Early 20th Century & the Modern Movement (1900–1945)

São Paulo Plano de Avenidas

1930s · Brazil · Latin America · Hygienist and infrastructural reform urbanism · Planned by Prestes Maia
Detail of the General Plan of Central Improvements (Plano Geral dos Melhoramentos Centrais) from Prestes Maia's 1930 Plano de Avenidas, showing the radial-perimeter avenue system applied to central Sã
Detail of the General Plan of Central Improvements (Plano Geral dos Melhoramentos Centrais) from Prestes Maia's 1930 Plano de Avenidas, showing the radial-perimeter avenue system applied to central Sã · cc-by-sa

Core idea

Radial-perimeter highway urbanism

Why it matters

Structured motorization of a megacity

Description

A road-based restructuring plan for São Paulo developed by the engineer Francisco Prestes Maia, published with João Florence de Ulhôa Cintra in 1930 and pursued during Prestes Maia's mayoralty from 1938. Its core was a radial-perimeter system of wide avenues centred on an inner ring, the Perímetro de Irradiação, with river valleys converted into arterial roads and successive outward rings anticipating metropolitan expansion. Large parts of the system were built, fixing the automobile-oriented structure of the growing metropolis.

Significance

The Plano de Avenidas set São Paulo decisively on a path of road-led growth and remains central to explanations of the city's congestion and its weak investment in rail transit. It exemplifies the engineer-planner tradition in Latin America, and later critics have treated it as a cautionary case of structuring a megacity around motorisation.

What shaped it

Plans it influenced

Sources

Open it on the interactive timeline →
hub.toekom.st — History of Urbanism · an interactive timeline of 850 planned cities across 6,000 years.