Brasília is not the kind of place with many surprises. It is a pleasant city, and I like to live here most of the time, but planners designed it to be uniform and boring and they succeeded. The same pattern repeats with monotonous regularity. Brasília is the vision of the future projected by leftish planners from 1960. That future never arrived, but time froze here.
That is why I was happy to find something a little different. They are building bike lanes. You can see on the pictures that it is pleasant. It really doesn’t go anywhere. Like most things around here, it is not an organic development. They probably expect that you will drive to this place and then ride. The second picture shows the trail along one of the usual streets, green canyons.
Brasília is a postponed opportunity. The location is superb. It is mostly gently uphill from the lake and the man-made lake is pleasant. Brasília sits in big-sky country. And lots of things grow here with a little coaxing and a little care. The weather is pleasant all year around. You could have been the perfect walking and biking city. A city for people. But it was built for cars.
Brazilians have made this a pleasant place despite the design. Imagine how nice it could be if the start had been better. It can be improved, retrofitted. It is already better than it was and I am confident it will get still better. That is why I don’t think it is an opportunity lost, just postponed.