the city of Porto Velho, near the border with Bolivia, and the other connecting the new capital with the city of Belém, the main port situated at the delta of the great Amazonas River. Roads were designed as lines of occupation as well as channels through which modernization would infiltrate the undomesticated interior. For the government, as well as for many geographers, engineers, and architects, it was necessary to reorient the spatial axis of coastal occupation inherited from the colonial period toward the central plateaus, and from that elevated point—Brasília—unleash a new cycle of development that would expand to the rest of the national territory. 2
