Urbanistic impact on landscape: Belo Horizonte, 1891-1897

Abstract

The planned city of Belo Horizonte was founded in Brazil at the end of the 19^th century to be the new capital city of the State of Minas Gerais, Brazil. The urban intervention provoked an intense transformation of the landscape, with no precedents in the Brazilian urban culture of that time. This essay proposes to examine the impact of the built city in its original landscape, tackling the context of creation, the urban plan itself and the interface between the new settlement and the environmental pre-existences. We will also discuss the effect of this transformation on the contemporary urban landscape.