Francisco Prestes Maia e o projeto urbano para Panorama, 1945-1949 (original) (raw)

along the ridge between Peixe and Aguapeí rivers, have been determined the urbanization process of the Alta Paulista in the state of São Paulo between the 1940s and 1950s. Knowing the future extension of the railroad tracks towards the rio Paraná, real estate colonizing companies founded and built new towns in the region as a speculative measure inserted in an agrarian structure. In this process, roads were opened integrating the most distant regions; as well as commercial activities in wood exploitation, encouraging smallholder agriculture, and urban and rural allotment. In the same context, we found that the public power, the Federal Government and the State of São Paulo, from the beginning of the 20th century to the 1950s, articulated planning actions that sought to boost economic development, regional integration and occupation of the extreme west of São Paulo, including the Alta Paulista and the rio Paraná Valley, through cartographic surveys, development of navigation and commercial activities along the rio Paraná basin, as well as concessions for the expansion of railroad tracks to its margin and the opening of roads; Such actions are accentuated in the Estado Novo and gain new contours with the creation of the CIBPU-Comissão Interestadual da Bacia Paraná-Uruguai, in the early 1950s. In 1945, a real estate company in Campinas, Sociedade Imobiliária Panorama Ltda., linked to the capitals of landowners and politicians of the inland of São Paulo, acquired the land on the border of Alta Paulista with the rio Paraná, the São Marcos Evangelista farm, and proposed on it the foundation of a new intermodal city that would integrate the existing river port on the rio Paraná "Porto das Marrecas" with the future railroad tracks and terminal of ferrovia Paulista. Between 1946 and 1947, the engineer and architect Francisco Prestes Maia, former mayor of São Paulo and urban planner consecrated by the "Plano de Avenidas", "Plano de Melhoramentos Urbanos para Campinas", and sympathizer in that context of the Estado Novo, will be responsible for the development of the urban project of that city, which already had a name, Panorama, being for this urban planner his first and only experience of a new city. In this period, besides Panorama, 26 new towns, most of them the result of the entrepreneurial action of real estate companies that settled in Alta Paulista. This master's thesis is about the urban project for the new Panorama's intermodal city. We will present this project highlighting its urban plans, the "Relatório de Estudo e Projeto" (Study and Project Report), "Memorial Descritivo" (descriptive memorial), and sketches, both manuscripts by Francisco Prestes Maia and primary documents. We will see that while we have a process of urbanization of a region, in the emergence of a network of new towns and communication and transportation infrastructures, we also have the development of Urbanism as a disciplinary field and professional practice with the participation of Francisco Prestes Maia designing a new city, an exclusive historical fact in the trajectory of the urbanist, as well as the process of urbanization of that region, since the project for Panorama, in dialogue with the main international urbanism currents of that period, was technically and theoretically ahead of the other contemporary urban experiences in Alta Paulista. Our historical delimitation goes back to 1941, the year in which the railroad tracks of the São Paulo's Railway reached the city of Tupã in 1949, when we verified the first alterations in the original project of Francisco Prestes Maia undertaken by the board of the real estate company. Our geographical cutoff is Alta Paulista, specifically the city of Panorama. We highlight in all this process the dialogue of Urbanization in the formation of a network of towns, and Urbanism, as a field of knowledge and professional practice, with the combined action of three main protagonists: The public power through decrees, plans and concessions that made possible the occupation of the extreme west of São Paulo and the Alta Paulista; the action of companies and real estate companies that saw in the subdivision of those lands an alternative to raise profits, and the participation of Francisco Prestes Maia as urbanist in the urban project for Panorama.