City Planning and Planned City

While driving around Brasília I cannot help wondering how they were thinking when they planned this city. “Ok, we are going to build a completely new and modern capital. Hey! Let’s build it in the shape of an airplane!!” Some plans are obvious and somehow makes reasonably sense. Like I can understand that you put all the administrative and representative buildings in one area and the original plan of having commercial centres in every residential block makes sense, although it might not have worked out exactly as planned. But why putting all hotels in the same area?

Driving through the southern embassy sector you find some embassies that seem to be placed completely randomly and others according to some plan. For example I find it hard to see a plan behind having Lebanon, Mexico, Hungary, Indonesia and Slovakia next to each other, whereas it is easy to see the logic behind placing the Nordic countries (Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland) as neighbours as well as having Colombia, Chile, Venezuela, Uruguay and Argentina together (although I don’t see the logic in putting Serbia next to them!!). However, some locations are so surprising or unexpected it is hard to guess if it is by coincidence or if someone put them there by will, just to annoy or provoke them or maybe force them to cooperate. Hence you will find that Greece and Turkey are next door neighbours, as are Netherlands and South Africa as well as Russia and USA.