A project published in 1965 in a special issue of Manchete magazine– at the time the magazine with the largest circulation in the country – brought Sergio Bernardes’ proposals for urban planning in Rio de Janeiro. The project had topics such as: politics, geopolitics, economy, education, tourism, science and technology in issues related to transport, housing, urban integration, cultural and sports facilities. “This plan is a successive synthesis of future steps, starting from an analysis of today”. In the words of Bernardes, “it is the architect’s task to translate, in space and time, the balance sought, without which evolution is a massacre of individuals, crushing of humanity, degradation and destruction of nature by sacrificing the universal to private interests.”
The Rio plan is a proposal based on the analysis of existing problems. From public transport to the developing socioeconomic structure, and appeals to construction techniques that have been proven since the 1960s. Sergio Bernardes said that the prospective aimed to minimize the errors of the future, establishing as much as possible the awareness of the margin of the unpredictable and he added: “utopia would be to think that such a plan will be carried out tomorrow or a century from now. Realism is knowing it can be done.”
The proposal thus establishes priority criteria in the execution of parts of a global urban project with orientation of the city’s space through organic community cells, vertical growth through vertical neighborhoods, use of current railways – high-lines, tourist bridge linking Barra from Tijuca to Niterói and tourist route through the mountains of Rio.
