Brasilia is a city created by geometrists, all referenced and traced with rulers and compasses, North, East, West, South (NEWS), as all the main buildings, with the straight lines and the curves of perfect circles. The geometric wizards of the planning team worked in a perfect flat sheet of red dirt in the middle of nowhere, no rivers, hills or even trees to be respected.
But the geometry fails in the roads: in Brasilia the shortest distance between two specified points A,B is
D(A,B)= 1 UT + SL + n RA + 1UT
Meaning: Any Distance (D) is composed by 1 U-Turn; Plus a straight line (SL); Plus n number of Runabouts (called here Balões, balloons); Plus at least one more U-Turn. This is a best case scenario, because the backbone of the city is accessed by 30- something pairs of mini clovers called "Tesourinhas" (little scissors) that are the epitome of the U-Turn, needing to turn South whenever you want to go North.
Of course, Descartes rationality embodies all these formulas, with any single house pinpointed like in a 1950's GPS: SHTN LT1 TR2 BlA Ap102 is where I live, looks like a Google Earth address or the asteroid addresses of The Little Prince.
Where is the Red Flamboyant House in Sighs' Alley of Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay? Where is the "100 yards up from the Old Parking of the Automercado Los Yoses"? , a place with fond memories of my first stay in Costa Rica. The poetry of tree or flower names, the exagerated memories of national heroes, or even the bad taste of a street called India Muerta in Montevideo, is absent here.
No street names here, actually no streets at all, no sidewalks, no corners. How can you call this a city?
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