The new urban form and the model city: town planning in the Brazilian hinterland

Abstract

The diffusion of planning ideas incorporates both objective learning and more imaginative processes. This paper explores the interconnection of these two factors in Sinop, a new town in Brazil’s Mato Grosso state, planned by private developers in 1972. Sinop’s layout was commonly believed to reflect features of Maringá, a new town founded in 1945 in southern Brazil, whose highly rated design was planned according to formal garden-city principles. Like Sinop, Maringá was developed by private investors as part of a systematic colonization and deliberate urbanization process. Although Maringá was taken as a model for Sinop’s design, the two urban forms appear fairly distinct.